Washington"s freshman wide receiver Reggie Williams caught four passes for 134 yards Saturday. Unfortunately for Michigan, opposing receivers posting impressive statistics is nothing new.

In each of Michigan"s three losses last year, the opposing team"s top receiver posted impressive statistics: UCLA"s Freddie Mitchell caught 10 passes for 137 yards, Purdue"s Vinny Sutherland caught 11 passes for 127 yards and Northwestern"s Sam Simmons received 12 passes for 124 yards.

As the top defensive back, senior Todd Howard was and still is often assigned the difficult task of covering these receivers man-to-man for large parts of the game.

When asked about Howard"s troubles, Carr said: "When you"re one-on-one coverage with Reggie Williams, you"re going to give up some catches.

"Now, he didn"t get beat on (Williams" 74-yard reception). (Howard) was on the outside. Where was the ball caught? Inside. So he defended him. What happened? Reggie Williams made a great individual play.

"If you know anything about secondary play, you"d know that he made a great play. Look, give your opponent some credit."

Player of the week: Senior linebacker Larry Foote was named Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week. After missing all but two plays of the Miami (Ohio) game, he finished the Washington game with 12 tackles.

Operation time: The big play in Saturday"s loss was Washington"s blocked field goal which was returned for a touchdown. The block and return turned a potential 15-6 Michigan lead into a 13-12 Washington lead.

So the question is, why was the kick blocked?

After the game, Washington"s Omare Lowe, who blocked the kick, claimed that he got a finger on a prior Michigan field goal and that he was destined to block a kick.

But Carr disagreed with Lowe"s outlook on the kick, saying that the Wolverines" slow operation time the time it takes for the ball to get snapped to the point where it"s kicked was the problem.

"Our operation time was a little bit better on the first one," Carr said. When asked what specifically was to blame for the poor operation time, Carr refused to blame any one player, but later said, "I thought the snapping was very good in this game."

What"s next?: Coming into the season, Carr told the media that running back B.J. Askew was more impressive during the summer than Chris Perry and would start the season as tailback. Against Miami (Ohio) Askew had a career-high 20 carries, compared to only 11 for Perry.

But against Washington, Perry carried the ball 24 times, compared to only eight carries for Askew.

When asked about this and what can be expected against Western Michigan, Carr was his typical elusive self, "The good news is we have two outstanding backs and we need more. It"s a long season and the position that they play, they take a pounding.

"B.J. was outstanding in the pass-protecting game and has had an outstanding year. Chris played extremely well, so I like them both."

Not looking ahead: Nobody can accuse Carr of looking too far ahead in this season.

When asked if the realization that Michigan"s Rose Bowl hopes have been dashed in the second week of the season is weird, to which Carr responded: "The last thing on this Earth that I"m thinking about, or anybody on this team"s thinking about, or any person who"s got any sense is thinking about is the end of the season. They think about one thing and that"s Western Michigan."

Brackins coming back?: According to senior Jake Frysinger, linebacker Eric Brackins will return from an injury this week after missing the first two games.