Fox says Michigan football's Kyle Whittingham success multi-tiered

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It's a new era in Ann Arbor with Kyle Whittingham having taken over the Michigan football program following 21 seasons as the head coach at Utah. And just a few years removed from a national championship and three consecutive College Football Playoff appearances, hopes are high that Whittingham will be able to return the Wolverines to prominence after two years of falling off from the former accolades.

The Wolverines don't require a full-bore rebuild, but in the expanded Big Ten, they do need to fix a lot of ails, ranging both on and off the field. The reason Whittingham is at Michigan football to begin with have to do with some of the off-field woes that have recently plagued the program. But how would success this season be measured?

According to Fox Sports' Michael Cohen, Whittingham won't just be judged off on-field results, but also how much he stabilizes the program.

There are two prisms through which to view any potential progress during Whittingham’s first season after an incredibly successful tenure at Utah. The first is off the field, where part of the appeal in hiring someone like the 66-year-old Whittingham — a mature, long-tenured, universally respected figure across college football — was the idea that he could adequately cleanse Michigan following a handful of scandal-ridden years. (. . .)

If Whittingham can shepherd Michigan through a full calendar year without another public relations nightmare, the university’s leadership structure might finally exhale.

The second prism is on the field, where Moore’s roster-building efforts over two subpar seasons knocked the Wolverines from their three-year perch atop the conference hierarchy. Front and center for Whittingham and his staff is the development of quarterback Bryce Underwood following an uneven freshman campaign. Underwood ranked ninth in the Big Ten in passing yards (2,428) and 13th in passing touchdowns (11) for a team that finished outside the top 100 nationally in passing offense. How well, and how quickly, Underwood can adapt to the new system installed by offensive coordinator Jason Beck, who followed Whittingham from Utah, will serve as a barometer for the Wolverines’ ceiling.

On the field may be more difficult than usual, given that the schedule has so many projected College Football Playoff teams. It's quite rare that Michigan has so many top-tier matchups in one season, with Oklahoma coming to The Big House in Week 2, Penn State and defending national champion Indiana arriving in October, and with road trips to Oregon and Ohio State in November. Those are a lot of tough games, and it's difficult to envision that the maize and blue emerge from those five fully unscathed. But Whittingham does have a track record of doing more with less, so it's not completely infeasible that the Wolverines do better than most anticipate.

As Cohen noted, much will depend on Underwood, but the team has been bolstered with several new faces in the wide receiver room to help him, and offensive coordinator Jason Beck has had two straight seasons of transforming underwhelming offenses into top-tier units that are fourth in the country in yards per game and among the best in scoring offense.

This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: How will Kyle Whittingham's first year with Michigan football be judged?

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