The No. 18 Michigan Wolverines (7-2) hit the road for a Big Ten clash against the Northwestern Wildcats (5-4) on Saturday, November 15, 2025 at Wrigley Field.
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Stats to know
- Michigan has averaged 9.0 more points scored this season (28.1) than Northwestern has allowed (19.1).
- Northwestern’s defense has surrendered an average of 324.0 yards per game so far this season, 85.4 yards fewer than the 409.4-yard average from Michigan’s offense.
- Northwestern averages 4.7 more points per game (21.9) than Michigan gives up (17.2).
- Northwestern racks up 47.3 more yards per game (351.3) than Michigan gives up (304.0).
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Michigan football has emerged from its second bye week and entered the closing stretch of the regular season. The first of three games that will determine the Wolverines’ fate is a clash with Northwestern on Saturday at Wrigley Field.U-M coach Sherrone Moore spoke with the media on Monday to preview the Wildcats. He offered his scouting report of an improved Northwestern team, spoke about what Michigan focused on during its bye, and provided injury updates to key players. Here’s everything he said:
Sherrone Moore on what stood out about Michigan’s bye week:
Getting guys healthy. That was the number one goal. We want to make sure we got guys healthy.
Obviously, get work in, do things to get us better, but trying to get guys back. We’ll see what their status is as we go through the week, but feel good about it. Feel good about where Cole is. We’ll see where they are, we’ll see where Jimmy is, we’ll see where Jaishawn is. But feel like we’re in a positive place with all of them.
Feel like we’ll just keep getting more guys healthy. And then the guys that were playing, we’re getting into game 10 of the season, everybody’s got something — some bruise, nick, something. So keep those guys healthy, and getting their bodies back was important for us.
On the earliest RB Justice Haynes could return:
That’s week to week. We’ll see.
On TE Hogan Hansen and S Rod Moore’s status:
Yeah, same. Hogan feels like could be this week, could be next week, but we’ll take it day-by-day on Hogan. And same thing with Rod.
On discussing redshirts with players and how that has changed in the NIL era:
The other piece of that is how we’ve recruited and how well we think we’ve recruited and the guys we’ve brought in, some of these guys might not be here for five years. I think there’s some talent pieces that when you recruit high-level players and you bring in high-level players that they might not be here for five years, where the old-school thought is you come in and you develop them — and we still want to do that, and there might be some guys that we have to do that with, and they’re not ready.
But those talks are real. We have them with everybody individually, and I’ve had them already with some guys. ‘Should I redshirt? I want a redshirt,’ all those. It’s an individual basis. So we’ll have those, and we’re very open and honest with them.
On his previous comments that Jordan Marshall is built for November football:
One, he’s from that state that we all know of. He was the Ohio State Player of the Year, so he’s played in this type of weather, been through it. But it’s his mentality. It’s his mentality and how he runs. He’s a physical runner.
And you can see it from the first game he ever played when he played down there in the rain in Tampa. And he just got better with more carries and more carries. And how he’s built, how he works, how he studies the game, he’s a back that in November he’s going to thrive. We’re just excited for him, excited to see what he continues to do.
But also excited for the other guys in the room and let them get their opportunity as well because he can’t carry the ball 40 times a game. We want to limit those carries as much as we can, but we’re going to allow him to be who he is.
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On playing Northwestern out of a bye for a second straight season and how this compares to last year:
It feels a little bit the same but not, because we’re at a different place. We’re a different place as far as what we were playing for. Felt really proud of the team coming off that bye week last year because they played at a really high level throughout the rest of the year, and the pride that we took in the position we were in.
But it’s different now. We’re playing for a lot more. And the urgency is at an all-time high in the program. The urgency with me, with the coaches, with the players is at an all-time high to make sure that we’re prepared.
Because when the opportunity comes, it’s too late to prepare, right? You’ve got to go attack it right now, and I feel like our guys are doing that. I feel like the bye weeks are just different than they were last year. This bye week and last year’s bye week is different, but hopefully the outcomes are the same.
