49 days until Michigan football: Avoiding negative plays behind a Joe Moore Award-winning offensive line
There’s much anticipation heading into the Michigan Wolverines football season, and TheWolverine.com is counting down the days until the Sept. 2 opener against East Carolina. We’ll discuss current Michigan events, the upcoming season and/or take a look at a significant number that correlates with how many days remain until kickoff, whether it be a player’s jersey number, a year, a date, a score, etc.
Michigan’s offensive line won the Joe Moore Award for the nation’s top group for a second straight year in 2022. The Wolverines once again had one of the country’s best rushing offenses, ranking fifth with 238.9 yards per game.
Senior Blake Corum was at the forefront of it, netting 1,463 rushing yards and 18 rushing touchdowns in 12 games (he was limited with a knee injury for the majority of two of those contests). Despite carrying the ball a whopping 247 times on the season, Corum only had 31 negative rushing yards, gaining 1,494 yards not counting those negative plays.
As a team, Michigan had 251 tackles for loss yards allowed.
Michigan gave up 4.9 tackles for loss per game, ranking 42nd in the country, with 69 in 14 contests. In the Fiesta Bowl against TCU, the Horned Frogs stopped a Corum-less Michigan 13 times behind the line of scrimmage. Taking out that game, the Maize and Blue allowed only 56 tackles for loss, which would have ranked tied for 19th in the nation.
The line’s ability to pave the way for its running backs and quarterback was a huge reason why it kept the massive Joe Moore Award trophy inside Schembechler Hall, but so was its skill as a pass-blocking unit.
Michigan yielded 17 sacks all season long, ranking 26th in the country, with an average of 1.2 per contest, checking in 23rd.
According to PFF, graduate Trente Jones, graduate Trevor Keegan and senior Zak Zinter were each responsible for allowing 2 sacks. Sophomore Connor Jones and graduate Karsen Barnhart were credited with giving up 1. Outside of those, the Michigan offensive line was not deemed responsible.
Michigan football countdown to kickoff
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