Where J.J. McCarthy feels he needs to get better

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan football fans waited, perhaps not so patiently, for their former five-star to finally get his real shot at leading the team. After just one week of the season, they got it, with J.J. McCarthy getting his first start and never looking back.

It’s been mostly good, but there have been a few inconsistencies early. But that’s just nitpicking in a lot of ways.

Likely the one thing that hasn’t coalesced this year has been the deep ball. While McCarthy looked adept at hitting receivers deep all of last year in spot duty as well as early this year, starting in Week 4 against Maryland, he started missing. And since, he hasn’t really hit many deep balls, including none in Week 6 against Indiana.

For McCarthy, he feels like the biggest factor is just consistency week-to-week. After his injury this spring, he’s gaining confidence in his arm again, and he realizes he just needs to rely on his ability and not overthink it when throwing downfield.

“Probably the biggest key, and the only key, is just myself, just putting the ball on them,” McCarthy said. “And just really like, understanding that as I’m recovering from this injury from offseason that like I’m starting to gain my strength back, my hips are more mobile, they’ve gained more strength, and just being able to get back into that rhythm again, and not be able to feel like that I need to put my all into a throw, and just realize I have a strong arm, just focus on it, see the ball through the throat and just deliver it to them. But the guy has been doing great getting open, I just got to put the ball on them.”

While the deep ball hasn’t been a big factor yet this season, one thing that has is McCarthy’s overall consistency.

At 78.3%, he leads all qualifying quarterbacks (players who have played in 75% of their games and have thrown an average of at least 15 passes per game) across the country. Considering that he was throwing sub-60% in limited action last year,…