Michigan football's 'one-track mind' steamrolls through season, with one last stop to make

HOUSTON — Monday is the end of the track for Team 144, one way or the other.

All season long — actually, since July's Big Ten media days in Indianapolis — the Michigan football team has publicly discussed its one-track focus on winning a national championship.

It became the program’s sole mission after two straight College Football Playoff semifinal losses left a bad taste in its collective mouth. It fueled a handful of seniors such as Mike Barrett, Blake Corum, Kris Jenkins, Trevor Keegan, Mike Sainristil and Zak Zinter to come back for one final season and postpone chasing their NFL dreams.

All six were all named captains; it was their mentality that set the tone every day.

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Throughout this season, no matter the heights the team reached — a top-10 road win over Penn State, a top-five win over Ohio State, or beating Iowa for its third straight Big Ten championship — the focus never wavered from finding a way to get to this moment.

“Like Kobe Bryant said,” Corum said after the win over Ohio State, “job’s not finished.”

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Now, following a thrilling 27-20 OT Rose Bowl victory over Alabama, No. 1 Michigan (14-0) will play No. 2 Washington (14-0) in the national championship game on Monday at NRG Stadium with a chance to finish it.

Even with the team at its final stop, those on the inside say nothing has changed in its mentality since it set out on the journey. If anything, they say, U-M has found its groove through the trials and tribulations that marked this season, as it learned to stay dialed into the task at hand as it came together.

“It’s as one-track mind as it can be, like a thoroughbred horse thundering down the straightaway,” coach Jim Harbaugh said Saturday morning. “The blinders are on, we see the finish line and we’re going to the whip, each guy. But also with a good balance, too.

“It’s a focused and loose team at the same time. Kind of in the sweet spot, from where I see it.”

The Wolverines left Ann Arbor early Friday afternoon and for many of those seniors, it still hasn’t quite hit home they won’t wear maize and blue inside those practice walls on State Street again, outside of a pro day in a few months.

Jenkins, projected to be a late first- or early second-round NFL draft pick, won the team’s "Enthusiasm Unknown to Mankind" award and left little to the imagination about U-M’s desire to win.

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He explained that this week isn’t about trying to be somebody you’re not, but rather about making sure each player is maximizing what he can, each second of each day.

“It’s do everything we’ve done, but really just empty that tank,” Jenkins said Saturday. “Like, if necessary, we will get carried off that field if we got to, if we really got to put that much in. We will get carried off that field Michael Jordan-style. Whatever we’ve got to do to be successful.”

One reason U-M has been able to be this successful, many of the captains explained, is its brotherhood. Keegan held his arm out toward a section of bleachers full of 300-pound offensive linemen goofing around. At one point, Karsen Barnhart laid back in Gio El-Hadi’s lap, as Keegan discussed how most of his teammates will be at his wedding someday.

“I mean, my kids are going to be calling these guys 'uncle,'” Keegan said. “It’s really special.”

It’s a group, Keegan explained, that put process over prize as many of the key pieces had to work their way to stardom.

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Keegan and Zinter didn’t crack the starting rotation until their junior seasons, before they both became All-Big Ten performers and two-time Joe Moore Award winners. Sainristil, who started as a wide receiver, told the Free Press how he debated transferring in 2020, before his career-altering transition to nickel back. Barrett never realized his full potential until former defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald installed a new defensive scheme, while Jenkins had to wait his turn behind players such as Mazi Smith and Christopher Hinton before he became a force in the middle of the line.

Corum may have shown star potential the earliest, but even he only had 31 touches as a true freshman and played behind Hassan Haskins in 2021.

But still, the group of six seniors — which includes Barrett as the winningest player in the history of the program — stuck together, all with a vision of a morning like Saturday — or they hope, an evening like Monday.

“We were all on the field yesterday, like yeah, ‘this the last one, the last practice at Schem, the last padded practice here, our last time riding together,’" Barrett said. "We were just talking about all the last, lasts and we talked about it, this is literally what we came back for.

“We’re going to do it, so now we’ve got to go finish it.”

Contact Tony Garcia: apgarcia@freepress.com. Follow him at @realtonygarcia.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan football to ‘empty the tank’ with national title at stake