Everything Kyle Whittingham said after Indiana, ahead of Rutgers
Michigan football coach Kyle Whittingham met with reporters Monday following the Wolverines’ loss to Indiana and ahead of this week’s matchup with Rutgers.
Whittingham addressed the continued offensive struggles, Michigan’s quarterback situation with Tommy Carr and Bryce Underwood, Jason Beck and the offensive scheme, the offensive line, red-zone problems, the running back rotation and more.
On Tommy Carr’s first start
Tommy did some good things. Things we’ve got to improve on, obviously, as you’d say about everyone in the program.
He was gaining experience. He had an opportunity to run all the reps with the ones last week in practice. He’s a guy I thought handled it pretty well.
Obviously, again, we’ve got to continue to get better play across the board at that position as well.
On whether Carr will start against Rutgers
That’s to be determined. I don’t want to play this game every week — who’s going to start?
That will be a decision we’ll make in the next couple of days here. Again, keep it to ourselves until somebody lets the cat out of the bag.
On reevaluating Michigan’s offense
We’ve got to get better on offense. Anybody in the country can figure that out.
We’re playing defense at an elite level right now. We’re No. 1 in the country, actually, in yards per play. I think we’re second in total defense.
A lot of good things going on there, but we’ve struggled more on offense in a lot of areas. Not running the ball well enough, not throwing the ball well enough, not good enough on third down. There are a lot of things to improve upon, and so it’s a work in progress.
We’re certainly giving it all our attention, every bit of our attention. Hopefully we see some improvement.
On why Jason Beck’s offense has not worked in Big Ten play
We’re asking ourselves all those questions that you’re posing. It hasn’t gotten much traction yet.
We’re looking at everything, and it’s not one thing. It’s a combination of things.
We’ve got to get better. Like I said, we’ve got to coach them up better at pretty much every position.
The plan is simple. We’re not getting it done from a coaching standpoint at this point in time.
On criticism that the offense does not fit Michigan’s personnel
I don’t think that’s completely fair. There may be some validity to it, but when you look at offenses as a whole, there’s not a ton of variation. More or less, the same runs, the same concepts in the throw game. It’s not as varied as you might think.
But the essence of coaching is getting things in the scheme that your players can do and can execute. We just haven’t.
We’re still searching seven games in, unfortunately.
On whether he would consider changing offensive coordinators during the season
Absolutely. I’ve done that before.
There’s not much I haven’t done in however many years I’ve been running here. You’re starting to see that show up across the country right now. Now is the time of year where you’re seeing head coaches lose their jobs, play callers being demoted.
My job is to do whatever is best for the program. I’m fully aware of that. If there are tough decisions to be made in that regard, I’ve certainly made them before and will again.
But right now, I don’t think it’s time to panic. I guess you could say we’re two or three plays away from 6-1 or 7-0. It’s primarily due to our defense.
We’re in games each week because of the defense. But again, from inside the program, you can’t make a division and say, well, this side of the ball would have done this or that, because we’re all in it together.
You’ve got to protect the locker room, and you don’t want to have divisiveness at all in any way, shape or form. I don’t believe we do. I think our guys are all on the same page, which is a credit to them because it could have been very easy at this point in time to start to have some division. But I don’t see that.
On what he would say to fans frustrated by the offense
Nobody’s more disappointed than me. I’ll tell the fans, nobody’s more disappointed than me and us.
It’s not due to a lack of work ethic. We’re here 90 hours a week trying to figure this thing out.
We’re just unsuccessful this year on offense so far.
On seeing Utah remain undefeated
It’s great. We left them with a lot of good players and good coaches there. Couldn’t be more happy, thrilled and elated that they’re doing so well.
I know all those guys. We recruited all those guys — well, most of them. Obviously, there’s a portal cycle that we were involved with.
But no surprise to me. We’ve got good players, and they’re playing at a high level.
On the timeout before the missed field goal against Indiana
At that point, we weren’t sure if we were going to kick it. We weren’t sure if we were going to go for it, kick the field goal or punt it.
Going for it was a viable possibility. We knew it was about 14, 15 yards. That probably had as good a chance for success as the lengthy field goal with just a couple-mile-an-hour wind in our face.
There were 20-something seconds, and I wanted to take a timeout in the event we did go for it, and we’d have some time, if we convert on fourth down, to try to get in the end zone or at least have an opportunity for it.
But that was the reason for that. We hadn’t decided at that point it was a sure thing to kick the field goal. After the timeout and after deliberating, we figured that was the highest-percentage play.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. It was probably a little bit outside his range that he was comfortable with in practice. That was the reason we called the timeout.
If we had gone for it, we’d have had another two or three plays to work with.
With the way our defense plays, if we had kicked a field goal and made it, then obviously they’d have 75 or 80 yards to go. If we missed it, worst-case scenario, which we did, then they’d have to go 30 or 40 yards with probably less than 20 seconds after you take the time off the clock for the kick.
So really trusting the defense that if the worst-case scenario happened, they’d be able to get us out of the drive, and they did.
On whether Michigan has enough offensive talent to be better statistically
We’ve got some good players on offense. Some of the positions haven’t gelled quite like we’d hoped, but I’m not putting that on the players. We’ve got to coach better.
We certainly have the talent to be better than we are right now. Absolutely. That’s without question.
I’m not saying we could be leading the country or the Big Ten, but better than we’ve performed so far.
On how Carr handled the loss
Tommy’s a stand-up guy. He’s competitive. He’s everything you want in a quarterback from how he handles himself, his demeanor, his accountability factor.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that he would put the weight of everything on his own shoulders. It’s not fair to have him do that. It’s not fair to him, and it’s not true.
He is a guy that has just a ton of drive and determination. He prepares, like I’ve said before, so well for each game. Whether he was playing or not, he prepares the same way.
