J.J. McCarthy’s legs might be key to unlocking Michigan’s offense

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Between sips of Diet Coke at his postgame news conference last Saturday, Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh declared J.J. McCarthy the best quarterback in college football. The Wolverines had just dismantled Minnesota by 42 points for their sixth blowout in six attempts this season, and Harbaugh described his protégé, who’d accounted for three of Michigan’s four offensive touchdowns, as a dawg — D-A-W-G — which he said stood for “Disciplined Athlete With Grit.” A Harbaugh-ism if ever there was one.

Over the next few hours, Harbaugh used his team’s return flight from Minneapolis to watch a triple-overtime thriller between ninth-ranked USC and Arizona that extended into the wee hours of the night. He came away impressed with Trojans’ quarterback Caleb Williams, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner and likely No. 1 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.

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“He’s really good, too,” Harbaugh said with a chuckle at his weekly media appearance two days after returning to Ann Arbor. “I would say they’re both — now you’re in the world of talking about who’s better, Kobe [Bryant] or Michael [Jordan], Peyton Manning [or] Tom Brady. Hey, they’re both good. They’re both really good. They’re both really great. And we still love our guy.”

Harbaugh’s comparison felt equal parts timely and apropos following a weekend in which both quarterbacks reached the end zone with their legs. Every one of Williams’ three rushing touchdowns proved vital in USC’s narrow victory over the Wildcats that kept an undefeated season afloat, and McCarthy chipped in four carries for 17 yards and two scores on a bum ankle in Michigan’s 52-10 pummeling of the Gophers. A year ago, both players supplemented their respective offenses by running for more than 300 yards and at least five touchdowns.

Though rushing contributions from McCarthy are nothing new, Harbaugh and his staff encouraged their quarterback to navigate Michigan’s mindless non-conference schedule by exercising as much caution as possible, to protect himself for the more difficult opponents in the second half of the season. The onset of Big Ten play represented something of an unshackling for McCarthy, who never ran for a touchdown during the Wolverines’ first four games, but who has done so three times over the last two weeks alone. In addition to traditional scrambles, the reincorporation of designed quarterback runs from an offensive brain trust that includes Harbaugh, offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore, run game coordinator Mike Hart and quarterbacks coach Kirk Campbell should accentuate a traditional rushing attack that ranks 26th nationally in yards per carry (5.1) and 38th in yards per game (185.2) during what has been a more modest start than some people expected.

Michigan’s next test will come Saturday against an Indiana defense that ranks 91st nationally against the run by allowing 156.4 yards per game. 

“We understand internally how great of a runner J.J. is,” Campbell said earlier this week. “But we also want to make sure that we’re smart with it, right? We’re going to use him as a runner when need be, but we’re not going to run him into the ground either.”

One of the areas where McCarthy’s athleticism can be particularly effective is in the red zone, a notion underscored in last week’s win over Minnesota. McCarthy scored his first rushing touchdown on a beautifully executed read option play with tailback Donovan Edwards from the Gophers 5-yard line. He pulled the ball from Edwards’ belly, rounded a block from tight end Colston Loveland and broke a tackle in the backfield before turning the corner to power across the goal line, plowing through defensive back Tariq Watson along the way. His second rushing score came on a 7-yard scamper in which he shimmied away from a defender in the open field and then outraced another to the pylon.

Lessons about how and when to absorb contact have been a staple of McCarthy’s tutelage under Harbaugh, Campbell and former quarterbacks coach Matt Weiss, who held the job during the former five-star prospect’s first two seasons in Ann Arbor. They’ve encouraged McCarthy, a former hockey player, to consider things like down and distance, where the Wolverines are on the field and what can reasonably be gained by straining for extra yardage in each particular situation. Both touchdown runs against Minnesota were prime examples of when reward outweighs risk because McCarthy generated points on both occasions. The average length of his 10 career rushing touchdowns is just 8.6 yards, with six of them measuring 5 yards or fewer. 

“And we don’t want to take that out of him, right?” Campbell said. “There’s so many redeeming qualities of J.J., and being a competitor and wanting to fight for every yard is one of them. But when you’re at the goal line, yeah, that’s a great opportunity to go score a touchdown, right? If you’re in the open field, and you’re at the 38-yard line, and you already have a first down, is that a smart time to take a hit? No. So just coaching him through those opportunities and being smart with them.”

The potency of McCarthy’s runs and scrambles makes utilizing them a surefire choice for Michigan’s coaching staff down the stretch, especially against the likes of Penn State and Ohio State later this year. McCarthy is second on the team behind starting tailback Blake Corum with five carries of 10-plus yards, and he ranks third in first downs gained via run with 10 — nearly double the tally of second-string tailback Edwards (six) despite having less than one-fourth the number of attempts. He’s also forcing missed tackles at a rate of one every two attempts that trumps all three of the Wolverines’ primary running backs: one every 3.8 attempts for Kalel Mullings, one every 6.9 attempts for Corum, and one every 7.2 attempts for Edwards.

While there is precious little to criticize when discussing a Michigan offense that ranks 17th in scoring (37.3 points per game), fourth in third-down conversion rate (55.6%) and 15th in red zone touchdown rate (77.8%) — all en route to a 6-0 start — the regressed efficiency from Edwards remains a significant talking point. Edwards carried 140 times for 991 rushing yards and seven touchdowns last season while ascending to the No. 1 tailback role following Corum’s season-ending knee injury. But his numbers are down across the board at the midway point of the year: from 7.1 yards per carry in 2022 to 3.5 in 2023; from 3.71 yards after contact per attempt in 2022 to 2.25 in 2023; from averaging one 10-yard carry every 7.4 attempts in 2022 to one every 12.75 in 2023, according to Pro Football Focus.

“Obviously, it’s not the start he wanted,” Hart said. “But he’s a guy that’s just getting better and better every week, you know? Watching him improve, you know, obviously coming off those injuries last year, he’s getting back to where he needs to be.”

Over the last few weeks, Michigan’s search for a more effective complement to Corum has led the coaching staff to Mullings, a former linebacker who has switched sides of the ball several times since joining the team. He’s rushed 23 times for 147 yards and a touchdown this season and carried twice as often as Edwards did against Minnesota.

Now it’s McCarthy’s turn to join the fray.

“It does tremendous [things] for our downhill runs,” McCarthy said when asked about his efficacy as a runner following Saturday’s win over the Gophers. “Because [opponents] have got to hold me accountable on any sort of QB run or read. It just opens up our offense so much more, especially with what we want to do.”

Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him on Twitter at @Michael_Cohen13.