Sherrone Moore believes the Michigan offense has much more to give
Michigan quarterback Davis Warren and his offensive line, especially, had moments they’d want back from Saturday night’s 30-10 win over Fresno State, but the offense found a groove late. Warren said the Wolverines left “meat on the bone” but insists they’ve got the players they need for an explosive offense.
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It wasn’t on display Saturday night, and possibly by design. Warren said — and head coach Sherrone Moore and cornerback Will Johnson confirmed — that the offense made a lot of explosive plays in camp against a very good defense.
Moore expects more of that even against a better opponent this week.
“I think our players played extremely hard offensively, and we got a rhythm at the end of the game,” the Michigan head coach said. “We really felt the line jelling, got a rhythm of everything going on. They definitely picked it up there.
“We’ve got things to clean up as we always will in run game technique and fundamentals … it’s the tale of 10 guys and you’ve got one guy that doesn’t do his job and then the play fails. So, we’ve got to continue to get better at that, but we will this week. We’re going to put our hard hat on and we’re going to work our tails off this week to have a great week of prepping.”
But they were moving the ball against Fresno State, he insisted.
“We had drives of like 10 plays, nine plays, nine plays. We’ve just got to get in the end zone,” he said. “When you feel you have that consistent rhythm, when you finally get the ball in the end zone, that’s definitely going to build some confidence for the players and especially guys that haven’t played a lot of football. But it really helped the confidence and really built some good momentum.”
The Michigan passing game will improve in time, he added, noting there were some “raw, detailed things that we can get better at,” including route detail and (of course) catching the ball. There were a few uncharacteristic drops and misplays, including one to junior Tyler Morris down the right sideline that could have been a big gainer.
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Experience matters, Moore said, and Warren and even Orji are about to get more, as are the receivers. Warren seemed to use junior Colston Loveland as a safety net — he was split out even more than expected — but they’ll need more guys to step up to help the quarterback, too, especially as Loveland gets more attention.
“Davis starting and Orji playing a little bit more is just going to give them more confidence that yeah, I can do it, and I can do it on the big stage,” Moore said. “Just continue to get it done to get in practice because you know what they’ve done against our defense.If they can do it against our defense, they can do it against anybody. For them to just continue to have that confidence throughout the week of preparation is going to be huge.
“We’ll go to the next read [if Loveland is bracketed]. We’ve got a lot of other weapons. So, you take away him, then you have to do with Semaj Morgan and Tyler Morris and Kendrick Bell, and Marlin [Klein], and the running game. You can’t take it all away.”
Texas is going to try, though, and we should find out a lot more about this Michigan team after Saturday’s huge game.
