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Special thanks to Jake Singer of Maize n Brew for joining me to discuss Michigan’s roster on this week’s podcast:

In one sense, Michigan’s 2026 staff turnover to head coach Whittingham and the assistants he brought with him from Utah and BYU closes the chapter on the Jim Harbaugh era – there are no remaining on-field coaches from the Wolverines’ 2023 title run, while the previous two years had in many ways been an attempt to keep that group together.

But on observing this program deeply and in my conversations with Jake over the last few years, I think the story is considerably more complex than that, and I find the “fresh start” and “clean sweep” narratives sometimes used in the national media to describe Michigan in 2026 to be wide of the mark.

For one thing, the “dirty” or scandal-tinged elements of that narrative don’t really make sense, since there’s a two-step timeline to it: everyone involved with the various NCAA and criminal investigations from a few years ago (Harbaugh himself, Steve Clinkscale, Jesse Minter, Chris Partridge, Denard Robinson, Connor Stalions, and Matt Weiss) were removed from the program well in advance of the 2025 season, and last year’s staff hadn’t been accused of anything … except for the head coach Sherrone Moore. It was Moore’s firing alone at the end of the year for personal incidents which toppled an otherwise “clean” group of coaches, and a set of reasons other than scandal has to be reckoned with for why they were let go.

For another, the player personnel has been essentially untouched. This was not a fire sale or anything close to it, instead the roster is on the other end of the spectrum: one of the most stable developmental pipelines I’ve studied in the Big Ten. There are some portal departures and additions, of course, and as one might expect a fair share of those additions have Utah or BYU backgrounds. But the total amount of churn is well within what’s become typical in the transfer portal era, and is more or less the same scale and quality I think I’d see if Michigan had no staff changes at all.

The third reason I think this is more complex than a “clean sweep” is also why I think it matters: as Jake and I discussed on the podcast, the real strength Whittingham has as a head coach is as a long-term program builder and personnel manager, and those impacts probably won’t arrive until 2027 at the earliest. In my many years of charting Utah in and prior to joining the Pac-12, I felt the national media consistently had this completely backwards – ascribing on-field, schematic or philosophical elements directly to Whittingham which actually came from the assistants he’d delegated those things to, while Whittingham himself ran the far more impressive operation behind the scenes as the CEO managing unique constraints and opportunities in the state.

One of the most salient ways that Whittingham’s savvy program management has shown out so far at Michigan in 2026 — and which has been, as usual, missed by superficial national analysts — is precisely where he’s pursued continuity in certain key stakeholders and program pillars rather than uniform overhaul in the staff.

The areas Whittingham dismissed immediately upon arrival were first and foremost the entire S&C staff, from the head of department to nutritionists down to the people who wipe down the benches, to replace them with the group which had been with him for 20-plus years in Salt Lake City – that’s an operations-level move, and salient as I’ll point out at certain key position groups. Whittingham dismissed many but not all of the on-field assistants: TE, WR, OL, DE, LB, and DB (there wasn’t a QB coach to fire since Moore just forgot to hire one, astoundingly), as well as the offensive and defensive playcallers. I’ll document as this article proceeds how those units were performing in the post-2023 era and the propriety of firing or reassigning them.

However, Whittingham retained the RB and DT coach, plus their assistants who are longstanding pillars (though the DT coach a month later accepted an NFL job), where I’ll document they had nominal performance. He also retained the recently hired special teams coach and his assistant, and moved the WR coach to the front office to keep his recruiting prowess and managed the transition through the signing period. This looks to me like an effort to retain local recruiting ties and institutional goodwill rather a totally imposed outside order.

What I’m most interested to see in 2026, therefore, are not the trite clichés I don’t think fit nor the typical tough talk which always follows Whittingham around, but rather the effects of the specific schematic changes his two new coordinators can immediately implement. While Jake and I agreed on the podcast there’s probably something of a ceiling until some longer-term program building can kick in, we also agreed that the 2026 returning roster has some real potential for quick gains by fixing a few concrete issues with different schematic approaches and it’ll be fascinating to watch this staff work with a significantly higher talent index than they have before.

Offense

In 2025 Michigan’s offense made a massive rebound as they returned to their typical baselines in just about every metric I track from charting, after an abysmal 2024 caused by not having a post-2023 QB transition plan plus some drama in the RB room. The challenge whenever there’s a big snapback is that baseline talent reasserting itself this “loudly” creates a lot of noise for the analyst to sift through to detect which individuals were going above and beyond the jump in performance everyone was getting, and which constituted underperformance in context even if their numbers were better than the year before.

