When people don’t expect much of a change to Michigan football’s offensive prowess entering 2025, they may not realize that there’s nowhere to go but up.
The Wolverines’ passing attack under former offensive coordinator Kirk Campbell with a trio of quarterbacks (Davis Warren, Alex Orji, Jack Tuttle) had the worst yards per attempt in the country. Not the conference — the country. Averaging just 5.4 yards per passing attempt, it was literally half of the country’s leader, Ole Miss. As a result, Michigan had the No. 127 offense ranked by yards per play — brought down mostly by the ineptitude in the aerial attack, given that the rushing attack was middling, at 77th in average yards per rushing attempt.
While pundits don’t give much credit to the 2021-23 Michigan passing attacks, in the national championship year, 2023, J.J. McCarthy led the 15th-best offense by yards per attempt. It was 24th the year before and 37th in 2021. Even the lowly COVID year (with Joe Milton and Cade McNamara at the helm) was 70th — again, in the middle of the pack.
Part of it was the lackluster completion percentage. But Michigan was 61st in the country — not a terrible mark overall, but certainly numbers that pale in comparison to 2023 when J.J. McCarthy led a room that was third nationally with a completion percentage of 72%. But the mixture of mediocre completion percentage with shallow depth of field attempt-wise meant that the passing game did next to nothing to help out the offense.
Ranking offenses by 20-yard plays, Michigan was dead last, at 134th overall. It was 29th in 2023, 54th in 2022, and 44th in 2021. In 2021, Michigan had the second-most long scrimmage plays above 50 yards (though that included the run and the pass) with 17. The Wolverines were 129th last year with just two.
The maize and blue don’t have to be that explosive…
Source link : https://wolverineswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/wolverines/football/2025/07/28/michigan-football-new-offense-passing-attack-revival-2025-bryce-underwood/85414113007/
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Publish date : 2025-07-28 21:37:00
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