“At the end of the day it’s just not throwing it to the other team,” McCarthy said.
The signal caller’s words were apt. His blunt delivery was even more telling. It may have transpired nearly a season ago, but even as No. 1 Michigan football players repeated all year that the devastating Fiesta Bowl loss was simply burned tape headed into the 2023 season, a shadow still lingered.
Amid all the fanfare of heroics and heartbreaks, on a Saturday in Glendale, Arizona, as the clock ticked down on the 2022 calendar year, and the Wolverines’ season, McCarthy threw two catastrophic pick-sixes.
And he hasn’t forgotten.
“One of the worst things you can do as a quarterback,” McCarthy affirmed. “Just staying poised, calm and collected no matter what happens, whether it’s a tip ball or anything like that, just going out there and being very (ready) to play.”
It seems like a surface-level problem to acknowledge. McCarthy, obviously, knows better than to throw interceptions, let alone the ones that generate six points for the other team in one play. But while the signal caller’s errors may have put players, coaches and fans alike through the five stages of grief, in football, the last stage isn’t acceptance — it’s solutions.
“I felt like we fell victim to paralysis by overanalysis and just getting over-detailed with too many things and overthinking things” McCarthy said. “I feel like this first couple of weeks we (have been) easing into things and it’s been fresh every single day.”
Staying fresh mentally may be easier said than done, but Michigan will attempt it nonetheless. Physically though, after a full week off from practice following the Big Ten Championship, McCarthy and the Wolverines have the rare opportunity to take a breather and rejuvenate. Finally past the seemingly endless churning of a week-to-week season, Michigan has, at most, two games to go — and over a month to actually get there.
With a refreshed and level head, McCarthy looks to approach his remembrance of bowl games past in a more analytical light. Though he only saw garbage-time action against Georgia, he emphasized that both games ended with the “same outcome.”
Now though, fully healthy after a banged up second half of 2023 and with another opportunity, McCarthy wants to leave a positive legacy and scrub the record on 2021 and 2022.
For McCarthy, a matchup against Alabama will pose a formidable challenge, yet also a rich opportunity. After a blistering first eight games of the season, capped off by a four-touchdown thrashing of Michigan State, the quarterback vaulted himself into Heisman contention on the back of a seemingly new-and-improved arm.
Thus far though, the 2023 season has gone out with more of a whimper than a bang. McCarthy has thrown for only one touchdown in his last five games, In his last four contests, he’s averaged just 124 yards passing. It’s a stark departure from the gunslinger that threw for 343 yards and two touchdowns while rushing for 52 yards and another score in last year’s CFP semifinal.
He remembers that, too.
“ ‘(Do) you want to live with the pain of discipline or the pain of regret?’ And I feel like last year, there was a lot of regret,” McCarthy said. “I’ve just made sure and worked exhaustively this offseason to make sure that we don’t have that regret this year.”
Playing in a CFP semifinal for the third year in a row, McCarthy and Michigan have a fresh slate to rewrite a legacy of wrongs. What ends up transpiring though, is another story. For better or worse though, whether McCarthy plays his way into a Wolverines’ win or loss, he’ll inevitably remember that too.
The question is why he’ll have to remember it.
