Jake Butt: “Great win/lot of things we can clean up”

After Michigan’s 51-14 victory over Central Florida, tight end Jake Butt was excited about his teams performance, but also realizes how much better the team can become.

“It’s a great win, but there’s a lot of things we can clean up. There’s so much room to improve. I personally had two drops today and that’s unacceptable. I think I only probably have two in my whole career here and I matched that today. There were some missed assignments by guys, maybe things on special teams we can clean up, things on defense.. that’s great though, let’s make these mistakes now before we’re getting later into the season, let’s make these mistakes now when we’re beating teams and we can clean ‘em up and grow from them.”

Michigan’s mistakes were few and far in between, but because the mistakes weren’t plentiful, when errors were committed they were more noticeable. Butt is as sure-handed of a tight end as there is, so his two dropped passes were surprising to see. Blow out win or not, Butt doesn’t take drops lightly. When asked if he laughed it off, Butt said no.

“I was really pissed off at myself. Both of them were perfect passes, inexcusable, there’s no excuse for that. I was disappointed in myself, the one right before half could have been a big drive starter for us, the other one would have been a big third down conversion. That’s usually where I’m trusted and make a lot of my plays so it hurt me a little bit. Some guys came up to me and said “hey man it’s early in the season, get these mistakes out of you now, you’re not going to have another drop the whole year” so it was cool how guys rallied around me a little bit.“

The critique of himself and the team is good to have, even if the stat-sheet and final score was one sided. There are always areas to improve. Michigan is taking each opponent as seriously as the next.

“We’re treating every week like it’s the National Championship, the Big Ten Championship. That’s been our attitude throughout practice. Every practice is the Big Ten Championship, National Championship. But with that said our opponents are getting tougher every week.”

When it comes to Wilton Speight, Butt is seeing improvement in his demeanor week to week.

“He was calm last week and again this week he was even more calm. Next week I’m sure he’s going to be even more calm. When you have a guy that’s coming in when he’s calm, he’s collected, he’s confident, it kind of flows throughout our entire offense and it makes us feel more confident. The quarterback’s the heart of your offense. And however he plays, however he feels, however he’s acting is how we’re going to act.”

Michigan takes on Colorado at the Big House this Saturday, the best opponent the Wolverines have faced to date. Correcting the errors made against Central Florida will be a big goal heading into the game. It’s good to see even in butt-whoopings that the players can be objectivelt critical of themselves and find things to improve upon. Complacency is a killer in any facet of life, and it doesn’t look like Michigan will stagnate.