Everything Kyle Whittingham said after Western Michigan, ahead of Oklahoma

Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham met with reporters Monday following the Wolverines’ dramatic 13-12 win over Western Michigan and ahead of Saturday’s matchup with Oklahoma at Michigan Stadium.

Whittingham discussed Michigan’s offensive struggles in the opener, Bryce Underwood’s performance and status as the starting quarterback, the offensive line and running game, the controversial final second against Western Michigan, injury updates and his first look at Oklahoma.

Here is everything Whittingham said Monday.

Fixing Week 1

A lot to fix, obviously. Defensively, we actually played pretty well. We didn’t give up much. 3.3 a play, which is awful for an offense. What we did not do defensively is get some takeaways. But we have a lot to fix on the other side of the ball. Just execution-wise, sloppy penalties killed drives, two turnovers, basically three overall with the special teams. So we only had 10 possessions, which is a credit to Western Michigan. They had a game plan coming in to play keep-away, keep our offense on the sideline and play to the clock. Their offense put enough points up. There was no reason for them to come out of it for the entire game, which resulted in over 40 minutes of possession time for them, which is very lopsided. We only snapped the ball 48 times. So a lot of ineffectiveness on offense was because we were on the sidelines much of the time. Even when we were out there, we weren’t good enough on third down. We didn’t run the ball well enough. So we’ve got plenty to fix. We’ll go back to work today. The players had Sunday off. I’ve seen what the coaches have. I’m sure they’ve all watched it on their own. But we have no shortage of things to be accomplished this week.

Offensive line performance

Not bad. The offensive line didn’t play bad. I’ve watched it three times now, the entire film, and they did not have a bad game. It wasn’t a great game, but it wasn’t bad. There were some big runs negated and a big throw or two negated from penalties. Pass protection was OK. We allowed the one sack. But I thought the offensive line, after watching it a few times, wasn’t as big of a liability as I thought it was initially.

Running game issues

Yeah, we weren’t running very violent. We’ve got to be more violent in our runs and, you know, sometimes instead of getting north and south, a little too much east-west going on. We need to be more north and south. That needs to be who we are.

Bryce Underwood’s job

He’s our QB right now, and it’s not something that’s infinite. At some point, we’ve got to turn a corner and we’ve got to see improvement. As we do with a bunch of stuff, we’ve got to see improvement out of the coaches. And so it’s not just on Bryce, and it’s not just Bryce’s job that’s not absolutely set in concrete. Nobody’s is. We’ve got to perform week in and week out and become somebody that we feel like is playing at a level that we can win with. And that goes far beyond Bryce. It goes throughout the whole team. So what you’ve done lately is very important in football.

Camp versus live action

It is unfortunate and disappointing because we see him every day, and he’s been very sharp all through fall camp. I don’t have a great explanation right now other than we hope to see improvement between Game 1 and Game 2 in the live action. There’s nobody, as I’ve said many times, that wants to be great more so than Bryce. And so we’ve just got to keep going down that road and hope for improvement. And we’ve got to do things coaching-wise to help him be more successful. We learned a lot. You know, I’m not going to share that because it would be game-plan-type stuff, but we learned a lot in this past game about going forward, what we need.

Underwood’s reads

We left a few things out there in both the run game and the throw game. The right read, the QB run-read aspect of it, wasn’t quite as sharp as we need to be. And we did have some things in the throw game that we could have had more production. And so that’s an ongoing process. It was his first live game in the Jason Beck offense. So we’re very confident that he’ll continue to grow.

Helping Underwood improve

Just keep coaching him. We’ve got to keep coaching him up in repetition and, again, continue to take the offense in a direction that fits his skill set best. It’s a learning process for us as well with Bryce. We’re going to learn more about him.

Underwood’s confidence

Well, it certainly helps. It was a terrific throw. He was off balance and getting hit. He still flipped it out there 60-plus yards. That was an outstanding effort on his part. Of course, the catch that JJ made. We talk about bright spots. JJ Buchanan was a huge bright spot on our team Saturday night. Six grabs for over 100 yards and obviously the game-winner. Back to Bryce, he’s a confident young man. He’s got every tool, every physical tool to succeed. He did give us some good runs, like I said, 40 to 50 yards. We just need to continue to coach him. He needs to continue to work hard and study film and do all the things that we need to have our quarterback do.

Dramatic game ending

A little bit, but mainly been studying the film, obviously, over and over, both sides of the ball, special teams as well. But certainly one that I’ll never forget. It was as dramatic an ending as you could possibly have. As I said after the game, nobody’s in the locker room hooting and hollering and celebrating because we know we didn’t play very well. Now, I don’t want to negate or downplay Western Michigan because they had a terrific game plan. They played well. They played an outstanding game. They executed their game plan, and so they’re a good football team. I would guess they’re the favorites to win the MAC and so forth. But still, no excuse for how we played.

