Michigan Football: Key starter appears to be out with injury

The injury report has been pretty good for Michigan football but there is one possible injury that isn’t ideal heading into Saturday’s opener. 

We are now just over 24 hours away from Michigan football‘s season opener against Western Michigan and it’s about time.

The Maize and Blue will take the field in front of 100,000-plus fans at the Big House and it’s going to be awesome to see.

But according to some Twitter detective work, it looks like Michigan football could be without a starter on the offensive line on Saturday.

There have been rumors about an injury to a key offensive lineman and now it appears that it could be to Zak Zinter — the guy called Michigan’s best offensive player this offseason.

As you can see in the tweet, it’s Cade McNamara and the offensive starters taking a snap against the defense. Everything seems normal but if you look at right guard, Chuck Filiaga is where Zinter should be and it’s led some to assume he won’t play Saturday.

Now, is it possible that Zinter just missed that practice or time in practice? Sure. But there has been chatter about it and this seems to be another clue.

I doubt it’s a serious injury. But his status for Saturday certainly seems in doubt which is probably why Harbaugh didn’t announce the starting offensive line this week.

More: 10 most important Wolverines for 2021 

We’ll have to wait to see the full depth chart, but here’s our best guess heading into Western Michigan.

Around the Big Ten

Nebraska and Illinois opened conference play last weekend and Thursday night, Ohio State scored a 45-31 win over Minnesota. C.J. Stroud started slow but finished with four touchdowns and just under 300 yards passing.

Ohio State’s defense might be vulnerable but the offense looks about as good as any in the country. The collection of skill guys on offense is incredible.

And while it’s not really Big Ten related, Joe Milton did make his first start for Tennessee last night.

The Vols defeated Bowling Green and Milton started hot, completing 8-of-9 passes, yet he finished completing just 11-of-23 passes for 140 yards as well as a touchdown. He did score two rushing touchdowns and ran for 44 yards but it wasn’t an impressive debut.

Not that we are rooting for Milton to fail, but I don’t think Michigan football fans would have been happy seeing him go off for 300 yards in his opener. Look at the reaction to Zach Charbonnet.

With McNamara ready to take over the job as starting quarterback for Michigan and J.J. McCarthy waiting in the wings, the transfer was the right move for everyone involved. Yet, that doesn’t mean that will stop the comparison fans will make between former U-M quarterbacks.