Michigan OL Jake Guarnera

Thoughts on the offensive line performance in Week 1? Rob Norris said that he felt like the team played soft in this picture. Your head coach talked about the utilization of the rhino last week. I'm curious, what's your evaluation? Do you think it was effective? Do you want to continue using it to the level you did last week? And overall, what's your feeling on the rhino? How tough is your job this week with Oklahoma's interior D-line? Is there anything that makes them unique? How has Bryce handled the criticism this week? You were kind of thrown to the player last year in the Oklahoma game. What do you remember about those first couple snaps and getting in there? I only had one snap, and I just kind of blacked out. Went full scheme ahead. I'm excited to actually get some more snaps this year against them. I know you don't want to talk about the message, but how do you feel the message from the readers was received? I think it was received well. Something that Coach Wood said was, do more. Do your job. We need guys to step up and to play better than we did last week. What do you make of Western trying to get the outcome overturned from Saturday? I don't really have a thought on that, to be honest. It's kind of what the card goes on. You said the other line, you need to be more physical. Be more physical. Going back to what the old school Michigan style is, you need to be physical. You need to be a guy, so that's what we need to do. It sounded like the offensive line, at least in passing, had maybe been going full go against the defensive line just because they didn't want Bryce to hit his hand on you guys. Do you think there was any level of that? That's not true. I don't know where we heard that from. Whittingham said something along those lines. Maybe that we weren't tackling. So you don't think anything from practice? No, we were going full speed at the time. Jake, can you describe the challenge a football player faces? The way college football is structured right now. You've got teams playing Western Michigan versus Michigan one week, and then you've got to host Oklahoma the next week. They got UTEP last week, and now they've got to come to Michigan. Can you talk about the challenge of stepping up in that competition? I think it's something that you have to do is go 1-0 every week. Whatever happened last week, you've got to move on. It's a different team and a different scheme, so just kind of locking in on what they do and playing to the best of our abilities and just being intentional in practice is something that I'm disappointed in. You guys were rotating your guards throughout the game last weekend. The center is a leader of that group. What changes for you as you rotate your guards? Just the guys next to me. I trust all of them to execute what they need to do, and I think we have a great offensive line, but we just need to show it on the field now, not just in practice. What has Coach Harding's message been? I'm sure you guys probably weren't overly pleased with how you ran the ball. Coach Whittingham said it was pretty good, the line play was pretty good. What has Coach Harding said? Play with passion. I feel like getting the first game out there, we weren't finishing guys the way we used to, and we need to get back to that week two and beyond. Thoughts on playing Cole Sullivan this week? Cole Sullivan, that was one of my roommates. Excited to go against him, excited to see him. Where have you grown as a leader this year? I've been trying to get a lot more vocal. I like to lead by example, but there's times when I have to use my voice, especially in the huddle, be the guy that's commanding that. I'm just being more vocal. Do you feel like communication was smooth the first game with the new offense up front trying to make calls and things like that? I think so. You've got to play with more passion, like I said, and just play harder. What was your view of the Hail Mary catch? I couldn't believe it, to be honest. I was just standing there blocking and then saw the ball up in the air. I saw JJ Cushbaugh. I didn't even know he was in the end zone, so I was running down there to go see. I was so confused. I was trying to get everyone off the field because I didn't know what happened or anything. Yeah, I kind of just blagged out after that, to be honest. You do that a lot. Jake, Ron mentioned that there was quite a Tuesday on the guys' birthday. Did you do that in practice? Like I said, a lot more intentional. A lot more physical. The guys were straining extra long today. I think the effort was a lot higher today than it normally is.