Mid-season report: 'Relative' expectations have Michigan feeling blue after 4-2 start

“I don’t feel good” about our record, punter Zoltan Mesko said. “Speaking from the perspective of being 4-0 two weeks ago, of course everyone wants to be 6-0, not 4-2. It’s all relative.”

Despite heightened expectations by the fast start, Michigan is right about where it should be halfway through Year 2 of Rich Rodriguez’s strip-it-down-and-rebuild-it tenure.

The Wolverines (4-2, 1-2) have mostly beat the teams everyone expected - Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan and Indiana, plus a toss-up win against Notre Dame - and lost on the road in hostile environments to Michigan State and Iowa.

Four games have gone down to the last possession, with Michigan winning against Notre Dame and Indiana and losing to MSU (in overtime) and Iowa.

“I’m not happy with the two losses,” Rodriguez said. “They were two pretty good teams in tough environments, but there were also moments we'd like to have back.

“There were a lot of errors that were unforced. Whether it was on offense or defense, you'd like to have those back and all of a sudden maybe you won those games or sneaked one of those out."

With a young, thin team - 18 first- or second-year players dot Michigan’s two-deep, and true freshmen start at quarterback and outside linebacker - mistakes are to be expected.

Tate Forcier has shown flashes of brilliance at quarterback, leading late touchdown drives against Notre Dame, Indiana and, perhaps most impressively, rival MSU. In an unrelenting rain, he rallied Michigan from 14 points down with five minutes to play against the Spartans, eventually tying the game at 20 on an exhausting 12-play, 92-yard touchdown drive.

He's also looked like a freshman, throwing an overtime interception in traffic against MSU and struggling for three quarters last week at Iowa before giving way to 19-year-old classmate Denard Robinson.

Forcier, who suffered a concussion against the Hawkeyes and has been battling a shoulder injury the last two weeks, was expected to practice Wednesday and appears on track to play Saturday against Delaware State.

"We've got to step back a little bit and say what really do our guys understand?" Rodriguez said. "Not just Tate and Denard, but our young guys. What do they understand in our offense, what can we execute well, and how do we go forward as far as putting things in?

“There are so many things more we want to do offensively, but we don't want to confuse the young guys.”

Along with a healthy Forcier, Michigan needs steady production from its beat-up running game - both Brandon Minor (ankle) and Carlos Brown (concussion) have missed time with injuries - and improved play on defense (the Wolverines rank last in the Big Ten in passing yards allowed) to navigate a difficult final month.

After Saturday’s “buy” game against the FCS bottom-feeding Hornets (1-3), the Wolverines close with games against Penn State, Illinois, Purdue, Wisconsin and Ohio State.

Michigan needs two more wins to qualify for the postseason, and perhaps three more to avoid the dreaded Little Caesar’s Bowl.

“We don’t want those two loses, I can’t say that enough,” offensive lineman David Moosman said. “But we’ve come out and we’ve played hard for six games and that's great. We’ve already done better than last year. That was definitely a goal, but we got a long way to go. We got a lot of big games, we got a lot teams that we want to beat, so we've got a lot of work to do.”

Dave Birkett covers University of Michigan football for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached by phone at 734-623-2552 or by e-mail at davidbirkett@annarbor.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.