Michigan coach Sherrone Moore opens up on offensive line play, how Chip Lindsey is calling the offense

Michigan Wolverines football has had to shuffle pieces around on the offensive line this season, dealing with injuries to its starting guards, graduate Giovanni El-Hadi (left) and junior Brady Norton (right). Junior Nathan Efobi and sophomore Jake Guarnera have stepped in on the left and right side, respectively, and fared well as the unit has grown and Michigan has won three-straight contests following the loss to Oklahoma in week two.

Last week, though, in the 24-10 win over Wisconsin, it was two mainstays who had their moments of struggle, with both junior left tackle Evan Link and sophomore right tackle Andrew Sprague each allowing 2 pressures, with one of the former’s being a sack. Sprague also missed a single base block that led to a tackle for loss.

On the ‘Inside Michigan Football’ radio show, head coach Sherrone Moore discussed what he saw from the offensive line in the win.

“To start the game, they came out fast, they came out swinging,” Moore said of the unit. “They played with the juice and energy that they practiced with. I felt like throughout the game, Wisconsin’s No. 1 rush defense showed up throughout the middle of the game, and they kept punching back. But what you saw was the O-line respond, which is ultimately what you want to see. You want to see the guys respond. 

“To go down and score again, and actually to have an opportunity to score again at the end of the game, and we held up at the 2, 3 yard line. People were probably not too happy about that, but the football gods will pay us off later on that. 

“The score could be, oh, it could’ve been 31, no it’s 24. I’m like, it doesn’t matter. We won. I don’t really care. We ended the game with the ball and we won. So, it felt like we progressed throughout the game, and we fought.”

There was a lot to clean up for the Michigan offensive line, but Moore is confident in what the group has become going forward. Plus, El-Hadi and Norton may return this week, bolstering depth at the very least.

“I think it’s a really great job by [offensive coordinator] Coach [Chip] Lindsey calling the game and feeling out what things are working and what things are not,” Moore said. “Yeah, we game plan, and you hope that every play you prescribe and put on the game plan is going to work, but it doesn’t work like that. They’re good coaches, too; they’ve got good players, too.

“So, there are things you have to adjust during the game to fix. I thought he did a really good job, and the staff did a really good job of figuring out what was working, what wasn’t, how we needed to fix it. But then the players responded.

“And I think they are doing a better job of attacking the second level and creating double teams. There are some things we have to fix — there are some [mistakes on] single blocks that happened — to eliminate the plays in the backfield, and those are all eyes and hand fundamental things that are easily correctable. We corrected them during the game, so that helped. 

“But I think they’ve really gained the momentum, and hopefully we have Gio and Brady back this week to push those guys that are already playing.”

Lindsey is five games into his first season as Michigan’s offensive coordinator, after spending the previous two at North Carolina under Mack Brown. The Wolverines’ offense ranks 20th nationally with 6.9 yards per play — up from 127th in the country with 4.7 a year ago.

“There’s just such great flow,” Moore said of the offense with Lindsey in charge. “He’s got complements to everything. The offense is built like that, but what he’s brought in are different tweaks and different things that add to it. And there will be more as we go through the season. There will be more. There will be more in this game [against USC] that will be different, that people haven’t seen. 

“He’s just done a really good job. He stays calm, he stays poised throughout the game, never panics, never flusters. He’s always got a calm head about him, and he’s always looking forward to the next piece of what we have to do to adjust, and he does a really good job of communicating with the staff.”

Moore was asked when Michigan feels it’s in position to take the next step as an offense given what it’s put on tape thus far.

“I think they’re there,” he said of the group. “They’re in place right now. It’s stuff that’s been installed that we’ve used, but you can only run so many plays in a game. Shoot, I think we had 66 plays in that game. They had 59 total. So, it wasn’t a game where you had the 70 or 80 plays, so there are so many plays that you can call.

“So, we’re there. We’re at that place offensively, especially with [freshman quarterback] Bryce [Underwood] and where he is in his development and maturation. So, we’ll continue to implement those things we need to and do everything we can to win the game.”