I've never seen a fanbase so wrong-footed after a national championship.
The Michigan Wolverines won their first outright college football national championship since the United States first crammed a monkey into a rocket and shot him into space, but you'd never know that amid their head coach leaving and taking half the coaching staff with him, the NCAA breathing down the necks of everyone who stuck around, and the most nationally known Wolverine being a dork who parlayed a failed military intelligence career into spying on MAC teams.
There are a lot of questions to be answered here, but the biggest one is "how do you manage to go bankrupt as the main merchandise seller of a national championship winner in the town where said national championship winner resides?"
Vibes are off, is what I'm saying! The Michigan faithful would insist otherwise, but I remember well the wailing and gnashing of teeth last winter as their chosen savior ditched them for LA and had half the coaching staff hop in his van. Take it from the fanbase with the least chill on the planet: this is not what unbothered looks like.
2024 should be Michigan's victory lap, and instead it feels like every Wolverine is emotionally grabbing at air as their ACME rocket runs out of fuel ten thousand feet in the sky.
But, hell... maybe they deserve it!
HOW WE GOT HERE
Jim Harbaugh leaving Michigan for the NFL almost immediately after the national championship, despite him repeatedly saying that he wouldn't and Michigan insiders insisting that a contract extension was imminent, was a blow. Offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore was probably the best choice to replace him in terms of both nascent coaching talent and to preserve continuity, but that ominous pipe organ music you just heard indicates that maybe coaching continuity isn't the best thing in the world for Michigan right now.
Anyway, as previously indicated, Harbaugh didn't just peace out, he took a huge chunk of the Wolverine staff with him to the Chargers, including their strength and conditioning culture guy, their lead recruiter, the defensive coordinator, and the guy who makes PB&J by toasting the bread just a little bit first and mmm! Delicious.
Then, a few months later, the Wolverines lost over 40 players via the NFL Draft or graduation, so all of a sudden you've got Sherrone Moore chilling like Will Smith at the end of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
Which is bad by itself but not unrecoverable. Sure, the offense got completely gutted and sure, Moore had to hire like fifty guys in a two week span and sure, the upcoming schedule is brutal, but that's what happens when you build a team around a bunch of sixth-year seniors and a mercurial weirdo. The defense is still excellent and hey: at least the trophy case looks a little less bare, right?
Right?!?
Thought of the day - What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! - Sir Walter Scott
— Coach Harbaugh (@CoachJim4UM) February 7, 2015
NOW WHAT?
Reports are that Michigan got its formal Notice of Allegations from the Connor Stalions sign-stealing affair, with not a lot of changes from the draft that was leaked earlier this summer. This is both good and bad for Michigan, in that the initial draft didn't explicitly tie Michigan coaches to what Stalions is alleged to have done, but also indicated that the NCAA is pretty pissed about being repeatedly stonewalled and misled by the Wolverines.
Anyone who says they know what this actually means for Michigan is a liar. As of this writing the final NOA hasn't been released, and Michigan has months to respond to that, and the NCAA needs to respond to their response, which ultimately means this won't get wrapped up until late December at the earliest.
So you aren't going to get your eagerly-anticipated Death Penalty for the Wolverines anytime soon. But look at it this way: them playing an entire season with the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads is pretty funny, too.
THE DEFENSE
Michigan's defense survived the offseason mostly intact. Despite overtures from the NFL and other schools, key players like interior defensive linemen Kenneth Grant and Mason Graham and cornerback Will Johnson stayed in Ann Arbor for another season. All three are among the very best in the country at their positions, with Johnson in particular being maybe the best defensive player in America overall. The linebacker position probably won't be an issue either, and will generate a ton of pressure on the quarterback in 2024.
But this is also a pretty thin group. Most of the defensive starters are good-to-excellent, but there's very little experience behind them. Starting safety Rod Moore is possibly out for the season with an injury, and significant contributor Keon Sabb transferred to Alabama. A couple of injuries could transform this unit from one of the best in the country to... well, still probably one of the best in the country but whatever "slightly worse than that" is.
The biggest story for the defense is new coordinator Wink Martindale, hired by Moore to replace the fiendish Jesse Minter (not to be confused with Johnny Ginter). Martindale has a history of blitzing the hell out of opposing teams long past the point of usefulness, so here's hoping that continues in 2024.
Robert Goddin-USA TODAY Sports
THE OFFENSE
Oh baby, I am so excited to watch this trainwreck.
Let's start with what Michigan returns. Running back Donovan Edwards was generally pretty bad in 2023, but in typical Edwards fashion all of that was forgiven due to three or four really clutch runs that salted away huge games. His problem is that he doesn't have Blake Corum to distract people from games like the ones he had against *checks notes* UNLV, Rutgers, Indiana, Michigan State, Purdue, and Alabama, games where he had significant chances to make something happen and ended up averaging less than 3 yards per carry. Prior to the national championship game he was averaging 2.68 YPC for the year.
But it's fine! Kalel Mullings is his backup, and he's so, so good, guys. In four seasons of college football he's got 50 carries. So, you know. A veteran.
Colston Loveland is back at tight end, and I don't have any jokes to make about him. He's their best returning receiver (by a lot) and one of the best tight ends in the country.
And... that's pretty much it.
The offensive line is completely new. Michigan fans will protest and say "well actually, one's a starting transfer from Northwestern and all the others have lots of game experience" but if it were Ohio State in that position they'd be predicting the exact day and hour of Ryan Day's firing. In reality the offensive line will probably be relatively fine, but the real concern is that both starting wideouts are gone (Semaj Morgan is back and aggressively meh), and uh, who, exactly is going to be throwing the ball, anyway?
I know the answer is, ostensibly, Alex Orji. But Orji has attempted exactly one pass in college and was a garbage passer in high school, and there are a few quotes coming from Michigan's fall camp that indicate this might not have changed significantly since the end of last season. Orji is incredibly athletic, and maybe Michigan can get cute with RPOs and use Edwards in more of a pass-catching role to help him out. But while there's a chance Orji might end up an acceptably good quarterback for Michigan, there's a much better chance that he is just completely godawful.
If that's the case, Michigan is going to need to cut bait quickly. The two most likely backups are Davis Warren and Jack Tuttle, who are mostly unknown quantities themselves. Tuttle is a seventh-year senior, which... good for you, man.
Either way, this has the potential to be extremely entertaining for yours truly.
THREAT LEVEL
Connor Stalions' attorneys dropped this gem earlier today:
“The NOA says Connor’s friends and family sent him film from games they attended with tickets Connor purchased,” Stalions’ lawyers wrote. “But there is no rule against that.” The lawyers went on to say the “only ‘scouting’ that took place in this case happened on Michigan’s campus from behind Connor’s computer.”
I guess just straight up admitting to the entire scheme is a kind of defense, but really I think it's emblematic of how Michigan world in general has approached everything related to sign stealing and recruiting violations over the past few years: it's not a problem because they're the ones doing it. If any other heathen school in the Michigan orbit so much as sneezes, they've got 15 varieties of finger-wagging at the ready. But if the Wolverines are involved? That's just them finally cutting loose and being sexy!
Regardless of how this all plays out, 2024 is going to be one of the most interesting seasons of Michigan football in years. Having perfected their particular brand of iron-clad gruntball, the Wolverines bet everything on 2023 and it paid off.
Now we get to see what happens when the guy at the table cashes out and throws a couple of chips to the guy helping him count cards.
The Threat Level is ELEVATED!
