It’s overstating it to say that Michigan winning the national title makes for three straight years where three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust has won a title. The 2021 Georgia team was much in line with the Wolverines philosophically — why try too hard through the air when the defense is so crushingly good? — but 2022 UGA didn’t have as good a defense and so it threw more often. It also picked up the tempo more, running 125 more plays (eight per game across 15 contests) than UM did this year.
Still, Michigan was extra cloud-of-dusty. It averaged 35.8 points per game, which is low for a title winner. It’s about a field goal less than even ’21 Georgia. It’s less than a point a game more than what 2018 Florida averaged, and that offense wasn’t always a work of art.
You have to go back to 2015 Alabama and Jake Coker to find a title winner at or below Michigan’s scoring average. In fact, only a few Bama title winners are below Michigan in scoring since 2009, which is as far back as CFBStats.com goes: 2015, 2011, and 2009. The ’15 team came during the process of Nick Saban trying to use Lane Kiffin to drag the offense into modern times, but the other two are firmly in the run-and-defense era of the Nicktator’s tenure.
It’s tempting to say that this year’s Michigan is what Billy Napier is trying to turn Florida into. It’s something I’m still trying to figure out, and it might be. My instinct is to say that no, he’s trying to make one of those Georgia teams since he’s off the Saban tree like Kirby Smart is, but let’s examine it a little.
Napier is like Jim Harbaugh in some ways, despite them having polar opposite personalities. Both are former quarterbacks who nonetheless prefer a power run-based attack. They try to go for complimentary football, where the offense and defense help each other out and don’t put the other in a bad spot. It’s easy to try to equate UF’s second-half runfest against Tennessee to Michigan running 32 straight times to close out its Penn State win, even if Harbaugh was suspended for that one.
Both also put a premium on evaluation and development. In Harbaugh’s case it could be somewhat due to necessity, as he’s a weird dude and also never going to equal Ohio State in recruiting. Napier seems to absolutely love scouting and development, as it’s something he spends a lot of time on.
It’s overstating it to say, as some have tried to since the title game participants were set, that the era where sheer talent matters most is over.
Michigan was, barely, still a blue-chip ratio team. The BCR, as defined by progenitor Bud Elliott, says that no team in the current era can win a national title without signing at least 50% blue chip prospects (4-stars and 5-stars) in the prior four cycles. There has also been speculation for months, including from Harbaugh himself, that the Wolverines could have as many as 20 draft picks in April. That’s a lot of talent, even if it wasn’t all recognized as such in high school.
We need to get past the covid waiver era before we can accurately assess if a new talent regime has dawned. Michigan was top five in returning production from last year, and Washington was top 25. Each had a lot of veteran players up and down the depth chart. The same was true of the other P5 team to finish the regular season undefeated, FSU.
It’s one thing to have a bunch of 21 and 22-year-olds competing against an assorted collection of 18-22-year-olds. It’s another to then sprinkle in some 23 and 24-year-olds into the mix. Washington QB Michael Penix was in his sixth year of college, technically still having been born in the 20th Century with a birthdate in May of 2000 (I said 20th Century and not 1900s, there was no Year 0).
Napier is years away from having that kind of roster given how much churn there’s been in the past couple of seasons. Many of the veterans either didn’t fit what he wants to do or didn’t pan out anyway, so there’s not a ton to be gained having fifth and sixth-year players in your third string.
But if you do want to win the extra smashy way, as Harbaugh and Napier both do, having an older team is the best way to do that.
I do think a window opened for Michigan after Urban Meyer left Ohio State. The way to defeat size and power is with size and power and speed. There are precious few coaches who truly have internalized that, and even fewer can pull it off. Meyer was one such coach, and sure enough, he never lost to Harbaugh. Saban and Smart are another such two, though Saban is done now as of yesterday.
Napier is… well, the jury is out. He has recruited some players like Tre Wilson, Aidan Mizell, and ’24 class signee Jerrae Hawkins, and the theme of last year’s offseason workout regime was getting the team to be faster. The upshot of the latter was that the team suffered in the power department, or so Pricely Umanmielen has said publicly, and then you also had offensive linemen and interior D-linemen with large guts who couldn’t move quickly. It was a mess, and no wonder both the S&C coach and nutritionist positions have turned over.
I think there was also a window for Michigan here because Alabama’s quarterback and skill position recruiting and development fell off after around 2019 or so, and Georgia finally lost enough top talent to fall back to earth some. I don’t know how long those conditions will persist.
And that’s why I don’t think Napier can win the Harbaugh way. The antidote to teams that want to do that already exists in the SEC, even if they weren’t at peak performance this year and big changes are ahead at Bama. Sark is doing a good job of making Texas into that too. Until and unless Florida accepts a Big Ten invite, the Gators can’t expect to repeat exactly what Michigan did this year to similar levels of success.