On Michigan being 7-2 and having its season goals still attainable:
A lot of juice. A lot of juice. They are chomping [sic] at the bit. They’re going to be chomping at the bit to go out to practice today. They’ve been chomping at the bit yesterday when they came in the building. And we’re chomping at the bit, coaches are. The energy is high, the juice is high, the urgency is high, and we’re going to keep it that way.
On what he’s seen from TJ Metcalf’s development and what he needs to continue to work on:
Physicality. Continue to see that. The physicality piece is huge. He’s a great tackler in space, vocal leader.
Work on the same thing everybody else is trying to work on: Being consistent in everything. But he’s done a great job for what we’ve asked him to do in these situations, and he keeps doing it.
On TJ and Tevis Metcalf off the field and whether they’re all about football:
They are. They’ve got great personalities, but they’re quiet kids. They don’t say too much unless you ask them some questions or you get around them.
They’re always together. A little less together now because they’ve got class. So some guy might be in this class, might be in this class. They might have the same class. But they’re great kids to be around, very quiet, very humble.
On younger Michigan players who made strides during the bye week opportunity scrimmages and who could emerge down the stretch run:
Last year, we took that chance to see how many more young players we can get. We’ve got six freshmen starting on offense, playing seven or eight. We’ve got freshmen starting all over. So you kind of already know which freshmen are going to play, and you already know which guys have had an opportunity. So it was just sharpening their toolbox and sharpening their skills to see who’s going to help us more and more consistently throughout the year.
On the pros and cons of QB Bryce Underwood taking snaps from under center compared to in the shotgun:
Under center and pistol are the same, except it’s three yards of difference, right, because you’re going to turn your back to the defense on a play-action pass or a naked on both of those. We’re working both. We’re working all of them.
The pros in under center are that you’re not giving your tell from the defense from a pass-run standpoint, per se, based on where the back location is, because the back location is the same. When it’s a play-action pass, you’ve got to get the depth in the pocket, and you’re going to have your back to the defense, but that’s also a con because then you turn your back to the defense for a longer amount of time. There’s pros and cons for everything, but we’re doing a good job of self-scouting and making sure we’ve got a good balance of both.
On Bryce Underwood’s bye week and attitude:
His attitude is great. His attitude is outstanding. He was already in here this morning. He’s locked in. He’s ready to go. Belief in the coaches and players are great. We all believe in him. He believes in us. He believes in himself, and we’re just going to continue to roll.
On his message to the team ahead of three games that will determine their fate:
Win today. If they’ve watched the film, they know that we’re playing a really good team. You don’t got to make anything up. You don’t got to say anything. This team’s a really good football team. They’re well coached. They’re tough. They’re physical. They don’t really beat themselves. They play at a high level. They play with great intensity. They’re well coached, again, but they execute in all three phases.
It’s going to be a great challenge for our team, and it’s going to be a physical battle. Up front, their O-line is really good. They play well together. Their D-line plays physical. Guys get open. They’ve got good skill players. Quarterback does a good job distributing the ball. Their running back is as good as we’ve seen. We know it’s going to be a great challenge. We can’t look ahead to anybody else.
On his thoughts about playing at Wrigley Field:
I think it’s awesome. It’s a historic venue. We’re really excited about going there. But, again, it’s just the place we’re playing. We can’t really worry about that too much. We talked about it and showed them what it looks like. But we’ve got to go play football on a blade of grass.
On what Bryce Underwood worked on during the bye week:
In general, spacing, timing. It wasn’t just Bryce. A passing game is a collective, holistic thing. It’s not just the quarterback and his feet and what he’s doing, but it’s also the receivers, the tight ends, the skill players, the protection. All those things, cleaning up all those little things to make the whole thing work is really what we worked on.
