WTKA Roundtable 10/8/2026: The Sophomore Slump

SPEAKER_1 (0:26)

This is a pre-recorded version of the WTKA Roundtable, on WTKA, unsurprisingly. Nine o'clock Thursdays. It is recorded, however, so if you call in, no one will answer.

SPEAKER_2 (0:59)

And we are back, folks, here on the Michigan Insider, on the Big Ten 50 WTKA, online at thebigten50.com. Sam Webb, Mr. Ira Wine, Tariq Boney, other side. It is time for the MGoBlog Roundtable.

Yeah, after another Michigan defeat, this one, I won't quite call it, it was a collapse. It was another collapse for Michigan. There were some recurring themes here. And so the diagnoses and prescription for remedies. I'm curious the takes of our esteemed panel, joining us as they do every single week from the blog, starting with the man that started it all over there, Brian Cook. Brian, good morning. How are you? I'm well. We have Seth Fisher, his right-hand man, to his left on the screen. Seth, how are you?

Seth Fisher (1:50)

How are you doing?

SPEAKER_2 (1:50)

How are you doing?

Seth Fisher (1:51)

I'm feeling a little echoey.

SPEAKER_2 (1:52)

Okay. And I'll try to work on that. And then we have Craig Ross. Craig, how are you?

Craig Ross (1:58)

I'm doing fine and I'm echoing.

SPEAKER_2 (2:01)

Let's start off first with Brian. Just give me your broad brush take on the game.

Brian Cook (2:10)

It was bad.

So I've been reviewing the tape and I wish I could say that there's one thing. This has been the case for the whole season where there are coordinator issues, but there are also issues with targeting particularly with the Rhino. There's issues with Bryce Underwood. We saw Andrew Marsh drop a pass. When you have this kind of dysfunction, it's never one thing.

There's been this media narrative this week about how Michigan is rushing laterally and how it doesn't fit their personnel, and that doesn't resemble reality. For one, Michigan was an outside zone team last year. That was their main, that was their base run play, and they were very good at it and all these guys ran outside zone last year. In terms of trying to get to the edge on a play that is a jet sweep, while you still have a power attach to the other side of that play, the narrative about how this offense doesn't sit the offensive line just doesn't match up with what I'm seeing. There's no thing that they can go into the lab over the bye week and be like, okay, we're just going to do this. That's not going to fix all the problems. I do think refocusing on some base plays and just running a lot of base plays would help because I think the main thing with Jason Beck right now is he calls a lot of plays where he needs the defense to take a particular action for those to work. Those are usually called constrained plays, and they usually force the defense to take an action based on the fact that you're having success on your base plays. What we didn't see from Jason Beck in this game is a consistent pressure applied to those offensive tackles. Because on the two of the first three runs that Michigan had, they were duos right up the middle and those guys got blown out. What I didn't see is Beck saying, well, we're going to keep doing this until they react to it and then hit them over the top. The down-to-down success has been okay over the course of the season, but the problem is that Beck has not schemed up hardly any explosives. We have a long run of 17 yards on the season, and Bryce Underwood barely attempts passes more than 20 yards down field. When you have a safety in the box on pretty much every play, when you have safeties at six and eight yards, you're never going to have the amount of consistency that you need to drive the field, so you need to get some explosives, and we just have not seen that this year, and that is the thing that I think is really hurting Michigan.

Seth?

Seth Fisher (4:49)

Brian's doing the offense, and he pretty much took care of everything.

Craig Ross (4:54)

He didn't say they're.

Seth Fisher (4:56)

Defensively, they're fine. They're running man defense. The defensive ends were a little injured this game, so we got to see what happens with Tariq Boney. It goes against longer tackles, and I think that is maybe going to be his issue, that they get their hands on them, and this is a game, and this is going to happen in the Big Ten a lot, where they're not going to call a lot of holding, and he gets wrenched around a bit because he just can't get off of that block. So he's going to have to really focus on keeping himself clean just because of his size and whatnot. And we knew we were going to see something, who's not going to be like a superstar immediately.