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Zak Zinter on Michigan's poise on the road: 'We go in with the goal to quiet the crowd down quick'

Anthony Broomeby:Anthony Broome•10/02/23•

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(Photo by James Black/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

The Michigan Wolverines bullied another Big Ten opponent in Week 5 with a 45-7 win at Nebraska on Saturday afternoon, its first road game of the season. It helped the team unlock the next gear in its development as it rounds back into championship form.

The offensive line had a huge hand in Michigan’s success on Saturday with the team racking up 249 rushing yards on the nation’s top-ranked run defense. Coming out and sending a message was an emphasis all week, and the happy mission was accomplished.

“It was our first challenge on the road,” senior guard Zak Zinter said on Monday afternoon. “It’s just it brings another element. You’re fighting the guys across from you, the environment, the weather, the crowd… it just brings another element into the game, which we embrace and we love.”

Michigan was not penalized a single time in the game, and Zinter believes it is a product of how poised the team is. All of that starts at the top with head coach Jim Harbaugh and staff.

“I think it just comes down to we’re a well-coached team,” Zinter said. “We keep our emotions in check. and we just go out there and try to play a clean game of football between the whistles. We don’t want to hurt ourselves.

“We do this thing called TTG. It’s ‘teach the game’ throughout camp. We’re going through every situation imaginable. And then on Fridays, or on Mondays, we’ll come in, we’ll have a TTG. We’ll watch situations from the week before, whether it’s a two-minute drive from another team [or elsewhere]. We saw [Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick] Mahomes get down last night and not score a touchdown at the end to just end the game and not let him have a chance at all.

“Just stuff like that where he could have scored a touchdown and boosted his stats but he went down and they took a knee and they won the game. It’s just simple stuff where not a ton of us knew a bunch of that kind of rule-wise before we got here, but I think it’s really beneficial for us.”

Michigan’s line has played well early on this year, but Saturday was its most complete performance to date. Zinter says there is plenty of reason to think the best is yet to come.

“We haven’t really opened up the playbook to too much these first few games, which I think is part of it,” Zinter said. “But also just the chemistry. Backs running hard, us running hard. Going into it, we knew they had a good run-stopping defense, and we wanted to make an emphasis that they weren’t going to be able to stop us.”

The next challenge comes in the form of a road game at Minnesota on Saturday night (7:30 p.m., NBC). Once again, Michigan will go into the game with the goal of silencing the crowd and seeing more metal bleachers than opposing team colors.

“Every road game, the environment is going to be loud, Zinter said. “We’re playing loud music at practice and just getting mentally prepared for all the elements and crowd noise going on. Whatever is going to come our way.

“We go in there with the goal to quiet the crowd down pretty quick.”

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