In the passing offense, there’s some of all of it – then-true freshman 5-star #19 QB Underwood competently managed the short passing game and stayed healthy all year, and took care of the ball well before a tough bowl game, which no one in the 2024 QB room could do. Underwood finished the regular season with a 134.5 adjusted passer rating that’s about half a standard deviation below FBS median, about what historical modeling expects for true freshmen in his situation.

It was also readily apparent, as Jake and I both agreed from watching tape, that Underwood has loads of potential left to unlock from a big arm, which was evident in the overperformance vs Michigan’s historical baseline in their explosive passing rate – if and when Underwood connected with certain targets, three of them in particular, they were for enormous gains which previous Wolverine QBs hadn’t shown much of.

However, film study on both target selection and Underwood’s throwing mechanics shows significant underperformance in passing efficiency. The majority of passing targets in the route tree were mediocre to underwater efficiency options for Underwood in terms of per-target success rates given the down & distance because he just couldn’t reliably hit intermediate or deep shots with accuracy against coverage or even modest pressure.

Michigan’s 2^nd & long, 3^rd & short, and 3^rd & long passing conversion rates were each six to eight percentage points below FBS medians at 35.5%, 27%, and 26.5% respectively – they had to stay ahead of the chains or the drive was over, and couldn’t take advantage of short-yardage defensive crowding for shot plays.

The culprit was obvious on film, Underwood’s throwing mechanics whip the ball by torquing his upper body with open hips, he wasn’t consistently or really ever using a proper throwing motion in which he points his hips, loads on his plant leg, and transfers power from his lower to upper body for a smooth delivery.

That results in a dumpoff thrower at best, and until he refines his mechanics will prevent Underwood from taking advantage of his arm talent to paint the entire field. In the 2026 Spring game I didn’t see any progress on this question, and I’ll be watching carefully during the Fall season to see if newly hired QB coach Detmer will be able to break down Underwood’s motion and build it back up for accuracy.

On the podcast, Jake and I talked about new OC Hill’s offense we had watched at Utah, and agreed that, schematically, the RPO elements are the most immediate way to boost the offense. Assuming he gets the decision-making down, they should be a match for what Underwood is comfortable throwing right now as well as free him up for more designed rushing, which was a severely underutilized asset in 2025.

I only charted 24 keeps prior to garbage time on rushing playcalls (that is, excluding sacks and scrambles on passing playcalls) during the entire season, fewer than two per game, which was suboptimal given that Underwood’s per-carry numbers were the best on the team: 62.5% success rate and 8.4 adjusted YPC, and double the explosive rate of anyone else.

It’s tough to parse what the 2026 backup QB situation is or how it might play into the decision to run Underwood. We went back and forth about this on the podcast – there’s a pretty strong argument that the backup QB room in 2025 was much better, with three experienced grad students and a mid 4-star then-redshirt freshman ready to go, and yet Jake pointed out the staff at the time was clearly nervous about putting Underwood in any danger.

All four of those transferred out in 2026, Jake told me one of their prep enrollees #17 QB Smiegel is hurt, a transfer from LSU turned around and left, and the Colorado State transfer Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi missed most of last year with an injury and still hasn’t arrived at Michigan yet. That leaves the only available backup at the moment as low 4-star true freshman #14 QB Carr.

If Fowler-Nicolosi arrives, is healthy and picks up the playbook so Hill thinks he can win with him, then the situation militates for running Underwood a lot – as Jake said, the clock is ticking and he’s too explosive not to. But if there’s any kind of hitch in the backup plan and Underwood is all they have, I expect some early non-conference defenses to test out whether they really need to honor the QB keep … and it doesn’t even occur to most Big Ten defenses to do that at all.

Running Backs

The good news for Michigan’s RB room was that they’d found a pair of primary ballcarriers in #23 RB Marshall and Alabama transfer Justice Haynes who were simply more effective cumulatively than the pair who preceded them (that’s a long story, it involves a baffling multiyear dropoff for one of the faces of the program, the previous staff taking way too long to recognize it and pivot from him, and when they did, going to a bruising back with a high success rate but low explosiveness).

Marshall ran for a 52.5% success rate and 5.5 adjusted YPC, Haynes even better at 53.6% and 5.9. Both had rushing explosiveness rates higher than just about any Midwestern back I’ve seen since I began charting every team in this league in 2021 at around 13% and 14% respectively, although still a notch below FBS median per usual for the Big Ten. That combination of moderate efficiency and high yardage indicates the backs are pretty good and show it when they break into the open field, and the major constraint is the offensive line, not the RB finding the hole.

