Michigan football has 'target' on its back, says it won't sleep on Fresno State

College football made it just one game into the 2024 season before a top-10 team went down.

Georgia Tech pulled off an upset to open the college football season on Saturday, when it beat its ACC foe, No. 10 Florida State, 24-21, with a game-winning 44-yard field goal as time expired in Dublin, Ireland.

It added insult to injury for the Seminoles , who last year missed out on the College Football Playoff after then-quarterback Jordan Travis suffered a season-ending injury in the final weeks of the year, and now have an uphill climb to get back into the CFP picture.

While some may have seen it as a shock, the Michigan football team wasn't surprised in the least.

“It’s college football,” senior offensive lineman Gio El-Hadi said. “Anything could happen. Just like March Madness, you see unranked teams beating No. 1 teams. Anybody could lose on their best day, on their worst day. If you have a target in your back, you gotta play as best possible. Every team we’re going against this year, we have a big target on our back, and we have to play to the best of our abilities.”

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Michigan has avoided being upset with great success in recent years. Since the start of the 2021 season, U-M has been favored in all but three games (Ohio State in 2021, Georgia in the 2021 CFP, at Ohio State in 2022) and only lost two times (Michigan State in 2021, TCU in the 2022 CFP) when it was projected to win.

According to coach Sherrone Moore, it's because the Wolverines have "a really mature culture" which helps the team make sure it doesn't overlook any opponent (say, Fresno State) when there may be a somewhat larger matchup on the horizon (say, Texas).

"You can’t be worried about two or three days from now, because then you’re going to lose today," Moore said. "So you’ve got to get the advantage today on what you can do to get better. We know they’re (Fresno State) a good football team. There’s no cakewalks anymore in college football. Whoever you play, you gotta be ready to go.”

The Seminoles are the fourth top-10 team to lose in either Week 0 or Week 1 across the past four seasons. As for this past week, Moore said his team all saw the result so there's "not much to say" about what needs to be avoided.

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The CFP field has expanded from four teams to 12, so certainly there's more margin for error built into the season. But at the same time, more teams feel they have a shot, which is why Michigan is expecting everybody's best shot, every week.

“You got to be ready to go,” senior edge TJ Guy said. “Doesn’t matter how early in the season you’re playing, that clock starts, ball’s flying, game’s starting, you got to be ready to go. I didn’t think about it (FSU loss) too much, but everybody’s trying to beat you, so you gotta be ready to win.”

Offensive line's new mantra

Once Moore took over as head coach, his offensive line room mantra of "Smash" was adopted by the entire roster, which meant the big fellas up front once again needed their own motto.

The unit won back-to-back Joe Moore awards (given annually to the nation's top O-line) in 2021-22 and was a semifinalist last season; the Wolverines said they wanted something that matched the level of play in their room.

And so left tackle Myles Hinton suggested: "Invictus," a Latin phrase meaning “unconquerable" or "undefeated.”

“None of us knew what that meant at the time," El-Hadi said with a laugh. "Then he told us a little bit about the word being unconquerable, unbeatable. And I feel like that’s what we are."

At least that's the standard an entirely new offensive line group will attempt to live up to. The starting group has seemingly come into focus over the past week, with the expectation it will look like this: Hinton at left tackle, Josh Priebe at left guard, Greg Crippen at center, El-Hadi at right guard and Andrew Gentry at right tackle.

From the sounds of it, Dom Guidice (a former defensive lineman) leads in the backup center battle over Raheem Anderson, while sophomore Evan Link was said to have beat out graduate Jeff Persi as the understudy at right tackle.

"No, trust me … we still smash," El-Hadi said with a smile. "We still we still say the word 'smash,' but it just kind of defines who we are as a position group. So yes, 'Invictus' has been running around a little bit more than usual. It’s been a good thing. Once (Hinton) said "Invictus," we thought it was pretty, pretty spot on. So we stuck with that.”

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan football has 'target' on its back, says it won't sleep on Fresno State