Michigan Football

Snapshots of Michigan’s Special Teams Domination

By Nick Bodanyi@NickBodanyi Sep 10, 2016, 1:57pm CDT

Not a lot has gone wrong during Michigan’s soiree with UCF. They lead by 30 as the third quarter winds to a close.

The group leading the way has been special teams - you know, those guys everybody forgets to talk about before the game starts. Any tiny amount of concern Michigan fans might have had over replacing one of the nation’s best special teams coaches in John Baxter is already gone; Michigan has Michigan problems. Michigan just reloads.

“They’re kind of Coach Partridge’s and I’s baby together, I guess,” Jay Harbaugh said before the season, shrugging off the height of the challenge. “There were some things with Coach Baxter that were great and that we’ve carried over and other things that kind of we took from other places and things we’ve done in the past.”

“As with anything, it’s always kind of a hodge-podge of different parts of your experience and you kind of piece together whatever you think is best for your specific team and players, so it’s a little bit of everyone.”

‘A little bit of everyone’ describes how Michigan helped set the tone early against UCF. Tyree Kinnel got things started early, managing to blocked two different punts before Wilton Speight even completed a pass.

University of Michigan v University of Central Florida

Chris Wormley got in the action shortly after, blocking a 50-yard field goal by Matthew Wright. He was in on another blocked field goal later in the second quarter.