In the first five games, Michigan hasn't allowed more than 20 points to any individual opponent. In each of the last two games, both losses to Iowa and Minnesota, the Wolverines' opponents only scored 20 points, which was enough to come away with the win.
When a team like Michigan can't rely on its offense to put points on the board to win games, it puts much more pressure on the other phases of the game to pick up the slack. Two areas that have held up their ends of the bargain are the punt game in general and the performance of sophomore punter Cam Brown.
"It's super valuable, for us," defensive tackle Jonah Lea'ea told media members on Tuesday when asked about what it means to have someone like Brown as your punter. "It's undervalued in general. I think for him to be able to pin an offense within their own 5 or 10 (yard line), it's huge. He did that a lot for us these past few games, so we always try to make sure he's appreciated."
Brown's most notable performance came against Oklahoma in Week 2 when six of his seven punts ended up inside the 20.
"It's a great feeling," Brown said when asked about pinning an opposing offense back with a good punt. "Honestly, it's hard not to get greedy and start just going too deep all the time. It's an unreal feeling, (against) Oklahoma, I felt like I had a pretty decent impact on the game and it was a lot of fun."
Michigan special teams coordinator Kerry Coombs certainly agreed with Brown's assessment of his own performance. Similar to his coordinator, Brown is someone who is always looking to improve.
"I obviously am very happy with our punter, with our specialists in general, they performed well," Coombs said on Sept. 16 following the Oklahoma game. "Cam had a really good game on Saturday, although he would tell you there were a couple balls he'd like to have back."
Although he didn't have as much of a standout performance in either loss against the Hawkeyes and Golden Gophers, he still placed three of his 10 punts inside the 20. Those punts put the Wolverines' defense in advantageous positions and helped avoid putting the unit in difficult situations.
Brown, who is originally from Australia and spent last season at UNLV, is looking forward to hopefully spending the next three seasons in Ann Arbor. This season under Coombs, he's feeling challenged and pushed in all the right ways.
"He's an intense guy, as I'm sure a lot of you guys have seen," Brown said. "But I really think he gets the best out of a lot of us. And we've had some silly mistakes on special games for sure, but I think it's nothing that you can't clean up easily. … He just really cares about us and winning, and he puts all his attention into that."
For a team looking to find consistency on offense, being able to rely on a punter like Brown when things go awry has been incredibly beneficial. And moving forward, both Coombs and Brown are always looking to maximize their impact on winning and hoping to remain a group that is "super valuable" to this Michigan team.
