It wasn't relief in the Michigan locker room following Saturday's near-disaster versus Army.
It wasn't frustration either.
"Nah, man," said wide receiver Ronnie Bell. "We're 2-0 heading into a bye week."
Fresh off a double-overtime win, it was something closer to pride.
"I'm still coming off that high from the game right now, so it's just pure excitement and joy," said senior offensive lineman Ben Bredeson. "And then tomorrow we'll be able to watch the film and make the corrections from there."
But when they pop in that tape, those feelings will fade. No. 7 Michigan nearly put its season on life-support the first weekend of September, in a game they were favored to win by 22 points, against an opponent that, for all its toughness and heart, nearly lost its season opener to Rice.
Whatever flashes of hope Michigan's new offense showed last week disappeared on Saturday in a morass of mental errors, miscues and turnovers. If this was a dress rehearsal for the start of Big Ten play in two weeks against Wisconsin, the script needs some major adjusting.
That starts with the man running the show, who, like his players, was still savoring the win when he addressed the media.
"Like I told the team, that's how you fight," said Jim Harbaugh. "That's how you scratch and claw, and both teams did that. Our team, the way they hung in there, their courage, their resilience. Their sharpness of mind, that seems to be at a little higher level this year with this ball club. Happy about that. Sometimes you have to fight like that, a football fight."
The Wolverines came out of this one bleeding, and perhaps they'll learn from those wounds. They indeed showed some resilience, at least on one side of the ball. The defense, per usual, bailed out the offense.
But sharpness of mind? That couldn't have been at a lower level on Saturday, certainly lower than it was throughout last season. The offense lost the ball three times in the early going, including two more fumbles by Shea Patterson, and turned it over on downs twice in the fourth quarter.
Loose hands. Blown protections. Strange calls and poor decisions. The Wolverines were guilty of all of it, and now they have two critical weeks to make amends.
"Unforced mistakes and the turnovers right now, those are things that we definitely need to clean up going into the Big Ten," said Bredeson. "It's just the mental focus on everybody."
In other words, the sharpness of mind.
Michigan's offense rallied when it needed to Saturday, answering Army's touchdown in the first overtime. It did so with a couple aggressive strikes through the air, an approach that it mostly abandoned in the second half. In a couple months, maybe we'll look back on that drive as one that saved the season.
"I think we did make some great strides in the way we finished the game," said Bredeson. "Really proud of the guys for fighting through it. Just about everything that could have gone wrong for us went wrong in this game, and everybody was able to stay together and finish it out. A win's a win at the end of the day."
But at the end of the year, more games like these will show up as losses. Michigan knew it had a dogfight -- a football fight -- on its hands Saturday, then played like a team waiting for a walk in the park.
Give Army credit for a stout performance, for wearing the Wolverines down and nearly wearing them out, but this Michigan offense has issues. It spent the last week trying to solve them, then created more on Saturday.
"Not as much (progress) as we would have liked," Harbaugh admitted. "Keep grinding in that department. Just getting it more well-oiled. Oscillating a little bit at times. Gotta get the well-oiled machine going."