The bad news was that injuries have had a major effect on the room. Haynes was only able to play in the first half of the year, and Marshall was hurt towards the end, held out a game, then when re-inserted he aggravated his injury and sat for the remainder of the year. #25 RB Ka’apana missed most of the last year with an injury and Coach Whittingham announced he’ll miss all of 2026 as well, and when I asked about not seeing 2025 recruit #26 RB D. Johnson in the Spring game Jake told me he’s also hurt.

Former walk-on #24 RB Kuzdzal carried the load admirably, all things considered, first as a backup when Haynes went down and then as effectively the only back in the last three games or so. He finished with a 56.1% success rate and 4.0 adjusted YPC.

Haynes transferred out, Marshall and Kuzdzal return and were playing in the Spring game. The third back in the Spring game was #5 RB Hiter, a 5-star and top prep recruit in the country. Jake indicated the program is very excited about Hiter, and I have no doubt that if everything works out he’ll be ahead of Kuzdzal and possibly even Marshall by the end of the year at his talent rating. Retaining RB coach Alford and the staff structure here, as well as the development trajectories of the previous backs vs the ones who Alford has been responsible for at Michigan and previously at Ohio State, suggests a lot of confidence in this unit’s production if there isn’t any more bad news.

The room is on a knife’s edge, however – if anything goes wrong they don’t have an alternate solution. Two of the backup options are hurt, the other prep recruit #29 RB J. Brown is a lower rated fullback candidate at 6’3”, and it was very clear from last year’s rep distribution and Jake’s comments that the other walk-on #36 RB O’Meara isn’t the same value as Kuzdzal. Any injury to the three viable RBs, or if Hiter doesn’t pop as a true freshman — high talent ratings are no guarantee of this, they only tend to predict how much production a team will get in the event that a recruit pans out — would leave Michigan in a precarious situation (although there’s one possible alternative, hang on to the end of the article for that).

Tight Ends

In 2025 Michigan used six tight ends on a regular basis, which seemed excessive given how little actual production they were getting. As Jake and I discussed on the podcast, there isn’t much point in second-guessing the personnel selection since, between the TEs and WRs, there were only three guys out of a combined twenty on the roster who had viable per-target numbers … although that points up the fundamental and longstanding development problem which ultimately got the entire skill talent staff sacked or reassigned.

It was baffling, however, that the previous staff didn’t figure out the weapon they had in #83 TE Z. Marshall, whose 60% per-target success rate and 9.15 adjusted YPT made him one of the most valueable TEs in the league. Algorithmic modeling suggests his numbers might come down a bit if he were targeted more than 1-2 times per game, but the algorithm provides no cover for starting TE Marlin Klein’s atrocious 40.5% success and 5.6 YPT on twice as many targets – an analytically informed staff would have flipped their roles by midseason. (When I had it optimize for Michigan’s offense in 2025 given their personnel efficiencies, the solution was benching Klein and the other receiving TEs plus two of the four WRs in the rotation, and giving all those targets to Marshall.)

#80 TE Hansen and #43 TE Tonielli have been snakebit, I think. Hansen played in four games, at odd points during the year which led me to think it was a strategic redshirt, but Jake told me that it was actually multiple severe injury problems. He played in the Spring game though and looked back to 100%. Tonielli is going into his fourth year in 2026 and has yet to break out, with pretty mediocre numbers and low target share each season. Jake’s thinking is that the new staff is more likely to stick to 11-pers, have Hansen back up Marshall, and cut down the rotation substantially.

Michigan has had success developing blocking TE / H-backs out of former-walk-ons, Max Bredeson graded out well on my tally sheet in that role and was drafted for it (unlike receiving tight ends who have an edge on draft day almost regardless of college effectiveness due to having such hard-to-find frames, pure blockers like Bredeson have to really prove it, and he did). As Jake has been pointing out for a couple years, #42 TE Hoffman who’s also a former walk-on, has been Bredeson’s understudy in the same role. I’ve gotten a similar development trajectory on Hoffman’s blocking grades, and I have no doubt he’ll be the one called on and effective as such if and when the new staff needs a dedicated blocker. But it’s an open question how often that’ll be; I suspect we’ll see a substantial diminishment compared to previous seasons, perhaps only situational use.

