45 days until Michigan football: 'The reason we didn't throw the ball is that we could run it'
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.
Many Michigan fans aren’t happy unless they’re unhappy, award-winning author John U. Bacon often says. The Wolverines are 25-3 with more Big Ten championships (2) than Big Ten losses (1) over the last two seasons, but there’s still a faction that wants to see more out of the offense.
While improvement is crucial, especially since Michigan has lost in the CFP semifinals each of the last two seasons and is aiming for a national title, the Wolverines have been fantastic offensively, leaning on a ground and pound approach. In 2022, the Wolverines rushed for 3,345 yards, averaging 238.9 yards and 2.9 touchdowns on the ground per contest.
Despite ranking 24th in the country with 8.3 yards per pass attempt, Michigan only threw the ball 26.4 times per game, the 90th-most nationally. With junior quarterback J.J. McCarthy back for his second season as the starter behind center, it’s expected that the Wolverines can, and will, air the ball out more, even if it’s only an incremental increase.
If you think Michigan ran the ball a lot in 2022, though, remember back to the 1970s under the legendary Bo Schembechler, the program’s all-time winningest coach. The 42.9 rush attempts per game in 2022 are nothing compared to the whopping 70.2 per contest in 1971 (!!!) or 63.2 in 1973 — the two highest marks in program history. It was a slower game back then, too, with fewer plays. In 1971, the Wolverines averaged only 11.4 passes per game, compared to their opponents’ 23.5. Quarterback Tom Slade threw the majority of the team’s passes, with 63 attempts.
Really, those are just fun facts to look back on. But it does tell us about the tradition that Michigan has built its success on — running the football well. The Wolverines have made damn sure they’ve figured that aspect of the game out before mastering anything else, and it’s worked well — especially within the confines of the Big Ten — over the years.
While head coach Jim Harbaugh was a star quarterback at both Michigan and for 15 years in the NFL, he’s got an old-school mentality and fondness for the run game. His mentor, of course, was Schembechler.
“You guys all laugh at that,” Schembechler said on WTKA in 2006 (in his final interview before passing away), after stating that he believed Michigan was going to have to throw the ball a bit more to beat Ohio State. “Nobody goes back there to check if we threw back in those days. They remember that one year, that 1971 year when Tommy Slade led us to an 11-0 season and we gained almost all of our yardage rushing the football and scored something like 450 points, some astronomical figure and from then on that was my reputation — that I would never throw the ball.
“Well, the reason we didn’t throw the ball is that we could run it.”
That last line is similar to the current Michigan coach saying in 2021 that “it’s not our job to stop ourselves.” The Wolverines will do what it takes to win — games and championships — and not apologize for it. And by the way, that could mean more passing this fall.
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