The Michigan Wolverines won on Saturday. That’s about where the good news ends.

College football is changing, but there are still teams who play on unequal playing fields. The Wolverines are one of those teams who are better than Rutgers.

They should always be better than Rutgers, and they should beat them by double digits almost anytime they play.

That’s typically the way that you can measure who is a great Michigan team or not. Do they blow away the teams that are inferior to them.

Saturday was a chance for Michigan to prove that they were still a good team. Kyle Whittingham insisted they were after nearly knocking off Indiana a week ago.

Instead, they were working through another one-score game where the game was in the balance until late in the fourth quarter.

Ultimately, Tommy Carr proved to be a difference maker with a touchdown run to give them a lead they would not relinquish. 28-21 final, Michigan wins.

The Big Picture

Winning is better than losing. There’s no question about that. Michigan is the winningest program in the history of college football. Their aspirations are higher than simply beating a Big Ten opponent on the road.

They are higher than beating Michigan State, who the Wolverines will welcome to Ann Arbor next week.

Michigan’s goal is to compete for championships, and runs at the College Football Playoff.

They are unlikely to do that this year without running the table and a lot of things breaking their way from other teams around the country.

Even if they do make a run and those things break their way, is there any confidence that Michigan is competitive enough to knock off some of those teams?

This Michigan roster has a lot of questions surrounding it, and the coaching staff has only made that worse.

Michigan came into this game hoping to get some big time production from their run game. Rutgers’ run defense was one of the worst in the country coming into the game. Michigan did not have an individual rusher go over 100 yards. Tommy Carr was the second-leading rusher.

Defensively, Michigan gave up some big plays and was not as good as they were a week ago. That was almost to be expected because that’s how good the defense was against Indiana.

The Wolverines have not been able to blow away any of the bad teams they’ve played this year, save for a Week 3 blowup against UTEP.

Next week Michigan has one more cupcake on their schedule, but its far from a layup. That sounds like its nonsensical, but it’s true. Michigan State is not a good team, but they will be looking for a big moment in Pat Fitzgerald’s first season as the head coach.

From there, Michigan plays at Oregon, home against UCLA, and at Ohio State.

All three of those games look different than they would have at the beginning of the season. Oregon and Ohio State look worse. UCLA looks better.

The problem with that? Michigan does not look like they’ll be competitive enough to knock any of them off.

Saturday’s game against Rutgers could have been an opportunity to build some confidence. They could have had a chance to get things right for the stretch run.

Instead, they won, but they’re still putting lipstick on a pig.

So sure, enjoy the win, but realistically, who cares?