Michigan football's aerial success leaves foes with more questions than answers

From the first day Michigan football turned on East Carolina's film, running back Blake Corum saw it coming.

The Pirates were going to stack the the box.

"If you watch some of their videos and listen to their press conferences, they wanted to stop the run," Corum said after Saturday's 30-3 U-M victory. ”I think they were going to die trying."

Statistically, it seemed as sound a shot as any for ECU to slow Michigan's high-powered attack. In 2022, U-M ranked No. 5 nationally in rushing yards, at 238.9 per game, while ECU's run defense ranked No. 19, at 112.5 yards allowed.

Strength vs. strength, yes, but the theory seemed solid: Slow the run, slow the Wolverines.

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But what ECU coach Mike Houston and company didn't account for — or perhaps what they banked against — was U-M's coaches living up to "50-50" run-pass balance preached all offseason.

To borrow Corum's phrase, ECU did "die trying" to stop the run, only for quarterback J.J. McCarthy to make the Pirates walk the plank with his arm. Michigan ran 31 times and attempted 31 passes, with McCarthy completing 26 of his 30 attempts for 280 yards and three touchdowns.

Those 31 rushes were less than any of U-M's games last season, as was the average gain — 3.9 yards per carry — considering the Wolverines 122 yards rushing. That total was mostly produced by Corum, who gained 73 yards on 10 carries, and Donovan Edwards, who had 37 yards on 12 carries — both returning from injuries last season, but said to be at 100%.

As Corum reiterated after the game, it wasn't that the Wolverines didn’t want to run. It wasn’t even that they felt they couldn’t. It’s that they weren't going to run into a wall when they felt they could throw over it.

"ECU did a phenomenal job of stopping the run," Corum said. "That was their game plan and they did a pretty good job, but we still had a run game, it wasn’t like it wasn’t there. If we really wanted to, we probably could’ve tried to get over 100 yards, me or Donovan or any of the other running backs, but why?

“When we’ve got guys like Roman (Wilson) and J.J. (McCarthy), they can just slang that thing.”

"Slang" they did.

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In the first of three games without Jim Harbaugh at the helm — he was serving this third of his suspension watching the game at the house of offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore, who was also suspended — the Wolverines' shuffled staff showed its willingness to abandon its run-first mentality of the past two seasons.

That plan didn’t happen, of course, without the approval of Harbaugh and Moore, both of whom were in their usual roles in practice all week. But the pair felt comfortable enough that McCarthy, and first-time play-caller Kirk Campbell, were tasked with carving up a defense that ranked next to last against the pass in 2022.

“Everyone saw what we did last year, we were smashing, pounding the football doing our thing and teams are going to prepare for that,” McCarthy said. "Especially this year, spending all offseason to try and stop that, so that's just opportunity for us as a pass game to capitalize.

With ECU selling out to stop the run Saturday, it left Michigan open to pass.

"If they know the answer, we're just going to change the question," McCarthy said. ”We're just going to keep going back and forth, do whatever we can to move the ball."

The quarterback completed 16 of 18 attempts in the first half, with the lone incompletions coming on a drop and a miscommunication. At one point, McCarthy connected on 15 straight passes, the longest streak for a U-M QB since Jake Rudock in 2015.

McCarthy's hot touch was evident on his third pass, a perfectly placed ball on a third-and-7 corner route to Roman Wilson for 16 yards to keep Michigan's second drive alive.

Two plays later, Corum ripped off a 21-yard scamper, his second longest of the day, to get Michigan into the red zone. Two plays after that, McCarthy fired a rope to Wilson in the end zone for Michigan's first score of the year.

“I was just doing my job out there,” said Wilson, who finished with six catches for 72 yards and a career-high three touchdowns. “I’m gonna take advantage of playing in this offense with a guy like (McCarthy) and elite running backs like (Corum and Edwards).”

It was the first of five consecutive scoring drives.

On the next series, McCarthy — who led the nation in yards per attempt on play-action calls a year ago — used the play fake to hit Cornelius Johnson for a gain of 20. Six plays later, U-M was in the end zone.

The next series, McCarthy continued to slice and dice.

He started with a pop-pass to Edwards on an end-around for a gain of 12. Then, after a pair of rushes picked up 1 yard, McCarthy took to the air again, hitting four straight completions.

On third-and-10, he connected with Johnson for a gain of 15. Then came consecutive chunk plays of 24 and 15 yards to Colston Loveland, followed by a 10-yard bullet to Wilson for his second score.

“Some of the things they were doing allowed one-on-one matchups in our slot,” acting head coach Jesse Minter said. “I think the design was really good, Roman executing at a high level … and of course, J.J. put the ball where he needed to put it.”

The second half brought more of the same: 12 plays — eight of which were passes — capped by McCarthy finding Wilson in the corner of the end zone from 15 yards out on third-and-11 for his third and final touchdown.

When U-M called off the dogs in the fourth quarter, the play-calling balance stood at 24 rushes and 30 passes.

“It’s very nice, selfishly, as a quarterback," McCarthy said. "But at the end of the day, it’s like we all said, it’s whatever we’ve got to do to move the ball down the field.”

McCarthy and the Wolverines didn't face many challenges through the air Saturday — his 86.7% completion rate was the second-highest by a U-M QB with at least 20 attempts, behind only Elvis Grbac (who completed 20 of 22 against Notre Dame) in 1991.

The question now is, will U-M make this a trend, or a one-off decision?

It depends, most likely, on which answer their opponents are searching for.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan football abandons its roots to 'slang that thing' vs. ECU