On OL Evan Link’s recovery:
It’s going well. We’ll see what he looks like. I don’t know what the timetable is exactly, week-to-week, what it looks like. I know he’s walking around, moving around. We’ll see how he goes as we go through the weeks.
On whether he’s be involved in Michigan’s response to the Big Ten’s outside equity negations:
Yeah, I’ll be involved. But right now, I’ve got to focus on this game and this team. There’s a lot of other people in the university that can handle those conversations for right now. They want me to focus on this. I’m going to just keep focusing on this game, and this is the most important game of the year, so I’ve got to go attack this one.
On the feedback he’s received about the proposed Germany game, which will now be played at the Big House:
Mixed. It was both. Some people, ‘Oh, wish we could have went to Germany.’ ‘Glad we’re not going to Germany because now we’ve got eight home games.’
So it’s either way. Some of our players like to fly. Some of them don’t like to fly. It wasn’t really a big deal in the building, especially. Players just play where they want to play. Excited to be back in the home stadium for that eighth game.
On where RB Jasper Parker is in his development:
He’s in a great place. Keeps getting better and better. Him and Bryson Kuzdzal, you’ll see both those guys on Saturday. Both of those guys will get a chance to carry the ball and protect and do different things because you’ve got to keep it balanced. You can’t just have them in there and run the ball. They’re in there, they just scream out run. They’ll both be in there to do a couple things to help take the load off of Jordan.
They’ve done a really good job throughout the week. Coach Alford and Coach Jackson do a great job of coaching them. They coach them hard. They push them. So we’ll see more of them as we go through the week.
On RB Bryson Kuzdzal’s running style:
He’s probably the second fastest behind Justice, if not close to his speed. He’s a fast dude, man. I would love to see him get out in open space and see what happens, see if anybody can catch him, because I don’t know if they will. He hit some of those runs in the last game. I think he only had like four or something carries, but he hit them hard. He hit them physical. Ran as physical as we’ve seen him run.
I was really proud of how he ran in that game, especially when you know it’s a run and you’ve got to stop the run. And he ran downhill. He ran fast. He ran physical. And he can make people miss. So it’ll be interesting to watch him in the game because it’s always different in practice to see guys execute, but I was really proud of how he played.
On his previous comments about calling Nick Saban for mentorship:
Oh yeah. I try to call him probably every two months. When you call Coach Saban, sometimes, it’s like you don’t know if he really wants to talk to you. But he does. Once he starts talking, it’s outstanding. And why not take advice from somebody who you consider probably the GOAT of college football?
I try to call some of the mentors, some of the people that I look up to throughout months, throughout weeks. I talked to Jim [Harbaugh] last week. Congrats to him on the win last night. I know he was happy about that. Just getting different advice, different things. We were talking about the travel, but also just talking about, in general, as a football program, things that he looked at, things that he tried to change or not change, and tried to adjust throughout the year.
I’d be a fool not to seek the advice of somebody like Nick Saban if I could.
On whether he’s a baseball fan in context of the Wrigley Field game:
I’m not a huge baseball fan. No offense to the sport. I played Little League baseball — All-Star, by the way. And then I stopped. Wasn’t good enough after that. Didn’t think I was going to be good enough, and didn’t want the time with the travel and all that. But I’ve got a lot of respect for baseball players.
The venue will be cool. The venue will be awesome to play in. Logistically, I know the locker room is a little different. And the walk, I guess, is a little bit like Rutgers, where you’ve got to walk up a ramp and go a little farther. That will be something we have to handle, but that’s not going to be a big deal for us.
On what stands out about an improved Northwestern team:
You start on offense: Stone, the quarterback, he does a good job. He was a transfer from SMU. He’s played a lot of football. Was highly touted out of high school. He played in Dallas. Does a good job distributing the ball to those receivers.
They’ve got the transfer [Griffin Wilde] from South Dakota. I think South Dakota State. He’s a really good player. And up front, I’m just telling you: Their O-line works really, really well together. They’re big, they’re physical, and they’re all older. They’re grads and one redshirt freshman. So they all play physical. They all play well together. And that back, number five, man, he’s good. He’s a really good player. He’s got great vision, great speed.
