Everything Kyle Whittingham said after Michigan’s bye week, ahead of Penn State

Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham met with reporters Monday following the Wolverines’ bye week as his team prepares for Saturday’s matchup with Penn State.

After consecutive Big Ten losses to Iowa and Minnesota, Michigan enters the second half of its season facing plenty of questions, particularly on offense. The Wolverines struggled to move the football against Minnesota, and Whittingham made it clear afterward that everything would be evaluated during the off week.

On Monday, he provided some answers.

Quarterback Bryce Underwood remains Michigan’s starter, and offensive coordinator Jason Beck will continue calling plays. Whittingham also confirmed the Wolverines plan to stick with much of their RHINO package, though the coaching staff has evaluated which parts of the offense have succeeded over five games.

The Michigan coach also discussed Tommy Carr’s increased practice reps, changes at kick returner, injuries along the offensive line, and leaked messages involving tight end Zack Marshall.

Here is everything Whittingham said Monday.

Bryce Underwood, Jason Beck remain in place

Well, we obviously took a step backwards on offense this past week, a couple weeks ago, and so we’re continuing to tailor the offense to try to put everybody, not just Bryce, in the best position to succeed.

The main thing, our big demise, is the turnover margin. If we continue to lose the turnover margin, we’ll continue to lose. Period. Cut and dry.

We’ve got to get that fixed. We turned the ball over three times against Minnesota. Once was on special teams, but it’s a turnover nonetheless. It was three turnovers, and you just can’t win against opponents that are very capable when you’re doing that.

That’s the main takeaway. We have got to start turning the ball over less and taking it away more, plain and simple. Until that changes, we’re going to continue to struggle.

Unless you want to call plays. I don’t. Jason will call plays, and Bryce is our guy, and we’ll move forward.

Tommy did get a lot of good reps last week, which you typically would in a bye week anyways. You give the second-team guys a lot of work. It was all about getting the second-team guys work across the board.

Continuing to use RHINO

It gives you an extra big-body blocker in the run game, which should yield dividends in that regard, and a better pass protector when you throw the ball. Those are the positives.

The negative, obviously, is he’s not really a viable pass receiver, so the defense has one less passing threat, although one of these days we’ll throw it to him.

That’s been a big part of Jason’s offenses for a lot of years, and you see it more commonly these days throughout college football. Not in the NFL, but it’s showing up at a pretty decent rate in college football.

Most of it, yes.

Whether Beck’s offense fits Michigan’s personnel

Yeah, I think that Jason’s offense has been proven through the years. Good running backs, Jordan Marshall and Savion Hiter, and it’s a run-heavy offense, at least at this point. Flexible, it could go the other way.

The two receivers have been pretty darn good.

Again, I keep coming back to turnovers. Nothing else matters if we keep losing the turnover margin. Nothing else matters.

Building the offense around player strengths

Yeah, that was a big part of it all summer long, was watching last year and trying to get a feel for who has what strengths and what they do well.

That’s obviously something that Jason, well, Jay and Jason, Jason and Jay Hill on the other side of the ball, your player strengths, it’s all about players, and particularly your quarterback.

We’re still getting on track. After the Iowa game, we had 470 yards, and I thought we had taken a step forward. We had taken a step forward.

You can’t panic, and you can’t completely change everything because you have one setback, but we did have a setback last time out.

Jay Hill’s development and Michigan’s defense

Jay Hill and myself go way back. We recruited him out of junior college to play for us. He was a terrific player, all-conference player. I believe he led the league in interceptions his senior year and jumped right into coaching shortly after his playing career.

As a GA, he was my, I was the defensive coordinator, he was my graduate assistant for one or two years. As soon as I got the head job, he immediately became full-time. He was one of the first moves I made, was to hire Jay full-time.

Did a terrific job for us in that capacity. He was our special teams coordinator and did a great job there. Had a chance to be a head coach. He was very successful as head coach at Weber State and, of course, the last three years the coordinator at BYU.

Jay’s had a terrific career. He’s got a bright future.

We’ve played really well on defense. I think we’re third in the country in total defense, which, with the strain and the stress that’s been put on them, that’s pretty darn good. He is a proven commodity and doing a great job for us.

Andrew Sprague, Andrew Babalola injury updates

Andrew, I’m not sure if he’s quite there yet. Sprague, I’m sorry.

Andrew Babalola, fortunately, will be able to start practice this week, which will be the first time in a while. It’s been a big disappointment for us because he had a setback and then another setback.

Hopefully, knock on wood, if we can keep him on the field, then he’ll definitely have a chance to help us.

To answer your question, he’ll start practicing today. We’ll gradually ramp him up throughout the week and see if he’s ready to contribute this Saturday. He’ll really help us if he can.

We’re really thin there, and I’ve got some other guys dinged up in the Minnesota game that will be questionable. That will come out on Wednesday.

Zack Marshall’s leaked messages

Yeah, Zack was very apologetic. It was an unfortunate deal.

Zack Marshall’s a great young man. He’s a team guy. It was just a lapse.

He apologized profusely to myself and the team. Of course, he had a statement. And so we just moved on.

People get frustrated. You lose a couple games and people get frustrated. It was in a small group chat. It was a small, close circle, we thought. But that’s beside the point.

You’ve got to protect the team. It wasn’t protected.

