Michigan’s ceiling this year is limited due to botched QB situation

The forward pass in football was finally permitted in 1906.

Someone please tell Michigan.

All kidding aside, the Wolverines had an elite quarterback in JJ McCarthy last season as he led them to a national championship but Michigan seemingly had no serious answer for a post-McCarthy world.

Perhaps former coach Jim Harbaugh, despite his effusive praise of McCarthy, and the current staff figured McCarthy might stay for another year. Perhaps he was unexpectedly too good for the Wolverines in 2023 before becoming a first-round NFL Draft pick.

Perhaps Harbaugh knew for a while he was headed back to the NFL and left the quarterback situation to someone else – mainly Sherrone Moore – to figure out.

The numbers are staggering: In Michigan’s loss to Washington over the weekend, the Wolverines threw it 25 times for just 113 yards. Michigan went down 24-3 at halftime to Texas and basically was forced to throw the ball more against the Longhorns.

So far this season, Michigan has thrown for 690 yards in six games. The Wolverines haven’t scored more than 30 points in a single contest. They scored in the 20s in close wins over Arkansas State, USC and Minnesota.

Opponents have thrown for 1,559 yards so far this season and have double the passing touchdowns. Tight end Colston Loveland has twice as many catches and three times as many receiving yards than any wide receiver on the team.

In five games, Michigan’s leading receiver Semaj Morgan has 13 catches for 78 total yards and one touchdown. Running back Donovan Edwards has more catches than any other receiver.

Former walk-on Davis Warren started the season at quarterback but he’s thrown two touchdowns and six interceptions thus far. He was replaced by former three-star Alex Orji, who is completing just 53.5 percent of his passes.

The quarterback situation has been so dire in Ann Arbor that millionaire alum Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports has offered massive amounts of NIL money to get an elite QB every year and said in recent days that he’s personally talked with Moore about this.

Jack Tuttle, originally in the same recruiting class as Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields, was called on in the Washington game and he finished 10 of 18 for 98 yards with a touchdown and an interception. Defensive back Zeke Berry went three of seven for 15 yards.

One wonders how Michigan ever got to this dire of a situation.

McCarthy was the lone quarterback taken in Michigan’s 2021 recruiting class. That season Cade McNamara was the starter and then the two had a quarterback competition heading into 2022. McNamara won the job, only to get hurt early on. McCarthy took over, never looked back, and then McNamara wound up transferring to Iowa.

In 2022, Michigan signed Orji and three-star Jayden Denegal but both were considered projects at the time – and still might be.

The Wolverines took no quarterback in the 2023 recruiting class, one of the best QB groups in recent memory, which featured Detroit (Mich.) Martin Luther King’s Dante Moore.

Michigan was always around that recruitment but never a top team as it looked like the five-star was going to commit to Notre Dame. But the Irish surprisingly took a pledge from CJ Carr and that turned off Moore, who ended up at UCLA before transferring to Oregon.

Four-star Jadyn Davis was the lone QB taken in the 2024 class and he reportedly traveled to Washington this past weekend but there has been an understanding he would redshirt this season. Carter Smith, the Wolverines’ 2025 commit, is wrapping up his senior season at Fort Myers (Fla.) Bishop Verot so he cannot help yet. Four-star Brady Hart is committed in the 2026 class.

Mismanagement of the transfer portal could be another insight into the Michigan quarterback situation.

The portal window opened Dec. 4 in 2023 and ran through Jan. 2 but in the early stages of that the Wolverines were engulfed in the Connor Stalions fiasco, Harbaugh’s coaching situation seemed up in the air week by week and the Wolverines were preparing for not only the Ohio State game in late November but the Big Ten championship against Iowa on Dec. 2.

After the win over the Hawkeyes, Michigan turned to College Football Playoff prep as somewhere in Harbaugh’s mind a return to the NFL had to be in the cards. After winning it all, McCarthy announced he was leaving for the NFL Draft on Jan. 14 followed by Harbaugh’s move to the Los Angeles Chargers on Jan. 24.

Michigan took only eight players in the portal; no quarterback.

There were elite quarterbacks in the portal including five-star Julian Sayin, who once was very high on the Wolverines early in his recruitment. Cam Ward was looking for a new home. Moore is from Detroit. Maalik Murphy and Kyle McCord among others were in the cards. Sam Leavitt was at Michigan State before leaving for Arizona State.

Michigan missed opportunities along the way. The coaching staff might have been short-sighted on McCarthy’s NFL future – and how fast that would come.

And now the Wolverines are stuck for this season. And does it get markedly better next year unless they hit the transfer portal?

This is definitely a crossroads Moore has to address early in his tenure as the most important position in all of sports is all for naught in Ann Arbor right now.