Washington’s Struggles Continue In 31-10 Loss At Michigan

More than anything else, the Washington Huskies just looked flat-out disappointing in their Saturday night loss against the Michigan Wolverines.

As if last weeks shocking loss against Montana wasn’t ugly enough, Husky fans once again were forced to shield their eyes in horror as the UW offense did a balancing act between mediocrity and average, finishing the game with just 10 points and 7 of them coming in the final quarter while down 24-3.

On the opening kickoff, Michigan kicked the ball deep and it sailed over the head of former Wolverine Giles Jackson who was then met with some chatter from his former teammates which fired up over 108,000 fans as the Husky offense took the field.

Shortly after redshirt freshmen quarterback Dylan Morris went trotting onto the field for the opening play, he was swarmed by deafening cheers due to a delay of game penalty against the Huskies. Suddenly, all of those football-induced headaches that were felt last week by UW supporters came roaring back. Washington was forced to punt but a pass breakup by sophomore defensive back Kyler Gordon helped get Michigan off the field quickly and back into the hands of Morris and the offense.

The two teams then exchanged punts again before ran 5 plays and picked up 20 yards then blasted in a 52-yard field goal to give them the early 3-0 lead. Then after another exchange of stalling offenses, Michigan ran a fake punt on 4th and 1 with success. What followed was a disaster for the Huskies as runningback Blake Corum torched them for a 67-yard touchdown and sent the Big House into a frenzy.

Corum was a consistent issue for the Huskies along with Hassan Haskins. Corum finished the night as the leading rusher with 171 yards on 21 carries with 3 scores while Haskins had 27 carries for 155 yards and a touchdown. In total, Michigan gutted out 343 yards on the ground which was a pivotal reason why they had so much control throughout the night.

UW followed up the UM touchdown by putting together their best drive of the half which ended in pure confusion after being stifled when running the ball 3rd and 5 then elected to run the ball again on 4th and 4 at the Michigan 31 yard line. After Washington’s fourth-down failure, both teams exchanged empty drives while UW fans were stuck trying to make sense of the back-to-back run plays.

When halftime arrived, the Wolverines led 10-0 as frustrations about the Huskies’ lack of creativeness on the offense end began to be expressed throughout social media.

Then four minutes after running out of the locker room for the second half, Washington was down 17-0 after Michigan ran the ball every down on an 8 play, 73-yard drive which punctuated their dominance.

UW followed up the Michigan scoring drive with one of their own as they went 72 yards in 15 plays which allowed Peyton Henry to drill a 28-yarder to trim the Wolverine lead to 17-3, but Michigan answered by finding the end-zone again and pushing the lead to 24-3.

Despite the Wolverines adding points, Morris and the offense began to look confident and they executed a 5 play, 75-yard drive which went into the books after a 22-yard strike from Morris to junior wide receiver Terrell Bynum. The Huskies’ momentum was slowly beginning to build up as they finally decided to throw the ball downfield and see if their skill players could go make a play.

The Husky defense then rolled up their sleeves and got off the field in just three plays after the Michigan drive picked up -2 yards. Suddenly, Washington had a shot at turning the game around but was unable to after turning it over on downs and then giving up another touchdown that’d act as a dagger into their comeback hopes. Michigan’s score gave them a 31-10 lead which would hold until the end of the night and plummet UW’s record to 0-2.

The opening two weeks of the season has been nightmarish for the Huskies as they’ve now been stunned by Montana and pummeled by Michigan, there are countless amounts of dots that must be connected if they are going to compete for a conference championship but for now, the focus should simply be preparing for Arkansas State because that would be the loss that officially causes the sky to fall in Seattle.

UW will battle that Arkansas State team and seek out their first win next Saturday at 1:15 P.M. PST.