Jim Harbaugh breaks down Blake Corum’s big day on offense
Michigan got tested by a feisty Maryland team on Saturday, struggling to find a rhythm offensively or to fully contain Taulia Tagovailoa and the Terrapins offense. But when you’ve got Blake Corum, sometimes you don’t need your best, and that was the case as the junior running back carried the Wolverines to a 34-27 win.
Corum carried the ball 30 times for 243 yards and two touchdowns, including a late first half score when Michigan caught Maryland off guard on a 4th and 1. That sort of workload is rare these days, but head coach Jim Harbaugh knows that Corum put in the work to shoulder the burden.
“Uh 30 carries, we knew very well he could handle that,” Harbaugh said postgame. “Nobody trains — he’s trained. This isn’t something that he just goes out and does. It’s a seven-day-a-week thing for him, year round, to train himself to be in a position to do what he does. And it’s just great. So proud.”
Easy to be proud when Corum accounted for more than half of Michigan’s total yardage. The Wolverines threw for 220 and a couple touchdowns as JJ McCarthy had the type of performance young, relatively inexperienced quarterbacks often have: Up and down.
With McCarthy and the passing game not providing all the answers, Corum was up to the task. His 243 rushing yards came close to cracking the Top 5 single-game rushing performances in Michigan history. Former star quarterback Denard Robinson is in fifth with a 258 yard game against Notre Dame in 2010.
And Corum’s 243 yard two touchdown performance on 30 totes comes a week after he churned out a mind-numbingly 12 carries for 71 yards and five rushing touchdowns, tying the school single-game record.
Along with Harbaugh, Corum’s father, James, was enjoying the show.
“You can just imagine how proud James Corum is. And I saw him, right behind the bench, there’s a button on the shirt popped,” Harbaugh said with a massive grin. “It was really cool. The branch doesn’t fall too far from the tree in the Corum family. James Corum being the tree, Blake being the branch.”