Wide Receivers

The WR unit in 2025 painted the full picture of both Underwood’s range of strengths and weaknesses as a true freshman QB, and the post-2023 Michigan staff’s development and analytical issues. The most targeted WR was the one transfer, Donaven McCulley from Indiana, a flanker who’s always had a high explosiveness rate every year I’ve charted him (26% of his meaningful targets in 2025 gained 15+ yards, and that was the lowest of his career), but his success rate was stuck at basically a coin flip, 52%, because Underwood’s deep downfield accuracy was so erratic, and the staff never made an adjustment for this.

The third and fourth most targeted receivers were below FBS medians on a per-target basis and effectively took up spots on the field without justifying it, though as we discussed on the podcast there don’t appear to have been any better options to replace them in the half-dozen other receivers who weren’t redshirting freshmen. Those two were #9 WR Goodwin and Semaj Morgan, who each had underwater success rates and adjusted YPTs below 7.0.

But the second most targeted receiver was then-true freshman #3 WR Marsh, who had spectacular numbers at 66.1% success and 10.8 YPT, and led the team in explosiveness at 31.6% (because most of these were catch-and-run type of plays rather than pure air yards, play sequencing has to set them up with some defensive manipulation, and so the predictive algorithm suggests that increasing his target share much more would have hit diminishing returns). Marsh was in the sweet spot for Underwood – at a depth-of-target point in the route tree that the young QB could hit him, talented enough to shake the defense in the open field.

The staff brought in three transfers, though only one has previous playing time and Jake told me another for eligibility purposes is functionally a true freshman. The experienced transfer is #13 WR Buchanan, who was listed as a backup TE at Utah but when I watched him for some other film study projects I think he would be better characterized as a detached Y-receiver who situationally lined up in the formation to help block. From the Spring game that looks like it’ll continue to be his role at Michigan so the label change just seems like a formality. It was pretty obvious to Jake and I what a help an inside receiver his size would be for Underwood and why the staff brought him over from Utah.

Between Marsh, Buchanan, and the tight end Marshall, three of the four receiving options seem pretty well locked in, and the question is just who the fourth guy is plus the next up in case of injury. All we have to go on is speculation at this point, but Jake seemed pretty certain that the young transfers are the staff’s preference, #10 WR Ffrench who redshirted at Texas last year, and #12 WR Moa who was recruited to Utah but didn’t play or attend classes so Jake said retained his eligibility.

When I pressed him on the matter, Jake’s read was that Ffrench and Moa would be ahead of the experienced but ineffective WR returners, and on top of that the staff would stick with 11-pers solutions even if a rash of WR injuries struck rather than go to 12-pers. By that logic I should think that, if their depth is tested, the staff would also give some playing time consideration to some of the more talented freshmen recruits, #84 WR Washington and #81 WR Browder who redshirted last year, or the prep recruit #86 WR T. Johnson, ahead of the older returners.

Offensive Line

We needed to do quite a bit of housekeeping on the podcast to get all the facts straight about the offensive line, because at two different positions the initial starter got benched, at a third position a starter missed a few games due to injury, the bowl game had almost the entire line move over a spot, there have been two defensive line converts and three guys I needed to check were actually on the roster.

Having done all of that, what remains for the 2026 situation is very straightforward: there are six returners who played on last years’ line, those six will form the five starters and 6^th man on this year’s line. There doesn’t appear to be a single available lineman who could challenge any of them … or provide useful depth.

Jake and I agreed the most effective was #54 RT Sprague, who played every game last year except the bowl, and that it was downhill from there. Just like in 2024, the previous staff thought #71 OL Link could effectively play tackle, were wrong and benched him midseason, this time for #77 LT Frazier, who was better by comparison but on my tally sheet still below Big Ten medians in pass protection grades at 20.4% error rates.

#53 OL Guarenera was the eventual solution at RG last year and played center in the bowl as well as the 2026 Spring game, he seems like a lock for the center job in the Fall. However the only other option for snapping the ball appears to be Nebraska transfer #67 C Ka’aha’aina-Torres, who got I think two garbage time snaps deep in a blowout last year and was getting so badly destroyed in the Spring game that it rendered half of that tape useless.

Jake’s solution for the guards was to move Link inside to LG (he hadn’t been playing there in the Spring game so I hadn’t thought of it, but as soon as he suggested it I could see how it would work out better than the alternative), #55 OL Efobi getting the starting job at RG after wandering around the line last year as a backup guard, and pulling out former FCS transfer #70 OL Norton to be the 6^th man since he can technically play tackle or guard. There’s also some hope that former 5-star #65 OT Babalola, who tore his ACL last Fall and missed this Spring, will be playable at some point during the year.

