
WTKA Roundtable 9/17/2025: Coaches Confirming Message Board Takes
MGoBlog: The MGoPodcast
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Hosts wrap up the roundtable, project Michigan as favorites for the Nebraska game, and note where to find next week's coverage.
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Things Discussed:
- Biff Poggi love: We don't often get honesty about what they did wrong.
- Let Underwood cook? Not sure if it's going to hold up because people revert to learned behaviors when stress gets high. It's easy against Central.
- We saw enough that Oklahoma should be a blip: the RPOs are real, the zone reads are real.
- QB run game: Forces defenses to make themselves easier to read, because they have to play 11-on-11 unless they can two-gap at the DT spots.
- Oklahoma and Nebraska are good at messing with a quarterback's reads, and Bryce wants to make them quickly. Take away their options and you give Bryce a true read. Nebraska's defense is all about generating confusion.
- Bryce running early on pass reads: good thing, do it. When he's hitting a DB he's the one causing punishment. Also nerfs pass rush: remember how Michigan played Sean Clifford in 2021 and teed off when Allar came on.
- Haynes: been good but frustrating—sometimes he's great in pass pro but he had another handful of purse-swinging. Guy got sick of blocking for his QB at Alabama? I'm sure part of the reason he came here in the first place is he was sick of being a lead blocker for Jalen Milroe.
- Defensively: Barham at the Jake Ryan job was eye-opening. If you can't roll out against a defense they can front the edge on stretch and the running game is dead too. Replacing Nichols snaps with Barham at edge also gets Rolder/Sullivan on the field. Favorite Barham play: he grabs the RB as he's forcing a give on zone read so he can go back to tackling that guy. Caveat: that's the worst running back we're going to play this season.
- QB run game vs Michigan: isn't any one thing, but biggest issue was Rolder not fitting it. He had an up and down game where he (3/6 first downs, maybe 4 were on him), while Sullivan found the guy to hit, but had a few looks at it first. If you're a senior you can't be ahead of that guy and be making mistakes.
- Nebraska preview: They played Cincy (no pass game) and two teams CMU would trounce. Their run D is permeable: defense plays very small, wants to confuse you, make your RB slow down to find his gaps and blocks, and rally from the secondary. You can really gash them. It's a bad matchup for Nebraska: Michigan's OL is good at ID'ing their blocks and wants to play heavy and hit you quickly in the run game and confuse coverage reads. The 2023 game was a blowout because if you have linemen who can ID their blocks you destroy the basis of their system. Would be a good game to have El-Hadi back; Efobi is probably going to have a rough outing.
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