Best and worst from Michigan football win over East Carolina
Michigan Wolverines football blew out East Carolina, 30-3, to begin the 2023 season. Here are our superlatives from the game.
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Most telling stat
Michigan ran more than it passed in every game last season. But Saturday, the Wolverines ran 62 total plays — 31 passes and 31 runs. It’s the first time the rush attempts didn’t exceed the number of throws since a 34-11 loss to Georgia in the 2021 Orange Bowl.
ECU stacked the box and flowed down hill, selling out to stop the run, so Michigan made the Pirates pay by throwing the ball around a bit. Junior quarterback J.J. McCarthy was sensational, connecting on 26 of his 30 passes for 280 yards and 3 touchdowns. Most of McCarthy’s throws were right on the money, including all 3 touchdowns. The best was his third to senior wideout Roman Wilson, who hauled in all three receiving scores for the Maize and Blue; McCarthy perfectly placed the ball on a rope in the corner of the end zone for the final touchdown of the day.
The Wolverines appear to have more answers than last season when the run game isn’t there, though we’ll see how everything looks when the competition improves.
Best wide receiver
Wilson was the guy Saturday, with 6 catches for 78 yards. If not for one bad drop and another he could’ve caught, his numbers would’ve been even more impressive. His route-running was precise, and he’s already got the speed. He and McCarthy appear to have built up some great chemistry. Wilson was flying around at The Big House.
Blake is back
Michigan senior running back Blake Corum still had some success in his return, after suffering a season-ending knee injury last November. He looked a step slower than a year ago, but he’s still knocking off the rust, and he revealed postgame that Saturday marked the first time he got hit since trying to give it a go at Ohio State last November.
Corum ran 10 times for 73 yards and a 2-yard touchdown in the beginning of the second quarter. He broke off 21- and 37-yard touchdowns, with the latter setting up his lone score. He didn’t exactly look like he was at his best, but it seems he’s getting there.
Best looking tackle
Over recent years, Michigan has had several offensive tackles who wound up playing guard in the NFL. There are a few tackles on this team — graduate Karsen Barnhart being one of them — that are likely to be in the same boat. And for the record, there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as they perform at a high level in a winged helmet.
And then there’s Stanford transfer and senior Myles Hinton. The 6-foot-6, 340-pound mountain is a tackle through and through. From what we gathered, he was throwing defensive linemen around during preseason practices, playing great, and thus earning Michigan’s starting right tackle job. Hinton is big, strong and athletic — a great pickup out of the transfer portal.
Barnhart got beat a few times in pass protection — nothing major, though — but we didn’t notice Hinton with any egregious mistakes, though the film will be a much better test. We had heard Hinton was likely going to win the right tackle job, and that was confirmed with his first U-M start Saturday.
Biggest disappointments
It’s time to nitpick. Michigan won by 27 points (but didn’t cover the 36-point spread!), out-gained ECU, 402-235, and had some great individual performances. However, not everything was great just yet. Fair or not, the No. 2 team in the country will be held to a high standard. Here are three things that stood out:
• Pass rush: ECU ranked 103rd nationally with a 7.8-yard average throw depth last season and got the ball out quickly against Michigan. The Wolverines had a few pressures, but didn’t get much heat on the quarterback and didn’t register a sack for just the third time since the start of last season. We’ll have to wait until next week to see if the Wolverines have taken a step forward in the pass rush department.
• Missed tackles: Michigan’s defense allowed only 4.3 yards per play, so there’s not a ton to complain about. But there were a few missed tackles, including a pair by graduate linebacker Michael Barrett in the first half. It’s likely just a product of a season opener and nothing to panic about. Barrett, by the way, also made several nice plays, finishing with 5 tackles.
• Second-team offense: Michigan’s backup offense, while possessing some solid players, did not live up to its standard Saturday, and that’s probably an understatement. The group gained 4 yards on four plays its first drive and 15 yards on five plays on its second. There were penalties and missed assignments — a lot to clean up.
Deep position group
The Michigan linebackers really showed out. Again, Barrett played well for the most part. Junior linebacker Junior Colson and sophomore Ernest Hausmann also had strong games. The latter, a Nebraska transfer, might have been the best of the bunch in this game, concluding with a team-high 6 tackles and a half-stop for loss. The way he moves at his size, with big, broad shoulders, is impressive.
Up and down day
Saturday also marked the debut for Michigan graduate kicker James Turner, a Louisville transfer, and perhaps he had some nerves playing just miles from where he went to high school, at Saline (Mich.) High. Turner missed his third extra point, after former U-M kicker Jake Moody didn’t miss a PAT all of last season. Even some of the makes were hit a bit low, as was a 52-yarder that he failed to connect on at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
But Turner’s 50-yard field goal as time expired to end the first half was great, and Moody-eque. ECU called timeout as he set up the first time, and he went through with the kick. It made it through the uprights, but it was on that same lower trajectory. After the timeout, he drilled it perfectly, higher, and it would’ve been good from 60-plus.
Overall, Turner looks like he’ll be very solid for Michigan, but fans will no longer look away during extra points. There will be some added suspense.
Top defender
Hausmann was probably the runner-up, but Michigan graduate defensive back Mike Sainristil takes the cake here. He had an interception on ECU’s second possession of the game, the second pick of his career, added 1 tackle and played tight coverage all afternoon long.
Michigan’s defensive backfield was short-handed, too, without sophomore cornerback Will Johnson and junior safety Rod Moore, making Sainristil’s presence, communication and leadership even more important.
Saddest field goal
ECU hasn’t been shut out in 313 games.
The above statement is a fact because of one of the saddest field goals we’ve seen. ECU head coach Mike Houston brought on his field goal unit on third down with five seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, and kicker Andrew Conrad made a 33-yarder as time expired. Final: Michigan 30, ECU 3. Nobody can tell the ECU offense it didn’t come up to Ann Arbor and put points up on the No. 2 team in America.
It also reminds us of the sad field goal by Penn State, down four touchdowns at Michigan in 2016. Maybe James Franklin and Houston learned to take the points when it’s completely unnecessary at James Madison, where the former was the wide receivers coach in 1997 and the latter was the head man from 2016-18.
Best shirt
McCarthy made waves wearing a ‘FREE HARBAUGH’ shirt before and after the game. The ninth-year head man, of course, is suspended the first three games of the season, school-imposed, stemming from an alleged NCAA violation.
“I just want my coach back. It’s as simple as that — I just want him back,” McCarthy said, showing off the shirt after the game.
