With two losses, Michigan understands the assignment — 'we pretty much have to win out' — but can the Wolverines do it?

Michigan Wolverines football is a 14-point favorite over Michigan State Saturday in East Lansing, according to BetMGM, and will be projected to beat each of the next three opponents, too — Purdue, Northwestern and Maryland — before taking on Ohio State Nov. 29 at The Big House. Anything can happen in that game, as the college football world witnessed a season ago, when the Wolverines beat the Buckeyes as 17.5-point underdogs in Columbus.

The Wolverines have suffered two losses already, at Oklahoma Sept. 6 (24-13) and at Southern California Oct. 11 (34-13), meaning they likely have no margin for error to earn an at-large bid to the 12-team College Football Playoff.

That’s why, while Michigan held “tough conversations” early in the week following the embarrassing loss in Los Angeles, with players and coaches holding each other accountable. it was no time to hit the panic button. Michigan got “back to work,” a now-famous line because head coach Sherrone Moore was wearing his blue-collar jacket, and players embraced that mindset.

“I feel like we handled it well,” senior EDGE Derrick Moore said. “Like Coach Moore said, we just went back to work. Nobody put their head down. That was it, really. Really just getting back to work — that was the agenda all last week, after that loss.”

It’s taken time for fan bases, administrators, coaches and players to adjust to the new world of college football with the 12-team playoff, where losses aren’t a death sentence. Keeping sanity inside a program after hardship is paramount. Look at Ohio State, whose coach was physically unable to move and muttered “what happened” as his players lost control and attacked the Michigan Wolverines while they celebrated winning 13-10 over the Buckeyes last November. That OSU team won the national championship game 51 days later. It’s hard to wrap your head around.

“I feel like sometimes, especially with how college football is going right now, a lot of teams or a lot of guys on a team put their head down after one loss and starting pointing fingers,” Derrick Moore said. “But for us, we just go back to work and try to figure out how can we not be in that position again, especially moving forward. We pretty much have to win out. So, what do we have to do now to pretty much not feel that feeling anymore?”

Michigan has to win to not have that feeling anymore. Foster and maintain a sense of urgency, win with numbing repetition, get on a rampage and see what happens against Ohio State or in the playoff. It all starts with Michigan State this week, and the Spartans won’t be easy to beat, considering this is the biggest game of their season and the Wolverines haven’t fared well on the road, 1-2 with the lone win coming by three points at Nebraska.

Michigan graduate defensive tackle Tré Williams transferred in from Clemson. If the Wolverines do wind up in the CFP in December, their season will be similar to the Tigers from last year. Clemson lost to Georgia to open the season, fell another time in the middle of the year (Louisville) and actually suffered a rivalry loss to South Carolina at the end. By virtue of winning a weaker conference, though, the Tigers got into the field after an ACC championship game victory over Southern Methodist. In a first-round road game, Clemson played a close game at Texas before the Longhorns pulled away.

Speaking with media after practice Tuesday night, Williams shared what he learned about moving on from losses and still seizing the opportunities ahead.

“You can freak out,” Williams said of losses. “Nobody likes to lose. But you have to flush it.

“A lot of what I’ve been telling my teammates is we can never let a loss beat us twice. We’ve seen that a lot in college football, a team that may have started the season off well and they take one loss, and that one loss turns into three, four losses in a row. And they got beat by our first loss.

“I wasn’t going to let that happen here.”

Michigan did bounce back from the setback to USC by beating Washington, 24-7, in an impressive effort highlighted by defensive takeaways and the offense cashing in.

Now, it’s Michigan State week — always a big one — and the Wolverines are attempting to keep that same fire burning hotter and hotter.

“Urgency,” Sherrone Moore said. “Urgency is the word. Complacency is a plague that will eat you alive, and it’ll take away your edge.

“I’m just going to stay on the same path as I was last week, on kind of a bit of a war path. Making sure we’re doing all of the things we need to do and all of the little things. You can be happy about the win, but you can’t be satisfied.”

Win or lose, it truly is back to work in today’s college football, as long as you have a path to the CFP. This week, Michigan is bringing its blue-collar shirts and mentalities to East Lansing.