The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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THE WOLVERINE 2020 FOOTBALL PREVIEW ■ 53 QUARTERBACKS All would have benefited from spring football, in various ways. That's all water under the bridge now, Gattis offered. "It's challenging," he said. "You look at the quarterback position, some- times people want to know who's going to be the starter, who is going to be the captain. We've encouraged all of those guys, they're all leaders. "We missed the timing, we missed the competitive reps, we missed the good on good. But we'll pick back up. We're going through some- thing that everybody else is going through." Gattis might not have drawn a distinction between the top three quarterbacks even if Michigan had conducted spring practice as usual. There is always a sensitivity when that particular job changes hands. The lack of spring football made it easy, even logical, to not sepa- rate the contestants. Gattis, in a Zoom meeting with reporters, declined to even say what he likes about each of them. He made sure to underscore this, though — nobody leads anybody. "We're excited about the guys we've got on our roster," the second- year Michigan offensive coordinator said. "We've got to solve that ques- tion later on down the road, when we get an opportunity to. No one has a leg up. It's not based on depth chart last year, it's not based on skill set this year." The last two seasons, McCaffrey demonstrated both his strengths and his vulnerability. Both years, he has been the first man off the bench to replace Patterson, sometimes with no appreciable decline in the offense. Both years, McCaffrey sustained a significant injury. In 2018, he opened the season and the eyes of onlookers by demonstrat- ing a polished calm when coming in at Notre Dame. He completed 4 of 6 passes for 22 yards, ran the ball three times for 10 yards and seemed to stamp himself as the heir apparent. He fired an 18-yard touchdown pass against Western Michigan, found Ronnie Bell for a 56-yard TD toss and broke off a 44-yard run against Wiscon- sin. He broke something else while running for 14 yards against Penn State — his collarbone. That ended McCaffrey's season, but he worked his way back into action last year, in the same role. He rushed for 42 yards, including a touchdown, in the season opener against Middle Tennessee State. He threw for 40 yards and rushed for 21 in relief at Wisconsin's Camp Randall Stadium. The absence of a key baseball skill — on- time sliding — and a vicious, head-hunting hit by a Wisconsin defensive back cost him the next four games with a mild concussion. He returned for Michigan's home rout of Notre Dame, firing a 26-yard touchdown strike to then-freshman wideout Mike Sainristil. McCaffrey competed the rest of the season, raising his two-year totals to 13 game appearances, 18-of-35 pass- ing (51.4 percent) for 242 yards with three touch- downs, and 13 rushing attempts for 166 yards and two scores. Those who lean toward McCaffrey in any McCaffrey-Milton discussion cite his un- deniable experience edge. Those who opt for the latter point out that Milton's size, Redshirt junior Dylan McCaffrey has connected on 18 of 35 throws for 242 yards with three touchdowns, plus run for 166 yards and two scores, in 13 games over the past two seasons. PHOTO BY PER KJELDSEN