How involved is Sherrone Moore with the Michigan offense?

Michigan Wolverines football hadn’t lost a game for 616 days until it fell 31-12 to Texas Saturday. It had been 1,379 days between losses at The Big House.

“There is no greater feeling of success than winning a football game,” the late Bo Schembechler said. “There is no greater [feeling of] despondence than the failure to win one.”

So, yeah, this one stung.

It was also the first loss under first-year Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore, and now it’s his job to get the Wolverines to refit, retool and put steel in their spine.

“We always talk about a 24-hour rule, and we’ve been fortunate where that 24-hour rule has just been wins,” Moore said on the ‘Inside Michigan Football’ radio show. “So now, the 24-hour rule applies to the loss. You gotta get over it.

“We gotta learn from it, though. We can’t let failure be our undertaker, and we have to make sure we continue to push forward and have some fortitude and strength to get better.

“We got so many great players, great kids. So as coaches, we have to do everything we can to put them in a great position to go win.”

It’s also Moore’s job to lead his coaching staff, which is obviously disappointed but also has to continue to push forward and make corrections.

“I challenge them every day,” the Michigan coach said. “I challenged them at halftime, I challenged them after the game. I challenged them yesterday, when we talked about how I want it to look and the things that we need to do to adjust to be better. I think they’re applying those challenges right now, as we speak.

“I’m just ready for Tuesday practice, to see what our team is gonna look like.”

Sherrone Moore’s involvement in the offense

Moore also met with Michigan offensive coordinator Kirk Campbell Sunday, after the offense failed to total 300 yards for the second week in a row.

Moore said a few times during his Monday press conference that Michigan has to run the football more and rely on its identity of playing a physical style. Campbell and Moore had those discussions when they met.

“That’s a big question,” Campbell said of what the identity of the Michigan offense is. “Sherrone and I had a good meeting yesterday about that.

“We still need to be a run-first team. We’re not going to change from that. But we need to make sure we protect the football. When you don’t protect the football, it’s kinda hard to be a run-first, play-action team.

“Just making sure that we’re sticking to our guns. We’ll be a downhill run team with complements on the perimeter and complements in the play-action pass game. That’s not gonna change. We have the ability to do that, we just need to put it on display on Saturday.”

Campbell calls the plays for Michigan, but Moore is a former offensive coordinator himself. In fact, he was lauded last season for his ability to catch defenses off guard. In part due to his efforts, the Wolverines finished 15-0 with the program’s 12th-ever national championship.

Moore was asked how involved he still is with play-calling.

“Kirk will ask, at times, ‘Should we do this? Should we do that?’” Moore revealed. “I remember as a play-caller, you get a rhythm sometimes, so I try not to be as much [involved], because I’m so involved in everything else.

“But I’ve definitely taken a step more into looking in the offense and the things that we need to do to get better.”

Michigan is back to the drawing board as a whole. Moore has stressed to the team having a “sense of urgency” without “panic.” While he’s looking to walk that fine line, he doesn’t want to make a knee-jerk reaction, but making changes to who plays and who doesn’t is a possibility.

“I go back to last year,” Moore said. “We had [quarterback] J.J. [McCarthy], who was an established quarterback, but he threw 3 picks in a game. And you could’ve easily panicked and said, ‘Hey, let’s take J.J. out.’ But for us, it’s gonna be for the whole process for us to work together.

“We can’t just panic and make these changes all of the sudden — we just gotta make sure we do what we can and what’s best for the team.

“And if we go through practice this week and we feel like somebody else is better at a certain position, then yeah, we’ll make those changes. Whoever we think is going to help Michigan win, that’s who we’re going to play.”