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As told to you Tuesday on this site, Jake Rudock started at quarterback for Michigan tonight (or yesterday night, depending on where you’re checking in from, I suppose).
Last season as the main man at Iowa, he threw 5 interceptions all of last year. After one game in Maize and Blue, he’s already 60 percent of the way there.
Michigan is 0-1, but as lame as it sounds, they have clearly gotten better, even since spring. We tend to judge everything in a vacuum. You win. You lose. Everything in between is immaterial. The ends justify the means, no matter how we got to the ends.
There were two major issues for the Wolverines that have plagued them seemingly since Lloyd Carr left … crappy offensive line play and constant turnovers.
Well, one of them seemed to get better. Michigan was a pretty terrible 76th nationally in sacks allowed last season and 59th in tackles for loss allowed. That seemed to be significantly better, either because of better coaching along the offensive line or the fact that for the first time since Chad Henne was stomping the sidelines, the line knew where the quarterback was going to be at all times for the most part.
The defense was decent, but so it was expected to be. Utah has plenty more fire and gas than they showed tonight, and in spite of getting no help both on the score board or momentum-wise, the defense basically gave up 17 points and kept the team in the game.
To be honest, everyone wants immediate gratification, but for most people coaching, the goal is just to get better by the day, by the week, by the month, and through that process you end up getting better on the wins and losses portion of it.
It’s mostly the difference between putting boards together so you can sleep with a roof over your head versus actually learning how to frame rooms and build a house. Michigan ended last season pitching up rebar and OSB just to have a roof when it rained. This wasn’t going to happen overnight.
That said, the quarterback play has to be better. The assumption was that Jim Harbaugh comes in, the quarterback play immediately changes overnight, not that Jim Harbaugh was the best quarterback option Michigan had on the sidelines.
The truth is, Harbaugh’s teams have mostly been the anthesis of quarterback-centered, which is often how it can go in coaching. His teams have been marked by great defenses and punishing running games.
Rudock was bad tonight, as bad as you can probably be as a singular player. Surely, he feels it, with horrific over throws on easy patterns, mind-boggling interceptions, and clearly reads pre-snap with no thought after the ball was in play on if it was a crappy idea or not.
That said, Wolverine Nation shouldn’t sleep too restlessly. Utah is good, and this is the dawn of a new era. Harbaugh lost his first games at San Diego and Stanford. It’s not really a harbinger of things to come.
Losing sucks, but when it comes in the context of getting better, you take it. Michigan got better tonight. 0-1 is just part of the process in getting there, however great “there” ends up being.
