Michigan Football: 3 takeaways from big road win at Wisconsin

Early on, the Wisconsin versus Michigan football game looked like it might be a 0-0 defensive battle for four quarters. And then Cade McNamara and the Wolverines used some trickeration to score the first touchdown, breaking the scoreless effort.

The Wolverines would extend their lead to 10-0 before the Badgers and Graham Mertz finally showed signs of life with 10 quick points before the half to make it a manageable 13-10 game.

When Mertz went down with an injury in the third quarter, however, the game seemed to be pretty much sewn up as the Wolverines added a touchdown to go up 20-10. A 10-point lead was insurmountable in a defensive battle like this one as the Wolverines improved to 5-0.

What did we learn from the Wolverines’ big road win?

3. Run game is slumping

For a second straight game, the Michigan run game fell flat. Against Rutgers last weekend, Michigan accounted for just over 100 yards and averaged just 2.9 per carry, and against the Badgers, things weren’t much better.

In fact, the Wolverines had just 112 yards on 44 carries, averaging just 2.5 yards per carry. Hassan Haskins and Blake Corum combined for 93 yards on 34 carries which isn’t going to cut it against better teams.

Is there a reason to be concerned? Not yet, especially since Wisconsin has one of the best defenses in the Big Ten but the road-graders up front need to be able to win some battles against top defenses. They’ve shown this season that they can dominate, but they need to do that against teams like Rutgers and Wisconsin.

The run game is slumping a bit, but I’m sure that’ll be corrected soon.