Spring ball means assimilating freshmen and transfers to a team’s ways, getting an idea of personnel on both sides of the ball and just simply getting out there and shaking off the rust after months without live action. For the Michigan football team, it also means establishing — really, re-establishing — the team-centric mindset that’s defined the program for decades.
It starts from the top, and it starts with a message that coach Sherrone Moore delivered to the players on the very first day of spring practices.
“Coach Moore has done a very great job of just rallying Team 146 under a motto: ‘team over me,’ ” senior linebacker Ernest Hausmann said Wednesday. “Developing that standard, (that) mentality upon everybody here, new guys, transfers and returning players understand that every single thing that we’re going to do is with a ‘team over me’ mindset. That right there is going to be a really big difference.”
That ‘team over me’ mentality is everywhere you look in the Wolverines’ program, from the letters plastered in the stadium tunnel reading ‘The TEAM, The TEAM, The TEAM,’ to Michigan’s practice gear which features the word ‘TEAM’ intentionally above the word ‘ME.’ It’s the brand, the main message — and for the Wolverines, it’s what matters most.
Even when asked about his personal goals, Hausmann diverted — choosing to focus on everyone but himself.
“I like to keep that stuff to myself,” Hausmann said. “As leader of this unit, this whole team, the goals as a whole unit are the only things that matter. All I’m focused on is getting the team ready to go for game one.”
It’s a mentality that, coming off of a year without nearly as many stars as the one before it, may be even more crucial this season given the buzz a certain freshman quarterback is bound to attract. Most of that is out of Michigan’s control. What the Wolverines can control — and what they decidedly are controlling from the start of spring ball — is the mentality with which the team plays.
But Bryce Underwood, the former high-school phenom who’s drawn a massive amount of attention since his commitment, has already adopted that mentality.
“He’s a team-first guy,” offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey said Monday. “If you ask the older guys on our team right now, I think they would tell you that they love his approach . Really, that whole room I’ve got in there right now, they’re all the same way, they’re all wired that way, or (they) probably wouldn’t be at Michigan.”
Regardless of position, the ‘team over me’ mindset is one that translates to every player, from Underwood to Hausmann. The same goes for TJ Guy, the senior edge rusher who, after a strong junior year totaling 32 total tackles and 5.5 sacks as a rotational player, claims he isn’t too concerned about his anticipated starting role.
“I’m not really thinking too much personally about how my role is going to change,” Guy said. “More about the impact I have on my teammates, my young teammates, my new teammates, and being a good example for them.”
Moore hopes that type of selflessness will spread across his team, pushing everyone to be better as a result. When the ‘team over me’ mentality extends to the field, it looks like a cohesive defense, one that moves a singular unit on the line and contorts and constricts together in coverage. It looks like an offensive line worthy of the Joe Moore Award, or the quarterback zipping passes to his receivers without hesitation.
None of that can happen without every single player in tune. By emphasizing a ‘team over me’ mindset on day one, Moore is making sure the Wolverines are on the same page.
