Michael Shaw talks about the U-M RBs

Running back Michael Shaw talks about the increasing role of the running backs in the Michigan offense.

Question: Are you glad Denard Robinson left some of those yards and touchdowns for you today?

Mike Shaw: “He told me on the sideline, I think it was about mid second quarter that he was going to start giving the ball up a lot more because the reads are changing and knowing that we going to a read-option offense and normally they are keying in on me. I don’t know why, but they keying on me and that is where he has been getting his yards from. The ends are reading me and so he takes it outside and does he what he does best. Now, I guess UMASS got the memo and they started trying to hone in on his speed and the more things opened for me today.”

Question: Is that part of the plan going in, obviously before you necessarily know what they are going to, have you carry far more than Denard was?

Mike Shaw: “Normally, it is just whatever happens on the field. We run through our reads in practice but there is no way to tell in film who the end is told to key in on or who they are trying to contain. We had an idea that they were going to try and contain Denard but we also thought Notre Dame was going to try and contain him. He had 250 yards against them so, we just have to keep executing our offense and I had to step up and that’s what I did.”

Question: You seemed to delay a split second before you popped through the whole on that touchdown, what did you see there?

Mike Shaw: “Earlier in the game, I was trying to hit the hole as hard as I could. I seen it and I hit it, their D-line did a great job of two gapping our O-line, what that is, they try to show us something and then when we get into our hole, they jump from the other side. I hesitated a little bit to make sure what I saw was the right read and then I tried to hit through it as fast as I could to make sure that nobody could get a hand on me and nobody was backside, so I took it in from there.”

Question: How important is it for this offense to have other guys like yourself and Daryl (Stonum) so they can’t just key on Denard?

Mike Shaw: “It is very important, but it starts up front with the O-line. They did a great job today, but the guys are starting to finally get into a groove and stepping up when their number is called. I did today. Roy (Roundtree) did last week. Stonum did today. We have playmakers, but now we coming into our own as an offense. We getting experience each week and we getting better.”

Question: Did the offense seem to have any sense of urgency with respect to the defense, this defense allowing these many points against this opponent. Does the offense have any pressure put on itself given the fact of the way the defense played?

Mike Shaw: “I would say that we add pressure to ourselves, just because like the defense did last week, they held us up a lot. We scored 21 points and we didn’t score any more I guess two quarters and the defense shut Notre Dame out. So this week, whenever they gave up a score, we knew that we had to come back with an answer and Denard did a great job like Stonum said of keeping us poised. We went down 17-7 and a lot of guys weren’t too happy about that, but he let us know that it still is the first or second quarter and this game is far from over and we’re at home, so we need to do what we need to do best and execute. That’s what we tried to focus on the rest of the game.”

Question: How do the struggles in your special teams change what you do on offense? Do you feel maybe a sense of urgency there too that maybe you cannot count on the kicking game put up three points on the board.

Mike Shaw: “It is hard to say. I don’t really expect the kicking game to miss kicks. We all have faith in all our teammates, so we know they can get the job done. We see them in practice every day. I know they will get that corrected, but our job as the offense is to score touchdowns, so to keep those guys out of that situation, instead of getting stopped on third and medium or third and short, we need to punch it in and get to the end zone. So those 40 yard kicks can turn into extra points.”