ANN ARBOR, Mich. — No Michigan coach in the last 50 years has faced less pressure to beat Ohio State than Sherrone Moore faces this week.
The Wolverines could lose by five touchdowns, and as long as five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood shows up as planned, Moore’s approval rating wouldn’t budge. Michigan fans — a lot of them, anyway — have come to terms with this season as part of a cosmic bargain the program struck with the football gods. Michigan won the 2023 national championship and is set to sign the No. 1 prospect in the Class of 2025. And 2024? Let’s never speak of it again.
A lack of pressure shouldn’t be confused with a lack of desire. Michigan wants to win this game, as the Wolverines will say over and over this week. Players will recite all the rivalry liturgies about the “Beat Ohio” drill and the signs in the weight room and the year-round drive to beat the Buckeyes. After the past three years, when Michigan played Ohio State with Big Ten titles and College Football Playoff berths on the line, it’s hard to generate the same buzz for 10-1 Ohio State against 6-5 Michigan.
As far as most outsiders are concerned, a loss to Ohio State has been baked into the cake for the majority of Michigan’s season. Players and coaches don’t think that way, of course. And they shouldn’t. Ask anyone at Michigan, and they’ll insist that this team, despite its obvious flaws, is capable of putting everything together for one game in Columbus. And who knows, maybe they’re right — stranger things have happened. But this rivalry tends to move in cycles, and the forces of change are working against Michigan this season.
WE’LL SEE YOU FOR THE GAME COLUMBUS 🔥
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While Michigan was busy winning a national championship, Ohio State was assembling a roster that could deliver payback for Ryan Day. Aside from a last-second loss at Oregon, that roster has done what it was built to do. As hard as Michigan tried to keep its championship mojo going, the Wolverines were exposed early on as a program in transition. The result is a game Day cannot afford to lose and a game Moore is not expected to win.
The table has been set for Ohio State to get its revenge, but Michigan doesn’t have to sit down and politely cooperate. If the Wolverines defensive line plays the way it has the past two games and the running game produces the way it did in the second half against Northwestern, Michigan will be capable of making Ohio State sweat.
“The offense is rolling, defense is rolling,” edge rusher Josaiah Stewart said after Saturday’s 50-6 blowout over Northwestern. “We’ve just got to keep going and continue to punch them in the mouth next week.”
Let’s say this game goes exactly as the experts project. Ohio State will be headed to the Big Ten Championship Game with a shot at the No. 1 seed in the CFP, and Day will be able to breathe easy for the first time in four years. At 6-6, Michigan will be headed to some cheesy bowl game and thinking about how to turn the tables next season.
That’s where things will get interesting for Moore. Until about four days ago, Michigan fans were solidly on the fence about the job he’d done in his first season. His game management and roster evaluation have been less than inspiring, and Michigan’s offense has been in disarray for much of the season.
All of those concerns faded into the background when Michigan landed Underwood, the five-star quarterback from nearby Belleville High and arguably the biggest recruit in the program’s modern era. After years of looking down at other teams for paying their players, Michigan ruthlessly and shamelessly flipped the switch and found wealthy donors willing to bankroll a star quarterback. You can call out the hypocrisy if you want, or you can credit Michigan for realizing there’s no moral high ground in refusing to pay players what they’re worth. The rules of college football have changed, and Michigan has changed, too.
“That’s the standard we want, right?” Moore said. “We want to recruit at a high level.”
For years, Ohio State was the team that collected five-star recruits and Michigan was the team that preached toughness and grit over talent. That’s an oversimplification, of course: Michigan landed its share of four- and five-star recruits, and Ohio State had tough players, too. But the narrative of the rivalry was solidified when Michigan beat the Buckeyes three years in a row despite finishing well behind Ohio State in the recruiting rankings.
Regardless of what happens Saturday, that narrative will need to be updated. Moore is putting Michigan in the conversation with Ohio State, Georgia, Alabama and the other recruiting juggernauts. If he can sustain that, it’s hard to imagine Michigan staying down for long. Recruiting at that level opens doors that were closed during Jim Harbaugh’s tenure, but it also comes with its own pressures and challenges, as Day knows all too well.
This was Moore’s honeymoon season, as much as he tried to deny it. He has a one-year reprieve from the all-consuming pressure that Harbaugh, Day, Urban Meyer, Jim Tressel, Lloyd Carr and John Cooper lived with 365 days a year. As soon the clock hits zero at the Horseshoe, another clock will start, and Moore will be racing against time to surround the No. 1 recruit in the nation with enough talent to put Michigan back on equal footing with the Buckeyes next season.
All of this creates a slightly awkward situation for the players who will take the field Saturday in Columbus. This team, Team 145, won’t have a privileged place in Michigan history. While some Michigan fans are ready to fast forward to next year, Moore’s task is to make sure Michigan treats Saturday’s game exactly the same as the previous three against Ohio State. Michigan owes that to Stewart, Mason Graham, Colston Loveland and the other players who stuck around after last season’s national championship run.
“There’s obviously stuff we’ve got to do off the field,” Moore said, “but our No. 1 (goal) right now is to prepare to go win that game.”
Last year, Moore handled the pressure of filling in for Harbaugh in a Michigan-Ohio State game that people will be talking about for decades, a matchup of undefeated teams that put Michigan one step closer to a national championship. This year, it’s the opposite challenge. Moore’s first season has been a slog, and once it ends, a lot of Michigan fans will be happy not to speak of it again.
Unless the Wolverines give them a reason to.
(Photo: Rick Osentoski / Imagn Images)
