The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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more through the 2014 season. "He's going to be a more complete player," Lewan said. "The offensive line is going to have more experience next year. All those guys getting those starts is going to start paying off. "He's going to have more time in the pocket. You give that guy time in the pocket, he's going to pick apart defenses. That's what he does. He's good at that." As Michigan grows more consistent and well-rounded offensively, Gardner will do more by doing less, Borges observed. He noted that when a team isn't faring well, the quarterback feels obligated to produce more, sometimes crossing the line of what he should try. The issue gets compounded with a quarterback who can both run and throw, Borges explained. And it occurs across the board with those called upon to run the show. "It happens even with guys who don't run," Borges said. "They'll try to make tighter throws, under the guise of, 'We're not moving the ball. We've got to do something.' That's not always a good idea. "What he did do, where he really grew, was that he understood better how to keep the ball away from the other team. Early on, we were just throwing too many interceptions. He knows that. Everybody knows that." The numbers bear it out. Gardner threw seven interceptions in Michigan's first four games, nine in the opening six. In the last six, he threw just one. "As the season wore on, that kind of went away," Borges said. "That part of his game grew, big-time." Picks To Non-Moving Sticks Unfortunately for the Wolverines, about the same time Gardner stopped throwing it to the other team, Michigan stopped converting third-down situations with regularity. Over the first half of the regular season, the Wolverines converted third downs at a 47-percent clip, good for 34th in the nation. That wasn't far off from 2012, when they were No. 6 in the country with a third-down conversion rate of 50.3. In 2011, they were No. 16, at 47.0. In the second half of the season, though, U-M simply stopped moving the chains. The Wolverines plummeted to No. 72 in the nation in thirddown conversions, dropping to 39.4 percent overall, with forgettable efforts like 2-of-13 at Michigan State, 3-of-15 against Nebraska, 2-of-18 in a win at Northwestern, and 4-of-14 at Iowa. "Our turnovers went down, but our sacks went up," Borges said. "There are effects to both of those. Turnovers are terrible. They're the worst. You don't want to do that, because the other team plays on the short field. "When you get sacked, or you get tackles for loss, you deal with so many bad down-and-distances. The thing that really got killed was our third-down percentage. It just completely died. We couldn't get a thirddown conversion. A lot of that was because of bad down-and-distance." Michigan's offense lacked "syn-