Mistakes in games compared with practice

Well, I’m not sure what you’re talking about with players saying that. That’s news to me.

But we’ve been talking about being better offensively and particularly ball security. That’s been a hot topic, and it has been for several weeks.

So I’m not really sure. I’d have to have some more information as far as what their comments would be.

What the bye week showed Whittingham

Well, first of all, they seemed very resilient. We had a really good bye week practice-wise.

The guys were on the field Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and they bounced back and had outstanding practices. They had good energy, good attitude.

What’s really been particularly draining, every game seems to come, or doesn’t seem to, it does come, right down to the wire, with the exception of one or more games.

It’s been a little bit of a roller coaster in that regard, but that’s football.

I’m excited to be here, and I think we’ve got a tough group of young men that have a lot of want-to and a lot of football left. We’ve got seven games left, and we’ll see where it takes us.

Players who impressed during the bye week

You’re not going to see major personnel change, but some guys that impressed or continue to impress: Tariq Boney, a guy who’s got a huge upside on defense, and Carter Meadows as well. Those two are going to be special.

Let’s see who else.

Offensively, Savion Hiter continues. We need to do a little better job of trying to get him in a groove. He does some really good things in practice.

Tommy had a good week, as I mentioned. Took half the reps with the ones. By design, that would happen no matter what the situation was.

Hogan Hansen is starting to come around. He was missing for three or four weeks with an injury, but now he’s back, and we think he can really help us down the stretch here.

Change at returner

We’ll have a different returner back there, and that’s due to a couple of reasons. Not just putting the ball on the ground, but some injury reasons.

I won’t say who that is yet.

Possibility of Tommy Carr playing

To be determined.

He sure looks good in practice, like he has throughout all spring and fall camp. His small, tiny sample size that he had in the game is positive.

But right now, like I said, Bryce is our guy.

If we think that giving Tommy a series or two helps our chance to win, then we’ll see that.

Penn State as a chance to “save the season”

That’s dramatic. We thrive on drama.

The message is: Don’t turn the ball over. Play sound. Play physical.

Both teams are going in, they’re on a three-game skid, we’re on a two-game skid, so both teams, I guess, are in that boat.

Moving the football, obviously, because that was our poorest performance against Minnesota offensively. We rushed horribly, 70-something yards and 100-something yards throwing.

To my knowledge, that’s the only two ways to move the ball, running or throwing. We did not do that. So we’ve got to get that fixed.

But it’s an important game, as they all are. Every game is important.

What Michigan changed offensively during the bye

Well, the bye not only gives you a chance to regroup and get healthy, but look at everything you’ve done in five games, pick and choose what’s been good to you and what hasn’t.

Kind of can the things that have not been very good for five weeks and accentuate what has been good.

And then maybe introduce a few different elements that we think will help us.

Conversations with Bryce Underwood

All positive, but continuing to stress to everybody about the importance of taking care of the ball.

With him touching the ball every single snap, he’s a big part of that.

If we don’t get this turnover thing fixed rapidly, then something’s got to give. That’s all I can say right now.

Whether the game-preparation process will change

No.

No, the preparation has worked really good for 20-something years. We’ve won championships and gone to bowl games and things like that.

It’s only natural when you hit a tough spot to question everything you’re doing.

If you believe in what you’re doing, which we do, and we’ve been doing it for a long time, most of us, you don’t panic. You just stay the course.

NIL money and playing time

Whatever less than zero is.

I think it’s a little bit less than zero.

Why Bryce still gives Michigan the best chance to win

6-foot-4, 230, runs like the wind, can make every throw and then some.

Has a whole year of experience under his belt last year.

And so that being the case, and looking at the room as a whole…

Jim Harding and the offensive line

Well, played a little bit of musical chairs, but who in the country hasn’t, I guess, at least at some position with lineups?

If you look at his track record, he puts together an offensive line. He’s a guy that I have a lot of faith in. His players love him. I think if you ask all the other linemen, they’d tell you the same thing.

It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a while to get some traction and for things to take hold.

But I have no doubt that going forward, his guys will continue to get better and better, maybe season by season, not necessarily game by game, but as a whole in its entirety.

Confusion surrounding Sprague’s injury

Yeah, I am perplexed. And so is he, I think.

There’s a lot that goes into it, several opinions, differing opinions.

I guess now the opinions have maybe dovetailed a little bit and kind of settled it up in a place where everyone’s in agreement.

At least we feel now that maybe they’ve got a handle on it — not a handle on it, but have got some agreement.

We sure miss him. He’s a good player. I believe he’s a good player.

Turnovers snowballing

Well, there’s some truth to that, but I think it works both ways.

When you start getting a few on defense, then it seems to snowball as well. So I think that’s give and take.

Unfortunately this year, there’s been more give than take.

Last I checked, 122nd in the nation in turnover margin out of 130-something teams. That’s pretty bad.

You look at the teams that are down there with us and nobody has a record to speak of. There might be an exception or an outlier, but that’s such a critical aspect of the game.

Again, as I’ve said, with them shortening the game with the clock rules — and that was another thing in the Minnesota game — we only snapped it 49 times. They snapped it 65.

They had a really good blueprint, which has been used against us a couple times this year. When you shorten the game, they really dominate the time of possession. I think it was 37 to 23, 37 minutes to 23.

That has been the blueprint for most teams that we’ve played.

And yeah, so that’s where we’re at.