Michigan football: Work still to do, but the offensive line is making strides

The Michigan offensive line was a question mark heading into the season, and there might still be concerns about how it will hold up against the better teams on the schedule. Oklahoma dominated the Wolverines up front (though to be fair, the Sooners looked really good in the front seven before and after a win over U-M, too), but a revamped Michigan line has come on strong in recent weeks. 

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Graduate left guard Giovanni El-Hadi left the Sept. 13 game at Oklahoma with a lower body injury, and transfer Brady Norton followed later. That opened the door for redshirt freshman Jake Guarnera at right guard with junior Nathan Efobi moving to left, and it led to 381 yards rushing (616 total) in a 63-3 win over Central Michigan and 290 on the ground (395 total) in a 30-27 win at Nebraska.

“We said at the beginning of the year, and I’ve always said it, it takes 10 guys and nobody can be sad or depressed or down that we lost somebody on the line for a week or two,” Moore said after the win in Lincoln. “That’s how it is. That’s what it is. 

“Those guys have really taken ownership of that. To watch Nate step up, watch Jake step up as a freshman who’s been playing center, it’s huge. There’s a lot of trust in both those guys to do their job. They’ve been extremely impressive.”

Guarnera was aggressive and played very well for a first start against the Chippewas, and he held his own at Nebraska in his first “big” test. Young starting tackles Evan Link and Andrew Sprague have continued to improve slowly but surely, while grad senior center Greg Crippen came up huge against the Cornhuskers, opening holes on all three of the Wolverines’ long touchdown runs. 

“Greg Crippen had his best week of practice all week,” interim coach Biff Poggi said after the win. “I thought he was probably the leader of the offense this week in practice, and he played his best game. It was really important.”

Moore took it upon himself to work with the line during individual sessions in the week leading up to the CMU game, focusing on the “how” instead of the “what,” he noted. Whatever he did paid off with some good performances from a revamped line, including “getting back to the fundamentals.”

“Get back to the little things and play with that nastiness, that physical mentality,” Moore said of his goal for them. “That Michigan standard is what it’s about. Don’t worry about the play. And, again, it’s the how. It’s the violence of the play. It’s the low pads. It’s how you move, and those are the things that really win blocks. 

“It’s not the scheme, because at the end of the day, it’s one-on-one blocks for a line, whether you get to the first level or the second level. So, those are the things that we really harped on is that mentality, the mental piece of it. And they’ve really taken ownership of everything. Coach [Grant] Newsome’s done a great job with them.”

With a little help from the head coach.