Defensively, they just do a good job rallying to the football. They play great three layers of football. The front plays good together with the linebackers and the back end. And they just don’t make mistakes. You’ve got to execute at a high level to be able to go beat this team. And that’s the goal. That’s what we’ve got to go do. They do a good job playing together.
On defending Northwestern’s long, methodical drives:
I don’t want them to have any plays. I want them to have zero plays. Zero. [laughs]
understand that’s the type of offense that they are. And we’ve just got to be physical. The D-line’s been challenged. The linebackers have been challenged. Everybody understands what type of game it’s going to be. And we’ve got to match the physicality and really oversee that.
On whether he’s spoken to programs that have played at Wrigley about what to expect:
No. I mean, I’ve had some conversations, but don’t want to make that too much of a big deal. The biggest thing will be the wind. We’ll be seeing how the wind is in Chicago and what way that’s traveling, which way that’s going, because that’ll alter and change what you do a little bit from how you attack their defense and offensively what they’re going to do. That’s the thing we’re going to have to definitely be, not concerned about, but have an eye for.
On playing in a recruiting hotbed and in front of Michigan fans in Chicago:
I think it’s going to be great. Being in Chicago, I spent a lot of time — even when I was at Central, that was my main area. I spent. I stayed in the north side all the way down to the south side of Chicago. I would spend weeks and weeks in Chicago and Illinois, and it’s going to be cool to be there.
I hope we’ve got a lot of fans there. It’ll be great to have the great support from the Michigan nation, Michigan fans at Wrigley Field. It’ll be fun.
On CB Zeke Berry’s leadership in a young defensive back room:
It’s been outstanding. Zeke has been great. Zeke has played really good these past couple games as well, and his leadership has definitely taken over.
Him, Jyaire. Another guy that people don’t really talk about is Caleb Anderson. He’s an older guy that’s played a lot of football, and a lot of guys lean on him, along with Rod, obviously, because he’s played so much football. But Zeke has done such a great job, and he’s playing at a really high level for us.
On what urgency ‘at an all-time high’ looks like behind the scenes
I can’t tell you that! I mean, the guys are on it. They’re on it. They’re on P’s and Q’s of everything they do — meetings, practice, how they tie their shoes, how the locker room looks. Every detail they want to make sure it’s right, and we want to make sure it’s right, because those are the things that help you win the game. It’s the how. It’s not the what; it’s the how. We’ve got to continue to emphasize that.
That was the message yesterday in the team meeting. That was the message as we’ve gone through practice. It wasn’t as physical a practice yesterday on purpose, but the speed was what we wanted to be, and we’ll ramp it up as we go through the week.
On WR Donaven McCulley and TE Marlin Klein’s statuses for the Northwestern game:
They’ll both be good.
On what Michigan stressed with special teams during the bye week:
Same thing: Get back to the basics, tackling in space, running down, being physical, controlling your lanes, because that’s what it’s all about, and then making great decisions in the return game. Those will be the things that we really attacked.
On his connection with Nick Saban:
Coach Poggi is obviously really close with him. And one day I was like, ‘I’d love to get in touch with him.’ It was after the Rose Bowl, so he really didn’t want to talk to me after that.
But we connected that February, I think, when I first got the job, and we talked a little bit. And I remember him talking about, ‘I really didn’t like you guys’ game plan against us. You guys shifted and motioned every play. It was annoying!’
And I was like, ‘Thanks, Coach, appreciate it.’ But I’ve just, as much as I could, tried to get as much information from him as possible, and that’s really where the connection has grown.
On QB Jake Garcia’s value to the quarterback room:
Great value. He just works his tail off. He’s such a great human being, great kid. And he’s played in so many different arenas and venues and places and colleges, so it helps those guys get a different perspective.
