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Best and worst from Michigan's win over UNLV

clayton-sayfieby:Clayton Sayfie•09/09/23•

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Kenneth Grant
(Photo by Lon Horwedel / TheWolverine.com)

Michigan Wolverines football was clinical in its 35-7 win over UNLV. Here are the best and worst from the game.

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MVP

Michigan junior quarterback J.J. McCarthy was magnificent for a second straight week, with the offense going as he goes. McCarthy was 22-for-25 passing for 278 yards and 2 touchdowns, both to senior wideout Roman Wilson (who now has 5 scores on the season himself). He also ran for 38 yards on 3 carries, including a 17-yarder that set up a senior running back Blake Corum touchdown.

McCarthy’s added pre-snap responsibilities at the line of scrimmage, footwork, ability to go through his progressions and pinpoint accuracy are among the most significant ways in which the signal-caller has grown from last season. The competition will become stiffer at some point, but he’s playing as well as a quarterback can in the games he’s in.

The 6-foot-3, 202-pounder is 48-of-55 passing for 558 yards and 5 touchdowns through two games. It’s on to the next, but McCarthy has been stellar.

Best concept

Michigan’s run game hasn’t been as prolific as it wants (or as it probably will be sooner rather than later), but its threat — with defenses afraid of getting burned by Corum and Co. — has an impact on the passing game.

Through two games, McCarthy is perfect on play-action passes this season — 12-for-12 for 219 yards and a touchdown. He led the nation with 7.3 yards per attempt on play-action throws a season ago, but the Wolverines only threw 80. They’re on track for 72 attempts in the regular-season alone, and that’s after keeping the offensive menu pretty vanilla and McCarthy totaling less than six quarters of play against a pair of weaker opponents.

Saturday, McCarthy was 6-of-6 for 138 yards and a 47-yard touchdown in the play-action game. The score to a horizontally-streaking and single-covered Wilson was a bullet right on the money, after McCarthy faked a handoff to Corum, drawing the defense in.

Breakout sophomore

There aren’t any players on either ECU or UNLV capable of blocking Michigan sophomore defensive tackle Kenneth Grant. He was all over the place again, building off his disruptive game a week ago, posting 4 tackles, 2.5 stops for loss and 1.5 sacks. He also batted down a pass on third-and-10.

Grant is much more put together physically than he was as a freshman a year ago, now with the look of an elite SEC defensive tackle (no, we’re not saying he’s elite as a player … yet). He’s going to be too good to keep off the field.

Sack time

Michigan pressured ECU’s quarterbacks in the opener but didn’t register any sacks. The Wolverines got one on UNLV’s second possession Saturday (sophomore EDGE Derrick Moore) and added four more in the second quarter. The pressure was constant, forcing UNLV quarterback Doug Brumfield to run for his life at times. Brumfield is mobile, but his willingness to try to extend plays cost his team some yardage. He had only 2 rushes that gained more than 2 yards (a 12-yarder and a 4-yarder), proving Michigan did a good job of containing him when he scrambled.

Best back

Corum said he feels like he’s close to being back to the level he played at in 2022, when he finished seventh in Heisman Trophy voting despite missing the end of the season with a knee injury. His health is 100 percent, but now he’s just knocking off the rust. He rushed 15 times for 80 yards and 3 touchdowns this week, but still hasn’t broken off a huge run (he had a 37-yarder last week and a long of 19 yards this game).

But even Corum at, perhaps, 85-90 percent of what he played at last season is better than most in the country. He helped set the tone early on, including with a 20-yard reception on Michigan’s first play from scrimmage.

Toughest stat line

Junior Donovan Edwards, meanwhile, is still growing as a runner, clearly. It was probably a coincidence, but there wasn’t as much room to run on some of Edwards’ attempts — not his fault. At the same time, he got the minimum some other plays were blocked for, not possessing the same elusiveness as Corum (few do).

The Michigan back rushed 6 times for 9 yards, with a 4-yard long. He did catch 5 passes for 26 yards, including a 15-yard gain on a little forward pitch from McCarthy, essentially a running play but recorded as a throw. He’s still working to become elite in all areas.

Biggest void

The Michigan defense was great overall, allowing just 7 points (the backups were responsible) and 4 yards per play. But the secondary — down senior safety Makari Paige, junior safety Rod Moore and sophomore cornerback Will Johnson (he played a few snaps in the second quarter but is still working back from an injury) — left a little bit to be desired.

We thought Michigan played too soft in coverage at times, but it’s likely because of having some backups in and knowing that giving up big plays would be the only thing that would actually put this game in doubt. Michigan graduate safety Quinten Johnson missed multiple tackles, and others struggled. The Wolverines don’t need them quite yet, but they could use the aforementioned trio back soon.

Deepest team…?

We’ve heard a lot about how deep this team is, and there are a lot of capable players, but … Michigan’s backups — and to be clear, it’s not just the 2s in there, but the 3s and 4s at some positions — were disappointing again. The Wolverines emptied the bench in the fourth quarter, blowing a shutout by allowing a 20-yard run right up the middle, committing two penalties, throwing an interception (junior quarterback Davis Warren) and averaging only 4.9 yards per play. UNLV, meanwhile, averaged 7.2 yards per play, its backups out-playing Michigan’s.

Coolest moment

UNLV defensive lineman Ryan Keeler passed away due to a heart complication over the winter. Keeler, who wore No. 47, played with McCarthy and Michigan sophomore wide receiver Tyler Morris at La Grange Park (Ill.) Nazareth Academy. McCarthy wore No. 47 on his hand, replacing his typical Sharpied-on smiley face, and thew a 47-yard touchdown pass to Wilson, just after the television broadcast discussed the story and connection.

“If that’s not God, I don’t know what is,” McCarthy said postgame.

Checking in on the head coach

Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh won Pardon My Take’s ‘Football Guy of the Year’ award. He eats, breathes and sleeps football — loves it, craves it, needs it.

“Some people like and need ice cream; they need it” Harbaugh said on the aforementioned podcast back in 2017. “I need football.”

Harbaugh, suspended for the first three games of Michigan’s season, worked the chain gang at his son Jack’s game Saturday morning. You can suspend a man from coaching his football team, but you can’t suspend a man’s love for football.

Biggest honor

By serving as Michigan’s interim coach in the second half, running backs coach and run game coordinator Mike Hart became the Wolverines’ first-ever African American head coach. We’ll leave you with his incredible quote on what that feat means to him:

“It’s a great honor. I had a chance to play for Tony Dungy, Jim Caldwell. My first coaching job was with Ron English at Eastern Michigan. We have an AD at Michigan in Warde Manuel who is African American. We’ve had a great relationship since he’s been here. Just had a lot of great coaches who are African American I’ve had a chance to look up to. Just really let me know it can happen, it’s a possibility. Hopefully we see more African American coaches in college football. We need more. Hopefully, I’ll be one of those one day. I will be one of those one day. Really just a great honor being this is my university. I played here; this place changed my life. To have the opportunity to say I was the first African American coach here is huge.”

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