MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — It was fun while it lasted. Even if it was a bit awkward, at times.
But as Michigan shifts its attention to next season following a 34-11 loss to Georgia in the College Football Playoff semifinals, things are bound to get more uncomfortable.
Starting with the debate over who'll start at quarterback for the Wolverines in 2022, a question that head coach Jim Harbaugh felt obliged to intercept on New Year's Eve during his team's Orange Bowl postgame press conference.
"Like I said, we've got two great quarterbacks," Harbaugh said. "We make no apology for that."
Nor should he, though with apologies to Michigan's offensive line, that was one of the better blitz pickups we saw all night from the Wolverines, with Cade McNamara sitting just to Harbaugh's right at the podium shortly after getting benched in favor of freshman J.J. McCarthy in the second half of Friday's loss.
Well, not quite benched, exactly. Harbaugh insisted he'd made the move almost as a means of self-preservation for the Wolverines, after McNamara, who'd only been sacked seven times all season, was dropped four times on 25 dropbacks and took several more hits trying to escape Georgia's dominant defensive front and blitzing linebackers.
"I felt we just weren't — the protection just wasn't as good as it needed to be," Harbaugh later explained. "J.J. gave us more of a chance to escape it, avoid it and run."
Fair enough, but there'll be no avoiding — or escaping — what comes next, and Harbaugh and his quarterbacks surely know it. Everyone does, frankly. And after an SEC powerhouse had turned another CFP semifinal into a rout Friday night, it was about all the ABC broadcast crew had to talk about besides looking ahead to a Georgia-Alabama rematch next week in Indianapolis.
The battle looms
Can McNamara really hold on to the starting job next season the way he did this fall in leading Michigan to its first Big Ten title since 2004? Or will it be time, as most of us expect, for McCarthy — the promising five-star recruit with all that tantalizing athletic potential — to take command? And however that battle shapes up and shakes out, in this new age of free agency with the transfer portal in college football, will both decide to stick around?
"We asked Josh Gattis about that and he's like, 'I'm enjoying it right now. It works for us right now,' " analyst Kirk Herbstreit said during Friday's game. "But looking down the road, it'll be a heck of a battle between those two."
That said, if it was an uphill battle for McCarthy in 2021, as an 18-year-old true freshman getting his feet wet as a college quarterback, it should be a much more even playing field this spring. One that his talent could easily tilt as Michigan tries to run it back as Big Ten champs, presumably with a more dynamic offense.
"Because with his skill set, it opens up the playbook so much more," Herbstreit added. "It's nothing against Cade McNamara. Anybody's who has watched Michigan this year has to respect the job he has done as a leader and being efficient and being a complement to their run game. He has always seemed to make the right decision with the passing game. So it's great. But with McCarthy, you just can't deny his ability as a guy that can run and throw."
Those who stuck around to watch the second half of Friday's game got another extended look at that ability. And though neither quarterback finished with impressive passing numbers — McNamara was 11-of-19 passing for 106 yards and a pair of interceptions while McCarthy went 7-of-17 passing for 131 yards and Michigan's lone touchdown — it wasn't hard to envision some of those possibilities Herbstreit was talking about.
McCarthy scrambled several times to elude a pass rush that no longer had to worry about Michigan's running game, finishing with 23 yards on five carries. He also showed off that well-publicized arm talent, particularly on a third-down rope to Erick All that split three Georgia defenders.
We've seen glimpses of it all season, really, even as Harbaugh smartly stuck with McNamara as the starter through spring ball and into the fall. And as McNamara, who often draws comparisons to his head coach because of his feisty competitiveness, proved him right by steering Michigan's offense with a steady hand and savvy head.
Natural leader
For all the flak McNamara has taken this season, particularly back in September when Harbaugh and Gattis called games in which the passing attack felt like an afterthought, he never really flinched.
And while we only got a small sample of some of the freshman mistakes McCarthy was making on the practice field — those fumbles in the Michigan State game, most notably — we saw countless examples of why McCarthy had earned the coaches' trust. Managing games, making all the right pre-snap reads, and beating blitzes time and again.
Yet at the same time, we also saw his limitations, just as we did in the Orange Bowl, with passes batted down at the line of scrimmage and the pocket collapsing in on him. And as impressive as Michigan's ground game was this season, you don't have to imagine how much better it might be with McCarthy giving opposing defenses another run-pass conflict with his option ability. You don't have to because the coaching staff showed you as much with the way they shuttled the freshman in and out of the game for a play or two at a time. They knew what was missing, and they knew where they couldn't find it.
The question going forward is how much better prepared McCarthy will be to do it from start to finish with a full year under his belt and an offense that could be tailor-made for him. With Donovan Edwards and Blake Corum in the backfield and a deep receiving corps coming back, it'll be less of the ground and pound we saw with Hassan Haskins carrying the load this season.
Yet if we've learned anything about McNamara this season, it's that he won't back down from a challenge, nor will he be shy about protecting his turf. At the same time, though, it's pretty clear McCarthy is a true-Blue recruit who's not going anywhere, and he's already a leader among the Wolverines' young corps. He was the one who led those late-night freshman workouts on Michigan's indoor practice field when the team returned to Ann Arbor from road trips this fall. And he's the one everyone in Schembechler Hall expects to be the starter at some point, though McNamara — a redshirt sophomore this season — technically still has three years of eligibility remaining.
Obviously, McCarthy will have to learn to take something off his fastball in certain situations. He'll need to learn to better protect himself — and the football — when he's scrambling out of the pocket, too. Same goes for protecting his receivers on occasion, as we saw a few times in the second half against Georgia. Like that wheel route he threw to Corum only to see him get de-cleated by the Bulldogs' Chaz Chambliss, who got ejected for targeting on the hit.
But he'll also need to keep doing what he was doing in brief cameos as a freshman. Including at the end of Friday's loss, when on the very next play after Corum got lit up, McCarthy dropped back, pump faked to help sell Andrel Anthony's double move on the Georgia sideline and then lofted a 35-yard touchdown pass to give the Wolverines one last highlight to cap a season full of them.
We should expect to see more of that in 2022. But how much, and how soon? In college football, it's never too soon to wonder.
