Joel Klatt has been enthusiastic about Michigan football even when it wasn’t fashionable to be. He’s long defended Jim Harbaugh and his record, and even prognosticated that it was possible for the Wolverines to rebound greatly in 2021 when most thought that notion was crazy.
The premier color commentator for Fox Sports appeared on The Herd with Colin Cowherd last week and discussed where the Wolverines stand compared to Georgia — the team that appears to be in the crosshairs of the maize and blue.
“Georgia is the premier program in our sport currently. They are obviously back-to-back national champions and they are doing it with a blueprint that doesn’t require them to have a great player at quarterback,” Klatt said. “Now, (Stetson) Bennett played really well at times, got himself to New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist, but at no point do I feel like, ‘Oh boy, that’s a quarterback-centric program.’ They’re a roster-centric program.
“(Stetson Bennett) did make those big throws to guys like Brock Bowers, who are still there. And Bowers is one of, if not the best player in college football along with Marvin Harrison Jr.
“So, all that being said, Georgia is not going anywhere. So they had originally scheduled Oklahoma and they’re nonconference this year. And that game went away because Oklahoma is going to move into the SEC next year. OK, so now their schedule is — I hate to say like, trash — it’s not trash, it’s really soft. It’s so hard for me to tell you that I think Michigan can be the one that supplants Georgia because Michigan doesn’t play with the blueprint that Georgia, in the event they have struggled or even been beat in the last two years, it’s been a very similar style of team. It was Alabama who could really throw it with Jameson Williams and Bryce Young, and it was Ohio State this last year that could really throw it with C.J. Stroud and Marvin Harrison Jr. That’s not Michigan.
“So Michigan is going to try to just line up and go toe-to-toe, roster against roster at the line of scrimmage. Nobody has been successful doing that against Georgia in the last two years. Nobody. So when I look at teams that at least have the blueprint to go out there and supplant Georgia it would be an LSU, it would be an Ohio State.”
Perhaps he’s right, perhaps he’s wrong. They do play games for a reason, and Michigan’s enhanced focus on the Bulldogs could pay dividends — at least that’s what the Wolverines are hoping. Or, there’s also the chance that Michigan doesn’t play UGA at all –after all, Cowherd predicted an LSU-Michigan national championship game with the Tigers winning it all.
That said, it’s not like Klatt thinks of the maize and blue as a slouch. Quite the contrary. He says that Michigan does have pretty much everything going for it, but it’s just not a good matchup going against Georgia.
“I think Michigan is going to start out at No. 2 in the country,” Klatt said. “You are right to say that this might be Harbaugh’s best Michigan team. It’s his best quarterback at Michigan, there’s no doubt about that. They’re great at the offensive line. They’re really good on defense.”
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