Michigan’s O-line, backfield has it sitting on brink of special season
There weren’t many questions to be answered following Michigan football’s 41-17 victory over Penn State on Saturday, except for maybe one:
Are the running backs so talented they make the offensive line look great, or is the offensive line so dominant it makes the running backs look unstoppable?
And frankly, from the looks of it right now, the answer is both.
“They propel each other,” said Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh after Michigan disemboweled Penn State, 41-17. “The offensive line know that if they give Blake (Corum) space, Donovan (Edwards) space, even just, any kind of crack they’re going to make the most of it. You can’t have two guys that are more happy about the way their offensive line comes off the ball.
“It’s the ultimate team sport. They’re big fans of each other, I can tell you that.”
The test that didn’t become one
Saturday was supposed to be the Wolverines’ first test; a chance to see how their attack stacked up against a defense that’s among the best the Big Ten has to offer.
However, the combination of their offensive line — Ryan Hayes, Trevor Keegan, Olusegun Oluwatimi, Zak Zinter and Karsen Barnhart (playing in place of the injured Trente Jones) — and their running backs, the dual-headed monster of Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards, rendered that moot.
The Nittany Lions came in with the fifthranked rushing defense in the country, allowing fewer than 80 yards per game. They’d given up 399 yards total through their first five weeks. Michigan gashed them for 418, the program’s most in a Big Ten game since putting up 481 yards in a 78-0 win in 2016.
That blowout was against Rutgers; this was a top-10 Penn State as Michigan moved to
7-0 in consecutive seasons for the first time since 1973-74.
Edwards had the best game of his career, breaking the 100-yard mark first time with 173 yards on 16 carries and two scores. Blake Corum also continued his Heisman campaign, rushing 28 times for 166 yards and two touchdowns.
“Obviously, you’ve got Blake and Dono, you know they’re going to make you right as an offensive line,” Oluwatimi said. “Today, that happened.”
The last three running backs to win the Heisman through seven games: Reggie Bush in 2005 (116 yards per game, 10 touchdowns), Mark Ingram in 2009 (129.3 yards per game, eight touchdowns) and Derrick Henry (128.7 yards per game, 12 touchdowns).
Corum through seven weeks: 128.7 yards per game, 13 touchdowns.
For J.J. McCarthy, who is also one of the more dynamic quarterbacks in the Big Ten, it makes life pretty easy at times.
“I say it all the time, with them being able to do what they do it just opens up so much,” McCarthy said of Corum and Edwards. “Two extremely special players, extremely special human beings, I’m just so blessed to have them on my sideline.”
Picking up where they left off
Michigan’s offensive line was the best in the nation last season, given the Joe Moore Award, bestowed annually to the nation’s top offensive line.
Entering 2022, there were questions of how effective that group would be this season after it lost center and two-time captain Andrew Vastardis, as well as right tackle Andrew Stueber who was drafted by the New England Patriots.
The Wolverines left little to chance, going to the transfer portal and adding Oluwatimi, a second-team All-American at Virginia in 2021.
“Sheronne Moore is a great coach, there’s a great culture in that offensive line room,” Harbaugh said. “It was there last year, it continued this year, it’s building and it’s growing.
“So give the credit to the players and position coaches.”
On Saturday, Michigan had 12 rushes that gained 10 yards or more. It had five “explosive plays” of at least 20 yards. And on the two biggest plays of the game, a 67-yard touchdown scamper by Edwards and a 61-yard touchdown rush by Corum — which came on consecutive offensive snaps — neither running back was touched.
“It was pretty much blowing them off the ball,” McCarthy said of the push the big men got up front. “Our offensive line, I said it a couple weeks ago and I’ll say it today, we’ve got the best offensive line in the country.
“They showed it today and they’re going to keep showing it. There hasn’t been a team
that’s really stopped us completely with the run and I don’t think there will be.”
Through seven weeks, Michigan has run 292 times for 1,686 yards and 24 touchdowns. That’s an average 41 carries per game for 240 yards (5.8 yards per carry) and 3.4 touchdowns.
Despite the success, nobody in either unit is focused on the numbers. They’re not even focused on the wins once they’ve happened, they’re focused on what’s next.
Corum had barely made it off the field of Michigan’s top-10 massacre over Penn State; as he ran up the Lloyd Carr tunnel he turned to Harbaugh and said “it’s on to Michigan State,”
which comes after a Bye week.
It’s the same mentality the offense has. Pounding away, the next rush always on their mind.
Just how Harbaugh and company want it. “With any successful offense, you can go to any program in the country, you have to have a dominant run game,” McCarthy said. “You don’t see any air raid offense win the national championship, it’s where it’s done in the trenches and that’s where the battle’s won.
“It wins ball games and I’m all for that.”