It doesn’t surprise me that he’s done that, but it’s not justified. He’s not the one to shoulder the blame in this. He’s taking it on himself because that’s who he is.
We’ve got plenty of issues to go around. Again, it all starts with coaching. If we’re not playing well enough up front, we’re not coaching well enough. If we’re not playing well enough at the receiver spot, we’re not coaching well.
That’s our mentality. That’s my mentality.
On the offensive line against Indiana
It was probably our least productive game of the season from the offensive line. We’re talking about us.
That was a top-10 defense we faced, and they’re really good. They’re really physical in the front seven, and we got out-physicaled up front. They pretty much out-physical most everyone they’ve played.
We didn’t handle movement very well, and when there was no movement, we didn’t get push off the ball. A lot of the inadequacies and lack of production was due to a really good defense we were lined up against. They’ve been really good.
On Zack Marshall’s status
Zack will be back this week. We’ll see Zack back and contribute.
On what Michigan still has to play for
It’s important to get better each week. But again, it hasn’t been a complete disaster. Two or three plays, like I said, and we’re 6-1, maybe even better.
That’s shoulda, woulda, coulda. There’s almost no point in saying that, but it hasn’t been 30-10, 45-3. Every game is coming right down to the end.
We’ve just got to finish better. We have finished in certain games and we haven’t finished in other games.
That’s been the issue. We haven’t finished. If we can finish every game the way we want at the end, we have a heck of a season.
On why he believes Michigan can turn things around
The players’ work ethic, their attitude when they came in here this morning to watch the film.
They’re all disappointed. They’re all angry. The rooms were very somber.
You can just tell when an athlete is really hurt and ticked off. That’s the vibe we got this morning.
On whether he needs to overrule offensive calls more often
I’m not a micromanager. You hire guys for a reason.
During the course of a game, I’ll take the offensive coordinator for example. You’ve called plays throughout the course of a game to set up something later on. They know exactly what they’re trying to accomplish in that respect.
For me to barge in and just say, hey, arbitrarily run this — I’ve got a lot of confidence and faith in the guys that are on the staff. There are a lot of proven track records on the staff.
To answer your question, yes, I can. I can trump anything. Everything in the program, I’m responsible for. Everything. There’s not one aspect that I’m not.
But again, to micromanage and to jump in — a coach has so many hours in a week. I’m primarily a defensive guy, a special teams guy. That’s my forte.
To ignorantly jump in and say, I want to run this, hey, let’s try this — now, there are times, third-and-short, hey, let’s take a shot deep and then we’ll go for it on fourth. That type of thing.
But to second-guess a play, because again, the sequencing of what’s been going on the whole game may lead to this play having a high success possibility or probability. That’s my philosophy.
On potentially tightening the running back rotation
Fair argument. Fair question.
It just seems week to week each back has done something really good or done some good things to warrant having some carries.
If we would have a back clearly separate himself from the rest of the pack, I think that would be something that we would have done by now.
But no one’s really just, hey, I’m RB1 and there’s no question about it and I’ve got the hot hand.
It’s kind of been by committee. Not kind of — it has been by committee pretty much all season long because of that, because nobody’s really taken the lead and just run away with it.
On why the run game continues to struggle
There aren’t a lot of creases up front. We haven’t had the movement.
I continue to talk about physicality and getting the knock-off, knocking people off the ball. We just haven’t had any consistency this year.
And then, in fairness to the line, there have been some blocked yards that we haven’t taken advantage of at times.
On Michigan’s offensive line combinations
We don’t know yet. There are still two or three guys there.
The Avery Gach situation came down to: Do we leave Brady Norton at right guard, where he had played essentially all year long until he got injured, and put Mark Walbridge at right tackle, or do we bump Brady out to tackle, where he hasn’t played this year, and insert Avery Gach at guard like he did the week before?
Coach Harding felt that our best combination was to get Brady back, keep him in the spot that he’s comfortable at and give Mark a chance.
Mark had a really good week of practice. I thought Mark performed well. He got beat a couple times, but when you look at his overall grade for a first-year player that had never had much extensive time at all, I thought he held up.
On Brady Norton’s performance
Brady didn’t play his best game.
He was coming off an injury and was not as sharp as he’d been at points earlier in the season.
On why he still believes Jason Beck can turn the offense around
The things he’s done in the past, for one thing.
I know you can’t live on that forever, understandably, but he’s been very successful.
For example, we’re abysmal in the red zone right now. Last year, I think we led the nation in red-zone touchdown percentage.
That matters. Things that you’ve done do matter to a certain extent.
Then there comes a point in time where, OK, all fine and dandy what’s happened in the past, but we’re not getting it done right now.
On whether the red-zone problems are execution or play calling
I’d say all of the above.
If you look at the reasons why we lost the game, with those five or six areas, that was probably No. 1. We were 0-for-4 in the red zone.
We can’t be 0-for-4 in the red zone. That was what we were.
All that being said, we had a chance to win the game. The game’s in our hands. We’ve got the ball inside the 10-yard line with about a minute left and going in to win it.
Couldn’t get it done.
Again, we’re not sitting here saying we can’t compete with anybody. We’re just not finishing.
What, three times now? Three times we haven’t finished the right way.
But a couple times we have. That’s football. That’s why you pay everybody to come watch.
On how quarterback reps will be divided this week
To be determined.
We don’t have practice today. Today’s more of a walk-through introduction to the new game plan and how the week’s going to go.
On what Bryce Underwood may have learned from not starting
Good question.
I haven’t talked to him specifically about that or had any conversations since the game, but I’m sure I will.
I talk to Bryce pretty much every week. Great relationship with him. He’s a great kid.
We’ll see where we’re at.