First look at Oklahoma

Yeah, well, last year’s game is very applicable. I haven’t seen a whole lot of the film. The coordinators have already done it. I’ve studied their personnel. I can tell you right now that they have a very talented defensive line and they have an outstanding quarterback. We did a really deep dive on John Mateer when he was at Washington State and went into the portal because we would have really liked to have him at Utah. He’s a dual-threat guy that can really hurt you both ways. They’ve got an outstanding receiver, a game-breaking receiver, strong run game. Special teams are outstanding. They have the Lou Groza Award winner at place kicker and an All-SEC punter. They had a return go about 90 yards last week for a touchdown. So they are very talented in all three phases, and we’ve got our work cut out for us big time. And yes, last year’s game will be applicable.

Sunday practice schedule

No, we did not practice. The NCAA rules are you have to have one complete day off. So I’ll be back in here in about an hour.

Increased team urgency

Absolutely. Yeah, that was very evident in the locker room. The leaders stepped up and had some good discussion in the locker room postgame. But we’ve got to put this behind us and don’t lose sight of the fact we won the game. We did win the game, as frustrated as everybody feels. But we’ve got a big challenge this week.

Hiring Jernaro Gilford

Well, Coach Gilford has done a great job with his corners. BYU had done a great job. Jay Hill was the coordinator that we brought in. Obviously, Jay worked with Jernaro at BYU for three, four years. And so Jay was very emphatic that he was the right guy for the position. And so that’s really how that kind of evolved.

Ramping up physicality

We do. We’re not blocking up the run game yet. We weren’t as violent. Like I said, the offensive line wasn’t poor, but we need to be more violent overall. The running backs, it starts there, but more finishing blocks. We’ve got to finish the block better. And we will be ramping up the intensity in certain drills in practice. But as far as our tackling, we only missed five tackles, which is outstanding. There were five missed tackles in the game. And as I’ve said before, if we can be in single digits, that’s where we want to be, and you’ll be amongst the leaders in the country. And we only had five misses Saturday night.

Pass defense performance

I thought the pass defense was solid. We did get discombobulated a little bit in Cover 2 with the under coverage. But, you know, overall, the throw game didn’t hurt us. The quarterback did have a high completion percentage, but not for many yards. And so, as I mentioned, there were no explosive plays. We consider 20 yards and more explosive. I thought we did a good job keeping things in front of us and making a few plays on the ball. It’d be nice, again, to come up with some turnovers and interceptions, primarily interceptions. Statistically, they’re much more damaging to a team.

Western’s defensive plan

I’m not blaming anybody, but I think Western deserves a lot of credit. They did a nice job with their structures on defense. They didn’t do anything different than what we’ve seen on film from last year. So it was not anything caused by surprise. A lot of movement up front, but nothing that we hadn’t seen.

Clock review decision

Well, I guess they have this Hawk-Eye system. I was unaware of that, but as I looked, I knew it was close. When the ball sailed to the back of the end zone, I glanced up at the clock and it was just ticking to zero. Somebody had touched it. I didn’t know who had touched it, but apparently it was a defender that had already established an out-of-bounds position. So I’m assuming they got it right. They looked at it, and their technology that they have is very advanced, I guess. I think everyone is fairly satisfied with the explanation. I am. I think Western Michigan came out with a statement that, hey, we’re not going to question this anymore. They gave us a fairly transparent answer moving forward.

Quarterback timeline

Well, I don’t want to put a timeline on it, but we’ve got to see progress, and we’ve got to see a level of play that is conducive to winning games. And Bryce is still just what used to be a true sophomore. He’s a sophomore, if you can tune that out. So he is still early in his development. There’s no two ways around that. And he’s got a new offense that he’s assimilating this year. So in a way it’s a brand-new start there. Don’t want to panic. Don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. Like I said, he’s a big-time talent. His arm talent, his ability to run. We’re just going to stay the course for right now. But again, there does come a time for everybody at some point where you’ve got to look at maybe an alternative if you’re not getting what you need.

Tommy Carr’s reps with ones

He does, absolutely. Now, not a lot. You know, our split is about 80-20 getting the quarterback ready for a game, and that’s pretty common. That’s not out of the ordinary. But Tommy is the only other quarterback that gets reps, so that’s where we’re at.

Daley and Moore returns

Yeah, I thought John Henry Daley played well. He’s not at the peak of his game yet. He’s still ramping up, but he played a pretty heavy load for coming off the injury that he did. But he was effective. Rod was effective. Probably played Rod maybe a few more snaps than he should have, maybe a little bit less of a workload. But both of them contributed, and both of them did a nice job overall. They graded out very well, both of them.

Injury updates

Hogan Hansen, this week we’re going to try to get him integrated back into practice, as well as Carter Meadows. Those two guys, as well as Andrew Babalola, who should hopefully be out here in practice tomorrow. We’ll see.

Tommy Carr winning QB2

Just continued what he was doing in spring. He was a good decision-maker, very poised. Really is much more of an athletic runner than you would think, just watching him. He can make you miss. He doesn’t have blazing speed, but he has the ability to make people miss. And he seems to be unflappable. Nothing really bothers the kid. He’s very calm and collected, and he’s very intelligent. He lives in the film room. There’s not a time I walk by that quarterback room, other than when he’s supposed to be in class because we go to class, but he studies film ad nauseam.

Fixing mistakes, Oklahoma

Yeah, it kind of goes hand-in-hand. You’re fixing mistakes as you go along. You’re obviously getting ready for a new scheme, a new defensive structure, different personnel. It’s just all part of it.