One of the hottest Michigan football rumors—aside from the future of coach Jim Harbaugh, of course—is more of a mystery. It’s more troubling when that mystery is your star quarterback and team MVP. However, there is anxiety over Michigan quarterback JJ McCarthy’s late-season collapse ahead of the Rose Bowl battle versus Alabama in the NCAA football playoffs.
And, this week in The Athletic, unidentified Big Ten coaches gave CFB reporter Bruce Feldman an earful on the Wolverines’ trembling quarterback. McCarthy was outstanding in the first nine games of the season, throwing for 18 touchdowns and three interceptions (all of which came in the victory over Bowling Green).
In those nine games, he averaged 237 yards passing. But look at JJ McCarthy’s numbers since then: 124 yards per game and one touchdown pass. He hasn’t been the same since. And Jim Harbaugh’s colleagues didn’t hold back.
“I’m not sure what’s making him hesitant and less decisive than he was earlier,” a Big Ten head coach who played Michigan said. “He seems out of sync lately.”
One of the oddities, or perhaps not so strange, of McCarthy’s late-season collapse is that it corresponded with the departure of Conor Stalions, the assistant at the centre of the Wolverines’ sign-stealing “scandal.” McCarthy’s last big game was against Purdue on November 4, and the Stalions had left the day before.
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