Tag: Donovan Edwards

Michigan 50, Northwestern 6

I’m happy for the seniors. FS1 put up a stat box at one point talking about the seniors on Michigan’s team and their accomplishments. Over the past 3+ seasons, they have won a national championship, won the Big Ten three times, and gone 3-0 against Ohio State. We also saw senior Tavierre Dunlap score his first career touchdown on senior night at home. We saw Donovan Edwards get in the end zone for just the fourth time this year, which has been a disappointing season relative to expectations. There was Kalel Mullings scoring a career-high 3 touchdowns. We also saw transplanted players like Josaiah Stewart getting 2 sacks, T.J. Guy getting 1 sack, and Aamir Hall getting his first career interception in a Michigan uniform. This year has not gone according to plan overall, but at least senior night went well.

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Michigan 24, Michigan State 17

All hail Davis Warren! I’m not going to pretend that Davis Warren is on track to be J.J. McCarthy, but Warren played his best game of the year in going 13/19 for 123 yards, 1 touchdown, and 0 interceptions. He did not take any sacks and scrambled once for 7 yards. I mentioned on Twitter (before I knew Jack Tuttle would miss the game) that if I were Michigan’s coaching staff, I would start Warren and mix in Alex Orji on every third series. Warren got a bad rap early in the year when he made mistakes while other people (Donovan Edwards, Evan Link, Colston Loveland, etc.) were screwing up; Warren took the blame for the team being bad. Now that the offensive line has improved some and other players have adjusted, Warren looks okay. He’s not a world-beater, but the kid can play a little bit. I’m happy for him that he got a little bit of redemption. Nobody will ever be able to take away the fact that he quarterbacked Michigan to a rivalry victory over Michigan State.

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Illinois 21, Michigan 7

Bad game plans are the norm. After Saturday’s 21-7 loss to Illinois, Sherrone Moore said he needs to re-evaluate himself as a head coach. I’m not ready to throw Moore out after half a season with no functional quarterback, but I am very disappointed in him and offensive coordinator Kirk Campbell. There are all kinds of glaring issues with this offense:

• If ground-and-pound is your identity, stick with it. Michigan needs to be a run-first team. That’s the only way they’re going to win. Everybody has known that the entire off-season, even when we had higher hopes for Alex Orji or Jack Tuttle or Davis Warren or whoever. Early in the game, Michigan was using the passing game and Donovan Edwards. How are you going to wear down a team down the stretch by throwing the ball with a weak passing game and running Donovan Edwards? The bulls in the backfield are Kalel Mullings, Benjamin Hall, and Alex Orji. Pound the ball!
• Speaking of Alex Orji, he should be on the field. Probably the most frustrating thing about Michigan’s offensive personnel decisions is that Alex Orji – who played last year while J.J. McCarthy was here and who was deemed “one of the best 11″ by Campbell in the off-season – has disappeared from the offense for the past two games. How do you go from one of the best 11 to a guy who doesn’t see the field at all? I was not a fan of Orji as a starting quarterback who played the entire game, but he can be used as a mooseback runner. Hell, Michigan used Hassan Haskins in a wildcat role. You can put a 6’3”, 235 lb. guy back there with Mullings and/or Hall and/or Edwards and still do some things. Orji just can’t be playing an entire game as the only option.
• Donovan Edwards is both underused and frustrating. How did Michigan take one of the better receiving backs in the country and turn him into a guy who has 9 catches for 46 yards through seven games? He also had zero receptions in this game. Michigan needs to figure out ways to get him the ball. And then, of course, he had a very frustrating fumble on Michigan’s longest run of the day, a 19-yarder where the ball was punched out. He had 7 carries for 38 yards, but with the 19-yarder ending in a fumble, that’s basically 6 carries for 19 yards . . . which is nothing special.
• Plan for Jack Tuttle. Tuttle isn’t a guy who can do straight dropback stuff to win the game. He’s a game manager type who needs to be a complement to the run game. The offensive line can’t pass block – although I feel like they did slightly better in this game – and the receivers can’t get open with regularity. Michigan’s coaching staff should be using for Tuttle the game plan they used with Alex Orji, while occasionally mixing in a downfield/intermediate shot, maybe once a quarter.

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Washington 27, Michigan 17

I guess it’s Tuttle time. After a couple drives of Alex Orji’s version of the offense doing nothing (0 points), Michigan surprisingly inserted seventh year Utah/Indiana transfer backup Jack Tuttle. The offense immediately got a boost as Washington tried to adjust. Michigan rather quickly put up 17 points across the second and third quarters before doing nothing in the fourth. Tuttle completed 10/18 passes for 98 yards, 1 touchdown, and 1 interception. He also ran 5 times for 14 yards and lost a fumble. Orji completed 3/7 passes for 15 yards and ran 3 times for 11 yards before departing. The offense looked more cohesive and calmer with Tuttle behind center, at least until the end of the game, when Michigan was down a couple scores in hurry-up mode. I would imagine Tuttle’s time on task has not been significant running a two-minute offense since he’s been hurt for the past several months, but the game was out of hand at that point. Michigan was not going to get two scores in the span of a minute or so.

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Michigan 27, USC 24

A win is a win. I always try to keep things in perspective. Herm Edwards famously said “You play to win the game,” and Michigan won the game. The Wolverines are 3-1 and their primary goals are still within play: win the Big Ten, beat your rivals, make the College Football Playoff, and win a national championship. Sometimes you win ugly, and sometimes you win pretty. It might help put things in perspective that star tight end Colston Loveland missed the entire game with an arm injury and Will Johnson was absent at the end of the game. This just happened to be an ugly victory, but oh well.

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