For reasons that we spent quite a while discussing on the podcast, no one else in the room looks like they’d be playable in 2026 – they’re either freshmen or have been no-shows for multiple years and the 2026 Spring game. I’m not keen about the performance of this group in the Fall with no iron to sharpen them, and I’ve also been watching OL coach Harding for too long to think he’s going to work a miracle. I think Michigan’s offensive line development has been rusting since their 2022 Joe Moore award: five of the Michigan’s last seven starting linemen to leave college — Greg Crippen, Giovanni El-Hadi, Andrew Gentry, Dominick Giudice, and Jeffrey Persi — have had no NFL interest, they went undrafted and didn’t sign a UDFA, and I don’t think that streak will end in April 2027.

Defense

Looking at the five-year totality of charting data I have on Michigan’s defense from 2021-25, there are a few trendlines which I think point to recruiting or development declines — the most notable being the year-over-year falloff in havoc generation at the DE position as with one exception new effective producers stop being recruited to the roster after the 2020 cycle and havoc drops precisely in line with the old guard’s departures — as well as a scary ongoing injury situation in the secondary that’s well outside of modeled norms.

Structurally, there are two outliers in the data. One is the 2023-24 presence of a couple of absolutely dominant 1^st round defensive tackles as starters, who are personally responsible for a measurable five percentage point uptick in defensive efficiency over baseline on all downs and eight percent on 1^st downs and rushing downs (it is very unusual to ascribe structural effects to individual people, but the data here are unmistakable). The 2025 return to baseline by the DT unit on their departure is perfectually natural and to be expected, though the LB unit is another matter.

The second structural outlier is the defensive scheme employed by 2025 DC Don ‘Wink’ Martindale, who was a 3-4 coordinator in the NFL and adapted his scheme when taking over the 4-2-5 defenses that previous DCs Macdonald and Minter were running; those earlier schemes had over 65% of snaps in nickel regardless of offensive personnel. Martindale used a nickel against 11-pers or lighter offenses, but when the offense brought in a second tight end, he’d automatically replace a DB with a third DT to create a bear front in what I considered a 5-2-4 (it’s technical and not very relevant at this point but I would be happy to discuss in comments why I think this is a better description than a 3-4).

In my opinion, even though Michigan’s roster had the personnel depth to pull this off, this was not a good idea in modern college football given their 2025 opponents’ short-yardage passing preferences. Martindale’s defensive subsitution rules were trivially easy to manipulate and the passing skew of the slate took advantage: New Mexico and Oklahoma were early non-con opponents who really wanted to throw the ball in short yardage, while USC, Texas and Ohio State were repeat opponents from 2024 but who had much more success in 2025 against Michigan passing out of two-TE sets against four DBs and linebackers crashing the run. On the season, this resulted in staggering -12 to -40 percentage point year-over-year declines in 2^nd and 3^rd short to medium situational defensive efficiency, and a six percentage point falloff in the key 3^rd & long metric from 2024’s excellent 73% stop rate to a very mediocre 67%.

From talking to Jake as well as watching the 2026 Spring game and incoming DC Hill’s defense at BYU over the last three years for various projects, it seems like this is going to reverse and Michigan will return to much more nickel, or at least a 4-3 that won’t be as monomaniacally focused on run-stopping in short-yardage with transparent substitution rules.

The other interesting wrinkle Jake noted was Hill’s preference for multiple different personnel looks out of the same front – Michigan should be able to do that right away as they return multiple experienced players and quite a few developmental ones, plus at least one experienced transfer player, at every unit on the defense – there should be flexibility to experiment with multiple configurations for each position, if they wish.

Defensive Tackles

Michigan used a five-man rotation at defensive tackle (the two interior d-line spots in their 4-2-5 and three spots in their 5-2-4), which expanded to six by midseason first as injury subsitution and then as just as fatigue reduction. Modeling out the rotations, it seems like if no one ever got hurt and they stuck with the initial five-man rotation the whole way through, then the rep share in meaningful play would have been about 60% for the two 1^st line tackles, Rayshaun Benny and #95 DT T. Pierce, and about 40% for the three 2^nd line tackles, #17 DT E. Etta, Damon Payne, and Tré Williams. Benny and Williams had the highest grades on my tally sheet, Pierce had the lowest, Etta and Payne were about FBS average.

