The 3-1 Michigan Wolverines traveled to take on the 3-1 Minnesota Golden Gophers on Saturday and left town with a stunning 20-14 loss. It felt like Michigan just couldn’t get out of its own way the entire game, and five weeks into the season, it’s well past time they figure it out.
With Michigan’s season already being a disappointment with them sitting at 3-2, let’s dive into the red zone report for this game and try to figure out how Michigan can salvage the season with better execution below.
In Michigan’s first and only red zone trip of this game, they started off with the ball at the Minnesota 14 yard line with a first and 10. The first play was a 4 yard handoff to Jordan Marshall. It was just a simple inside zone play where Marshall got contacted 1 yard past the line of scrimmage, but was able to churn out a 4 yard gain from it.
On the next play, it was a nice pass to JJ Buchanan for a 5 yard completion. Andrew Marsh came in motion just before the snap and it put the defender in conflict over who to cover on the play. The result was an open JJ Buchanan for a nice 5 yard pickup that left it with a 3rd and 1 from the 5 yard line.
From there it was another Jordan Marshall carry on another inside zone where the offensive line carved out a little hole over the left side. On this play Nathan Efobi does a nice job to turn his defender out and it allows for a hole to open up where the defender just vacated from. Marshall gets a little contact at the line of scrimmage but all the defenders in the area were engaged with the offensive lineman so it’s a really tough play for them to come off the block and make the tackle there.
Marshall was able to power through the contact all the way to the end zone and got the ball across the goal line for Michigan’s first touchdown of the day.
These simple three plays in my opinion give a good encapsulation of what can happen when this team executes. Scoring touchdowns in the red zone can be very difficult because the defense was far less space to defend, and the offense has less room to operate in. The difference between scoring a touchdown in the red zone and having to settle for a field goal is often simply who executes better when there’s less space to work with.
In this series Michigan did a really nice job of not having any negative plays, and executing better than Minnesota did. You can see what can happen when this team is able to execute, and that was a very positive result for the Wolverines.
Unfortunately too often this season the offense, and the team in general for that matter, have simply failed to execute when its mattered the most. If Michigan can put together more consistent offensive drives like this one where they are able to execute, they have more than enough talent to be able to win games. Will they be able to do so this season is anyone’s guess, but this red zone trip provides a good example of the upside still remaining on this football team.
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