The Michigan Wolverines' football offense concluded the 2019 regular-season on a hot streak, and as a result has many fans excited about what the 2020 version may look like.
Head coach Jim Harbaugh has produced a few stellar offenses during his five years at U-M, but is the 2020 edition set to his best yet?
TheWolverine's Clayton Sayfie and Austin Fox provide their takes below:
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Clayton Sayfie — Sell, but hear me out
With a new starting quarterback and four new starters along the offensive line, it’s hard to argue Michigan’s offense will score more points (40.31 per game) or gain more yardage (424.9 yards per game) than it did in 2016, which stands as the best Wolverine offensive unit under head coach Jim Harbaugh.
Coupled with the fact that non-conference games have been recently eliminated from the schedule, and it’s going to be tough for U-M to beat up on lesser opponents to pad the stats.
There are, however, two main reasons for optimism that this Maize and Blue offense has a higher ceiling than 2016 and, more recently, the 2018 offense that averaged 35.15 points and 419.5 yards per contest, while notching an efficient 6.1 yards per play (best under Harbaugh). Here’s why:
• Coordinator continuity: For the first time since 2016, U-M is set to have the same coordinator — or same set of coordinators — running the offense for the second straight season.
There was quite the learning curve at the beginning of last season, considering the Wolverines transitioned from a pro-style offense to a spread attack and that most of the receiving corps was banged up last spring, not allowing them to gel with quarterback Shea Patterson and the rest of the team.
Additionally, U-M’s offense was surging toward the end of the 2019 campaign, with the unit putting up 35.7 points and 417 yards per game over the final six regular season contests, compared to 30.3 points and 388 yards per game during the first half.
Again, there’s roster turnover at key spots, but many of the playmakers at wide receiver, running back and tight end are back and should pick up where they left off at the end of last season, which leads us to our next point …
• An arsenal of weapons: Led by junior wideout Ronnie Bell, senior wide receiver Nico Collins, and fifth-year senior tight end Nick Eubanks, the receiving corps is stocked with talent and experience.
The running back room returns the top two rushers from last season in sophomore Zach Charbonnet and redshirt sophomore Hassan Haskins, brings back fifth-year senior standout Chris Evans and inserts true freshman former four-star Blake Corum.
The Wolverines are also confident at the signal-caller position with whoever wins the job, which will most likely be either Dylan McCaffrey or Joe Milton. Gattis actually said this spring he believes the team is in better hands at the skill positions than it was a year ago, even with the departures of Donovan Peoples-Jones to the NFL and Tarik Black to Texas.
"We’ll be a much better skill unit, even though we’re younger," Gattis predicted when talking to Jon Jansen on the In The Trenches podcast in April. "We just gotta be able to capitalize and make the plays that we need to make.”
Players that will help with that are a trio of sophomore wideouts — Giles Jackson, Cornelius Johnson and Mike Sainristil — that each displayed high-level potential, and “Speed In Space” last year as freshmen.
• We won’t predict the Wolverines to have the best statistical offense under Harbaugh in 2020 (assuming there’s a season), because of the schedule and the aforementioned question marks, but we won’t rule it out, and if things click the way Harbaugh, Gattis and offensive line coach Ed Warinner hope, then U-M could have an elite unit come season’s end.
Austin Fox — Sell
The best statistical offense Harbaugh has had during his time at Michigan was the 2016 crew, which averaged 424.9 yards per game and finished 58th nationally in the category.
A case could be made for U-M's 2018 unit as well, which averaged nearly an identical 419.5 yards per outing. When looking at the personnel Michigan currently possesses, there’s no question the 2020 offense has the potential to be better than both of the aforementioned squads.
Potential is the key word, however. Both redshirt junior quarterback Dylan McCaffrey and redshirt sophomore Joe Milton are loaded with potential, but have only attempted a combined 46 career passes and have very few meaningful snaps under their belts.
How quickly the new starter progresses (our money is on McCaffrey) will go a long way in determining how successful Michigan is in 2020, along with the speed at which an offensive line that lost four starters gels together.
If Michigan’s quarterback and offensive line play progress faster than expected and perform at a high level from an early juncture, the 2020 unit should absolutely be the best Harbaugh has had in Ann Arbor.
If the new signal-caller struggles and the offensive line doesn’t come together, however, then we could see a repeat of the first half of last year when the Wolverines couldn’t get much of anything going offensively under then-first-year offensive coordinator Josh Gattis.
The Maize and Blue are in phenomenal shape and have little to no question marks at every other offensive position outside of quarterback and offensive line, with running back, wide receiver and tight end all possessing experienced and proven starters.
The group of running backs led by sophomore Zach Charbonnet and redshirt sophomore Hassan Haskins should be the best Harbaugh has had at Michigan, while a receiving unit led by junior Ronnie Bell and senior Nico Collins also has a chance to be the best receiving tandem the U-M head man has had.
The tight end spot is solidified with a proven veteran in fifth-year senior in Nick Eubanks, giving the new starting quarterback a plethora of offensive skill position players to work with.
Again, though, it will be all for naught if the four new starters on the offensive line don’t gradually progress throughout the year, similar to the way a subpar U-M offensive line helped derail the 2017 season.
Our guess is that the 2020 campaign will be a tale of two halves, with the first half of the season featuring plenty of growing pains as the new quarterback and offensive line starters settle in, before developing into a stellar unit throughout the second half of the year.
This is the exact script that last year’s Michigan team followed, and even though the offense was performing at an impressive rate throughout the final five regular-season games when it averaged 38.6 points per contest, the dismal offensive showings throughout the first half still have to be taken into account.
With all that in mind, we’ll still give the 2016 and 2018 offense minimal edges over this 2020 unit, thanks to the way those two primarily hit the ground running in their respective seasons (the 2016 offense averaged 52 points per game in September, and the 2018 squad averaged 37.4 throughout the campaign's first month).
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