Pierce and Etta return and will no doubt have jobs on the line. The new staff brings over #91 DT Lea’ea from Utah, who was recruited as an end in 2023 and didn’t get much play his first two years but bulked up to 285 lbs last year and won a starting job at tackle with comparable numbers to any of Michigan’s DTs.

Picking out the fourth player in the rotation is tricky, since none got any playing time last year – the only ones who did have graduated or were converted to reserve offensive linemen. I was surprised by Jake’s guess of #54 DT Palepale, since he’s the lowest rated in the room and hasn’t seen the field in two years (I was expecting him to say #57 DT Moten, the highest rated redshirt freshman). But when Jake went on to say he thought it’d just be a three-man rotation of Etta, Pierce, and Lea’ea I understood what he meant – there’s nothing to recommend any of the returners since guys who were converted to OL got play when they didn’t last year and the prep recruits weren’t on campus for Spring ball.

While it’s my opinion that the DT unit has been nominal and a solid recruiting pipeline, and that this is why Coach Whittingham retained the assistant coaches here, it’s worth noting that the NFL interest fell off a cliff after the last draft. Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant, mentioned above, went in the 1^st round last April, and all of these guys were in the rotation with them in that 2024 season. Benny went in the 7^th round this April, while Payne, Williams, and backup Ike Iwunnah graduated without signing a UDFA.

The upshot is that this may be an underdeveloped unit in quantity and/or quality for a year or so before some of the very highly rated preps or the redshirt freshmen are ready to take over. If they really don’t have a playable fourth man for the rotation, or they find someone but an issue arises and they’re hard up for a replacement — both pretty plausible scenarios — then fatigue problems could become a real pinch in production.

Defensive End

Up through the 2020 cycle, Michigan’s defensive end recruiting was very typical for their talent profile – a few guys didn’t pan out, the expected number given the law of averages, but those who did were highly productive studs in college and bound for the NFL: Aidan Hutchinson, Mike Morris, Jaylen Harrell, Kris Jenkins, Braiden McGregor.

Their 2021 and 2022 classes were bizzare, however. In 2021, they took five preps the scouting services labeled as edges, but two wound up as offensive line starters, two did nothing (though one became a playable backup at UCLA last year), and one, TJ Guy, has been in the rotation for the last four years with the lowest cumulative havoc rate on my tally sheet for any 3+ year Big Ten edge (DEs and OLBs). In 2022, they took exactly one DE, Derrick Moore, and they batted 1.000: Moore was another stud and off to the NFL this April in the 2^nd round.

With the potential exception of 2025 recruit #94 DE N. Marshall — we’ll have to see how 2026 plays out for him, and any other Fall-arriving and future recruits — Moore was the last great defensive end prep recruit Michigan has gotten to campus, a rate of mediocrity or outright busts for the three 2023 recruits, four 2024 recruits, and perhaps the three 2025 recruits which is way, way off-model.

Last year, Moore had run it back for his fourth season in Ann Arbor and was by far the most productive “true” DE in the room. Guy was part of the 2^nd line rotation, and #9 DE Brandt, a 2023 recruit who has, amazingly, the second lowest cumulative havoc rate in the Big Ten for a three-year edge, got a comparable rep share with Guy.

It gets tricky to describe after that point. Then-redshirt freshman #8 DE Nichols, whose havoc rate was also pretty low, had half the reps as the others, but I wouldn’t call him a specialist, he played the same type of role just less often. Similar story for Marshall the then-true freshman, he rotated in often enough, and not due to injury relief or for a specialty role … so I would call him part of the regular order, but it wasn’t enough to get a quality statistical sample for analysis.

The reason for this rep share perturbation was because Michigan had converted a linebacker — and a very valuable one, for multiple reasons we discussed at length on the podcast — Jaishawn Barham to be a pass rusher. Barham was effective at havoc generation, but only in certain pressure packages from depth, not as a “true” end defeating tackles or setting the edge. As we discussed on the podcast, this was a patchwork fix: even setting aside the opportunity costs on the linebacker room, it was a temporary and partial solution to the fundamental problem of missing havoc production off the edge, and to the extent that younger players (Marshall, maybe Nichols if I’m being too hasty writing him off) had developmental reps taken away by it, counterproductive.

Guy graduated (Michigan finished 2025 with six OL/DL/LB multiyear primary rotational players getting zero NFL interest, in case it wasn’t clear to the reader why Whittingham’s first move was to sack the entire S&C staff) while Brandt, Marshall, and Nichols return, and there’s little question that those three have positions in the four-man rotation at edge in 2026.

