Michigan Football: Will the offense actually be better in 2022?

Can Michigan football’s offense actually be better in 2022 than it was last season when it won the Big Ten championship?

It seems like we’ve heard this tune before. As a matter of fact, it seems like we’ve heard this tune many times before.

It seems like every year, Michigan football’s offense gets super hyped up to have a breakthrough year, and yet, it never quite fully lives up to expectations.

When Josh Gattis first came to Michigan in 2019, Michigan fans were rightfully excited at the time that Jim Harbaugh was able to wrestle away a Nick Saban protegé.

Josh Gattis promised to bring fresh, innovative ideas to Michigan football’s outdated 80s style of play that would result in a much more dynamic offense, with emphasis on a downfield passing attack, focusing on the receivers, thus the “speed in space” mantra was born.

Now, three years later, Josh Gattis is gone, and his goal of turning Michigan football into an aggressive attacking offense saw mixed results at best, which has frustrated the collective fanbase to no end. It’s crazy to think that Michigan’s passing attack was never elite during his time at Michigan, especially with all of the WR talent that he had during his time here.

Obviously, a lot of it had to do with QB development, or lack thereof, which inhibited various Michigan wide receivers’ ability to be super productive, but even still, the offense was never designed to be like an Alabama, Ohio State, or Oklahoma, as Michigan was (and still is) a run-first team and that was frustrating, and one can argue, was part of the reason that Michigan had failed to get over the hump in the last few seasons in key games.

It just seemed like the majority of games under Gattis, for whatever reason, Michigan’s offense played conservative and very bland, and we never got to see the offense firing on all cylinders for a full season. We saw glimpses and occasional flashes, but all too often, the end product was the same boring one-trick pony. That will have to change this season.

(Also, Jim Harbaugh hired the wrong  Alabama assistant, as Maryland HC Mike Locksley would’ve probably had Michigan in a much better spot on offense. Even though his past Maryland teams have been bad, they’ve still been dynamic and have had aggressive passing attacks and if Maryland could get their defense right and keep their most important players healthy, they’d be a real problem in the Big Ten, as they are a mini version of Ohio State, just with less talent.

Look at what Purdue did last year for reference. They had an aggressive offense as well, combined with at least an average defense, and they knocked off Little Brother and Iowa last year, and gave OSU and ND a game for a little while).

Time for the offense to really be unleashed

Now that Gattis is gone (and most people probably weren’t the biggest fans of him anyways) Michigan football is using a co-coordinator approach to the offense, with o-line coach Sherrone Moore, and QBs coach Matt Weiss both coaching one side of the offense. Sherrone will coordinate the running game, and Matt will coordinate the passing game.

So far, Matt and Sherrone have called sharing playcalling duties a ‘seamless transition’ which is really encouraging, because both have never called plays before, but there’s also going to be inevitable growing pains, as Michigan will almost assuredly not look like the dominant Michigan of last year out of the gate.

We will have to be patient in the early stages, as the Wolverines will obviously just be starting the new season, growing and improving week-by-week, and so will Sherrone and Matt. They will need time to adjust to their new roles in a live-action environment.

The great thing is the Wolverines bring back almost all of their starters on the offensive side of the ball, with Cade coming back (with JJ in his hip pocket, or vice versa) along with Ronnie Bell and the receivers, and this should help ease the transition a lot, but I’m hesitant to actually declare that Michigan’s offense will be even better in 2022, at least in the early stages.

Also, everyone has a different interpretation of better.

What does better mean to the fans? Is it about scoring more points? Do you want to see the quarterbacks throw more touchdown passes? Do you want to see the quarterback’s yards per game increase? Or maybe even more rushing yards from the running backs? What does an improved offense actually look like for Michigan in 2022?

Overall, we’ll just have to take a wait-and-see approach with the offense. On paper, Michigan has added talent at every position on offense which is a reason for excitement, but at the same time, they have first-time coordinators that have never called plays before and are expected to trot out the best offense possible.

The good thing is, if there is a temporary drop-off in the quality of the offense to begin the season, Michigan has an easy schedule to test some things out, and slowly start adding more layers to the offense.

Michigan averaged 35.8ppg last year (good for 16th in the country) so their offense was no slouch in scoring the football. They were the 15th best rushing offense in the country last year, averaging 214.4ypg on the ground. Lastly, they were the 25th best total offense in college football last year.

Will Michigan’s offense be even better in 2022? Nobody knows, but this year’s offense has the potential to be the most dominant offense for the Wolverines in at least a decade (can we please for once have a wideout have a dominant breakout season? It’s been way too long).

All you can ask for is a chance at this point, and this offense has all of the necessary pieces. The only thing that’s left is to finally put them together.

Michigan fans, what does a “better” offense look like to you? Do you think Michigan’s offense will truly breakout this season? Sound off in the comments below!