Adjustment to Michigan football practice plan is paying off: 'It definitely helped us'
Michigan Wolverines football made a change to its practice plan after the first three weeks of the season. The Maize and Blue were 2-1 at that point, with wins over Fresno State (30-10) and Arkansas State (28-18) and a loss to Texas (31-12), heading into a game against then-No. 11 USC.
“I think we’ve always done that,” Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore said of the alterations. “We’ve always had kinks, adjustments and things depending on the team, from team to team. Every team is different. So there’s been a couple things we’ve done as a team, talking to the leadership council, to our captains and what we’ve done.
“It’s been good. Made adjustments before USC, and I feel like it’s helped us — and we’re going to continue to do that.”
Now, Moore didn’t say exactly what buttons he pushed, but senior EDGE TJ Guy provided some insight.
“Yeah, we started practicing more good on good, getting more good looks on each other so we could be ready for Saturdays and things like that,” Guy said. “So I think it definitely helped us.”
There’s a fine line coaches have to walk when deciding how much physicality to implement into practices, and how many reps they want between their offense and defense versus the scout team giving the starters a look. Michigan has long done more “good-on-good” than other programs, and Moore has continued that trend.
“Just practicing good on good is always good, because we’ve got good players and they’ve got good players on offense,” Guy said. “Playing against good players will only elevate your game.”
Michigan was up to the task the last two weeks, beating USC and Minnesota by an identical score of 27-24. There are certainly areas to improve, but getting the win is the goal — as junior quarterback Alex Orji said Saturday, coming away with the ‘W’ is what they “work all week for.”
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A focus in practice this week is coming out stronger in second halves. While Michigan has won three-straight games, it’s been outscored 57-26 and outgained 595-389. Things got dicey at the end of each of the last two tilts, versus USC and Minnesota.
“The biggest piece is we haven’t finished the way we wanted to,” Moore said. “And it’s not a speech, it’s not something in the locker room — we just have to execute at a higher level for us and that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ll continue to harp on that and stress on that.”
Guy believes it’ll take some time for all of Michigan’s new pieces to come together and play 60 minutes of high-level football.
“Just a continuation of finding each other, finding our identity,” Guy explained. “By the end of this season, I have no doubt that we’ll be right where we want to be, in terms of playing the second half. We just gotta finish, do a better job finishing, but I have no worries about that.
“It comes down to execution. If you didn’t have success, you probably didn’t execute to the best of your abilities. I like our guys, and whenever we’re all executing at a high level, I think we’re unstoppable. We just have to know that it’s gonna take a little more, and we have to finish — we have to finish dominantly.”
Michigan will play on the road for the first time this season, set for a rematch of the national championship game against Washington. The Wolverines will keep their typical road-game schedule from prior seasons, except they’ll adjust for the longer trip to Seattle.
“We’ll leave earlier and make sure we get there in time so the guys are rested,” Moore said.
