U-M's Wormley on last-play loss to MSU: 'It's a new season'

Michigan senior cornerback Jourdan Lewis said as soon as he sees the formation he knows what it is and refuses to watch.

Michigan players say they have moved past the devastating loss they suffered to Michigan State last season on a fumbled punt on the final play of a 27-23 loss.

The players and Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh spent several minutes on Monday fielding questions at Crisler Center about the hard lessons they took away from that crushing defeat ahead of Saturday’s rematch in East Lansing.

Lewis acknowledged he doesn’t watch the play anymore when it comes up on the Big Ten Network or on social media.

Senior defensive end Chris Wormley, who was on the field for the punt, referred to what transpired as “a shock.”

“At the end of the day, we’re a new team,” Wormley said. “It’s a new season.”

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Lewis said Harbaugh talked to the team about handling it better than any other team has handled adversity and they have.

Harbaugh said he’d hoped to never be in a situation where his team would have to deal with a loss like that where “defeat snatches a victory away at the very end.”

Harbaugh said there were several things he learned from that that last year’s last play. What exactly?

“Have the punter at the right depth,” Harbaugh said. “Not be in a spread punt in that situation would be the two that come to mind."

Senior tight end Jake Butt was on the field for the punt and raced back to make the tackle.

“I took my normal set, saw some guys rushing, tried to block my man and I didn't hear a punt go off so I just turned around and started running,” Butt said. “They executed on that play and that's football. It easily could have been us in the other position. We've seen it. That's the great thing about football is that anything can happen and the game is never over. Credit to them for executing."

Butt said the Wolverines aren’t “caught up in that game” or hanging their heads about what happened in the past.

Senior defensive end Chris Wormley said the loss to MSU has served as motivation.

He said it was a normal punt like they practice 10 times a day.

“I think at the end of the day, I thought it was going to be a regular punt,” Wormley said. “I thought our punter was going to get it off. When I didn’t hear the ball go off his foot – you can hear that in the back – it didn’t go off and I turned around and by that point the ball was 30 yards down the field.”

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Wormley said in the aftermath of what happened he wondered what happened and if there were any flags.

“It’s a learning process,” Wormley said. “You have a devastating loss like that.  Again, we felt that we should have won. You learn from the mistakes. You watch the film. You take that on the next opponent. It’s like Coach Harbaugh said, you put the steel in your spine. You continue to work each and every day to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

Asked if anything good came from the loss, Wormley said: “I don’t think it’s every good to lose, but at the end of the day you can learn from those mistakes. You learn that you have to take every opponent up until the last second seriously.”

That wasn’t what they were thinking back then.

“You play to the last second,” he said. “I think in a lot of our minds, we thought ‘Hey, there’s only nine seconds for him to punt the ball off. We’re going to get this W and enjoy a big win. But you can’t take it like that. You have to play until the clock says zero and continue to work each and every day.”