The upshot of the history given here is that I’ve already written off Brandt as a havoc generator not just because of his prior play but because the Barham move last year indicates that Michigan had too. The same logic applies to Nichols, though he was a redshirt freshman and he has time to flip the script. Marshall is an open question but given the ice cold streak the previous staff was on in prospect talent identification I’m not going to believe it until I see it with him.

The fourth spot in the rotation no doubt goes to #90 DE Daley, a transfer from Utah with incredible havoc generation prior to the Achilles injury which cut short his season at the end of the year. Daley missed Spring practices but is expected to play in the Fall. I was not particularly impressed with Big-XII offensive lines during my film study projects of the recently reconstructed league, an observation which has been borne out in high level postseason play and I believe properly compensated for in my predictive algorithm, so I think there’s an adjustment to be made in projecting Daley’s stats in the Big Ten. Nevertheless Daley should be productive assuming he doesn’t have any health issues.

Like the defensive tackles, my sense is that Michigan has a doughnut hole for the depth and developmental players at end. There are some highly talented younger ends who simply look like they need more time – case in point, the 5-star from the 2026 cycle Carter Meadows, a very exciting prospect but a Fall enrollee and at 225 lbs for a 6’6” frame will need a while at the training table before it’s conscionable to play him in this league. In the meantime the available options to plug in if any of the four obvious picks for the four-man rotation become unavailable, due to a lack of experience, picking up a new playbook with the incoming DC, and suboptimal mass or length, are concerning.

Linebackers

Jake and I spent quite a while discussing anomalies in the linebacker room, which I don’t think was inappropriate because there’s been a lot of Real Weird Stuff that the current and previous staffs were doing with this unit which needed to be explored for context here, for other units, and for the 2025 vs 2024 statistical changes. But I think it’s important to note that the position itself for 2026 looks strong, and could even be stronger if a certain mystery about FCS transfers is cleared up in a happy way.

So, by way of reversing that podcast approach, I’ll simply say that three pretty talented backup linebackers return from 2025, each of whom got to play a good chunk of meaningful time last year, more than they might have expected due to some … stuff. The oldest is #40 LB Bowles, a mid 4-star from the 2023 cycle who previously transferred in from Georgia — he started out the year as 5^th place in the rotation / 3^rd backup but all four backers ahead of him were out of the room for at least one game and he was the first beneficiary of the rep increase.

The two true freshmen last year were mid 4-star #12 LB Owusu-Boateng and high 3-star #29 LB Taylor, who were redshirting for the first eight games but then multiple simultaneous unavailabilities all hit at once and they shot up to a little under 20% meaningful rep share for the last four regular season games plus the bowl.

Jake relayed that the staff has said the 2026 rotation is going to be these three guys and everyone else is depth. That’s clear enough, there’s talent, some experience and redundancy, no size issues, plus five more non-preps and three early enrollee recruits in the room which is more than enough to find a viable backup option in case they need one. There’s no reason to think they won’t be fine either with the starters, or if they need to, in identifying the backups.

The outstanding weird thing is this: the new staff got two FCS transfers who are very productive and experienced, then gave them practically no Spring game reps and according to Jake, have been dead silent about them. And there’s no reason for this at all: one of them, #52 LB C. Pierce, set true freshman records and is the brother of the defensive tackle which is ad copy that’ll sell in Peioria, the other is #44 LB Staehling who’s the biggest LB in the room at 6’2” and 238 lbs, got two pick-sixes at North Dakota State last year, and has more playing experience than the entire Michigan linebacker room combined. Jake described the Maize n Brew staff as “dumbfounded” about this and eager to grill Coach Whittingham about it (I wish them luck, Whittingham treated non-deferential reporters like trespassers, but I thought Salt Lake City media was cowed too easily and overly solicitous).

The only danger here, to the extent that I can see one, is a scenario in which there’s a problem with one of the chosen three and an FCS guy is objectively the better choice, but the staff has picked a winner in advance and stubbornly sticks with their original choice, counterproductively. There’s I think four conditionals in that so I’m going to assign it low odds, but worth keeping in the back of one’s mind.

Secondary

The first thing to note about the secondary is the schematic change for the nickel defender. In 2025, the nickel was best understood as a second strong safety, so the main strong safety in their base configuration would play about 12 yards deep, but then in the 5-DB configuration he’d spin down to be what anybody else would call the nickel at about 8 yards deep and wide over the passing formation, while the additional (second strong?) safety would come in high at the same depth as the free safety.

