Everything Sherrone Moore said after Michigan's 21-16 win over Purdue

On his thoughts of the overall team performance

I thought, first of all, I’ll start defensively, just running all over the place, physical. This guy over here with 11 tackles, Rayshaun Benny had six tackles. And you’re gonna look at the film and there’s things we gotta eva luate and see what we need to fit better and keep contained on things. But I thought they did a heck of a job all night. For the plays that they had, 65 plays allowing 276 yards. And our standard is really high, right?

Our standard is really high. So I know on defense, we wanna be better than that, and we will. And I thought the thing I’m proud about on the defense is the amount of guys that played, especially young guys. And when you got guys like Troy Bowles, who’s not necessarily a young guy, but a new guy, but Chase Taylor, Nathaniel Owusu at linebacker, and Lugard playing, but they understand that’s the standard, right? So that’s what they’re in there for, and then that’s how they would get to attack offensively. Obviously ran the ball well, gotta be better in the passing game.

And you look in the red zone, if you don’t have two turnovers, it’s probably a different game. It’s either six or 14, but it wasn’t, right? So the main thing we had to do was finish. So things we gotta clean up there, and then special teams-wise, we gotta challenge guys, push them. In the returning game, we gotta make sure we got guys in the right place and see who’s going to be the most reliable in those spots, cuz that’s what’s gonna help us win these games. And at the end of the day, we’re 7-2, and we’re in a position to do everything we wanna accomplish and go win.

And our leaders are gonna take this thing by the horns. Our coaches are gonna do that. I’m gonna do that to make sure that we have it right where we need it to be and hold it to the standard. So we’re excited, we’re ready to attack it. But this week comes at a good time cuz those guys have played their tail off.

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On the passing game not working

I disagree. We’ve had some long passes down the field today. Just, we gotta connect on the one set, not that turnovers, so.

On Jaishawn Barham being out of the game impacting the defense

I mean, Jaishawn’s a great player, right? We know how good he is. But at the end of the day, everybody’s gotta step up. Whoever it is, they know their job. They know what the standard is of whoever we play on the defense is. They’ve gotta play at a high level. So yeah, we didn’t have him in the game, but that didn’t mean that the standard changes.

On Jaishawn Barham’s status moving forward

Not yet, we’ll see how this week goes. But – I could say he’d come back, but we’ll see how this week goes.

On fixing special teams

Yeah, consistency, the way you practice is the way you should play. And it’s just not, it’s gotta continue to do that. So we’ve gotta look at, challenge everybody there, challenge everybody, challenge the coaches, challenge the players to make sure we get it fixed.

On where Bryce Underwood’s biggest strides need to be made

I mean, I’d say today, right, you could see he was just taking care of the football. And other than that, I mean, he could make every throw, and he made a key third-down throw in the pocket to Zach Marshall. He threw a trick play to Zack Marshall on a deep that was in the pocket. He threw the sprint out play to the right and throw a sprint out to the left. So he’s got multiple strengths, but we’ve gotta clean up all the other things. We gotta clean up the things to make him.

And then everybody else around him has to execute at a high level too. The spacing has to be there. Spacing plus timing equals completions. So you gotta have the spacing too, so it’s not just on Bryce. And we don’t wanna put it, we don’t put out the excuse of always a freshman or there’s freshmen out there. Nobody’s a freshman anymore, we just gotta keep getting better.

On evaluating the OL play

Yeah, I mean, I thought they played physical, especially that last drive. You look at having, running the football at a high level for 253 yards, that’s physical football right there. And I thought they adjusted well early cuz there was some new pressure, some new ways that they reverted back to kind of what they did in games two and three on defense.

They played a different style of defense a little bit, which they were prepared for, but I thought the O-line adjusted pretty well. The blitz pickups and things, they did well. We had a young back in there, Jasper Parker, that missed one. But I thought the O-line overall, they’re playing at a really good level. We gotta continue to bring them along.

On the bye week being used for Underwood going under center

Yeah, I mean, I think we’ll look at everything. There’s not just one piece to look at it to make sure we get better at. We got really good coaches on the staff, and we’ll put our heads together and make sure we’re ready for Northwestern.

On how long he expects Justice Haynes to be out

We’ll see, we’ll see exactly how long that’ll be.

On Jordan Marshall’s night

Outstanding, 25 carries, 185 yards, three touchdowns, averaging 7.4 a carry. And he’s had 100 in what, Dave? 124. 124, and he’s only had one tackle for loss.

On the bye week coming at a good time for team health

Great time, that’s football though. You’re playing football in the Big Ten, guys are gonna get dinged up. Every team, I don’t think any team’s gonna be completely healthy right now.

So bye week’s great. And another guy that really came in at a crucial moment, Bryson Kuzdzal, came in there and ran hard, ran physical. He only had four carries, but four for 23, averaging 5.8, that’s really good. Especially in those critical moments, and holding on to football. So proud of him and what he did today, too.

On Jamar Browder earning more time and the missed pass

I gotta see the film exactly to see the detail of it. But he works his tail off, he’s another guy, he was on scout team half the year and making plays on scout team, so when you do that, you get elevated. You get a chance to go play on Saturdays, and he’s continued to show that. So we’ll continue to give him opportunities to go play.

On improvements the team needs to make to achieve its goals

I mean, I think regardless of the score today, I probably would have found something that we need to get better at. You never think you’re perfect. So we know we got a ways to go. We know what we got to do in this bye week to get better. And we know we got a really good team. We got to go play in two weeks.

So we’re gonna clean everything we need to clean up, get the guys back we need to get back and roll from there.