ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The 2022 season has the possibility that Michigan could field the best offense in school history. But it’s certainly not etched in stone.
The Wolverines return nine starters on the offensive side of the ball, with everyone coming back from the 2021 Big Ten Championship team except running back Hassan Haskins and right tackle Andrew Stueber. And the maize and blue add several key pieces, like transfer center Victor Oluwatimi and a cadre of talented freshman wideouts.
What’s more, tight end Joel Honigford — who moved over officially last year from offensive line — comes back for his sixth, and final, year of college football, keeping an already incredibly deep tight ends room intact.
But given that the maize and blue have a wealth of depth across the board on offense, why will it be successful? How do the coaches keep everyone happy, given there’s only one football and so many playmakers?
“The main reason is because nobody’s asking for it for themselves,” Honigford said. “It’s a lot of fun watching guys do their thing, what they’re good at. We have a lot of different tools, a lot of different guys who are good at different things. Even if you just look inside the tight end room, between me, Schoony, Erick, Carter – we’re all different tight ends. It’s fun to watch and it’s fun to be a part of.
“So I think having that throughout the whole entire offense allows for everybody to be able to share it. We don’t have any greedy guys – we didn’t have any last year either. I think it’s encouraging to see that, with the new guys coming in, that they’re buying into that and they just want to be a part of that success as a unit as opposed to individually.”
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It’s not that this is particularly the most talented Michigan offense in history — though it very well might be — but it’s that the coaches are more capable of putting players into positions to succeed.
That was a mantra of former offensive coordinator Josh Gattis — who departed this offseason for the same job at Miami — and while it didn’t work his first two years, we saw that side of the ball really improve as the season wore on in 2021. Perhaps the biggest strength for Michigan by the time it played in the Big Ten Championship was the diversity of talent — the Wolverines could move the ball in a variety of ways: on the ground, through the air, all with different players contributing.
As far as how Honigford sees it, it’s not that this team or last year’s team was so much better than their predecessors. It’s more the attitude of the players and coaches, alike, to ensure that everyone has an opportunity, and it’s not just one or two players making plays.
“We’re Michigan, we’ve always had really good talent,” Honigford said. “But it’s knowing how to work with that talent and knowing how to fill your role, whatever that is, with the talent that you have, is important to success. And that’s why we were so successful last year, because everybody knew what they had to do individually to contribute to team success.
“And, I don’t know, I just think guys have done a really good job at that. And obviously, we have really good guys who just came in who, you know, given time are going to make an impact for us. And, you know, you look at like the first handful of spring practices. It’s like, okay, let’s start going and start getting into it. And, and they did just that. And it’s encouraging to see, because some guys, like for myself, I took longer to develop. It’s just how it was. And I had to switch positions now where I’m at. And it’s working for me. But to see guys just like willing to step in and get after it right away is like very encouraging. And it’s a very positive outlook on like what we have going forward.”
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Regardless, things will look different in 2022, at least to some degree, on the offensive side of the ball. Or will it?
With Gattis gone, Sherrone Moore and Matt Weiss are now sharing offensive coordinator duties, but the same system is mostly intact. While some players have shared that throughout spring ball the offense has looked the same, given that so much personnel is returning, it gives the coaches the option to add more to their plate, compared to usual coordinator switches, where an offense has to start anew.
Honigford says that the offense hasn’t skipped a beat, and a lot of that is credit to their lack of ego as well as ability to work well as teammates on the coaching staff.
“Really well. Those two guys — Coach Moore, Coach Weiss — they don’t have an ego about themselves that, ‘This is gonna be my offense, this is gonna be my offense.’ It’s their offense, it’s our offense. So you look at Cade and J.J., you know, sharing quarterback duties last year, neither of them had a problem with it, it led to where we got to the College Football Playoff. And that’s where our coaches are doing the same thing. And like we can learn from that too.
“I mean, we have four tight ends that can help this team, but you can’t have four tight ends on the field all the time. It just doesn’t work like that. And so it’s just an understanding of how we work together. And what everybody does individually. So like, I do something better than Erick does something, so how are we going to work together to maximize our potential together? That’s the same thing with our offensive coordinators, just working together, finding their own strengths and our weaknesses and attacking their weaknesses and maximizing their strengths.
“Now, I just think it’s worked really well together. I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed playing for them and being underneath them.”
We’ll get a glimpse of just how good Michigan’s offense is on April 2, when the Wolverines host the annual spring game at The Big House.
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