So the structure had already built in frequent switching within the safety room, and then a lot more was added due to near-weekly injuries. So a position group that had two and a half starting spots and needed maybe four guys for a healthy rotation instead wound up playing ten – six guys with a hundred or more reps, three with over 40, and a walk-on with at least a dozen.

In 2026, Jake told me that the secondary under DC Hill is going to switch to more of a two-safety, three-corner system; when I went back to look at the BYU tape in my film library this week, that checked out.

There’s been some offseason drama in the cornerback room, although there didn’t seem like there’d be during the 2025 season. The starters, as they have been since 2024, were #0 CB Hill and #10 CB Berry. Hill has never graded out very well for me, but at least he’s an appropriate size for an outside corner and he stayed healthy all year. Berry has graded out even worse, I mean appallingly bad, as an outside corner at the times he’s played there, because of course he has, he’s listed at 5’11” and he might have been standing on the manifesto when they measured him.

I think Berry might be an effective inside corner, indeed I think that’s the answer to an entire mystery regarding his getting in the portal, discovering his market value, and then returning to some calumny with the freshman backups that we went back and forth about on the podcast, but at any rate he’s evidently resolute about playing outside corner so here we are.

The new staff brought in #3 CB Snowden from Utah, an experienced 5’10” senior but who missed Spring practices after hernia surgery. He should be the starter on the inside, but if there’s an issue at the beginning or during the season, Berry is the alternate solution … and arguably a better one since it opens his spot on the outside to the true sophomore backup #2 CB Earls, a 6’2” mid 4-star who got some play last year.

Indeed any of the potential non-Berry solutions is a potential improvement – Earls, Jayden Sanders who was other 2025 tall bluechip true freshman and got even more playing time as the primary backup but transferred out due to the drama (I think), the 2026 true freshman mid 4-star #24 CB Vincent whom Jake says is lighting up camp reports, maybe even #16 CB Edmond, the 6’1 mid 4-star from 2024 who’s never played … actually, probably not Edmond.

As for Hill – my predictive algorithm indicates a better than even likelihood that 2026 is the year he finally has his senior breakout, since all the markers of stability, consistent play, appropriate size, and raw talent are present. I should trust the thing, I wrote it myself and have been doing retrodictive testing for over a decade, it outperforms everything I’ve ever checked it against, but still … I’ll believe it when I see it with Hill.

The safety position was messy as heck, injuries wreaked havoc with it, the majority of meaningful reps represented transferred out, and the way it rotated has been eliminated … so I’m just going to skip the recitation.

The relevant returners are #25 DB Curtis, who played as the second strong safety for the nickel configuration (I hope the reader recalls what I’m talking about) for the most reps as Michigan DB injury roulette wheel spared him till the end of the year, #14 DB Young who was a backup to the only safety who didn’t get hurt and so got mostly rotational relief play but did get Curtis’ spot in the bowl game when the roulette wheel finally claimed Curtis, and #1 DB R. Moore who cannot stay healthy but is the final survivor of the 2023 secondary which defeated UW for a national title so I pray for him daily.

Moore is a free safety and Curtis is a strong safety. Jake told me that Young should slot in as a free safety, and #20 DB Bracy, the very productive Memphis transfer at strong. However, Jake allowed that might shake out a little differently as we get into Fall, and frankly I expect it to because of Moore’s injury history and the relative experience here – it doubles up the most experienced guys at strong while putting the least experienced guy in a position to get practically all the reps when, as seems inevitable, Moore goes down again. My guess is that Bracy is more likely than Curtis to slide over to free if that happens.

The depth is unproven, #5 DB Oden and #28 DB Winston, and my concern is that with all the injuries last year the previous staff still didn’t want to give them much play, and yet there was a massive transfer wave out – something doesn’t add up. They constitute adequate rotational relief if the unit stays healthy, but if they encounter even a mild version of the injury wave like last year they could be in trouble with untested depth like this.

That leaves one more player, possibly the most curious of them all: #26 DB Tatum, a transfer from Oklahoma who was the top recruit in the country in 2024 at his position … running back. He was pretty good as a true freshman in Norman, too, played in nearly every game and started three, 56 carries at 5.0 YPC. He sat out 2025 and I have no idea why he’s switching positions to DB, or why the unit needs a 5’10” and 212 lbs inexperienced safety when they already have four experienced guys and two inexperienced but talented and appropriate body type guys. But as Jake instantly picked up when I started to ask, the running back room is awfully light … Although in my experience with Coach Whittingham, Tatum will make a one-year pitstop as a safety and wind up as a linebacker.

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