Wolverine Digest

Joel Klatt: Biggest disappointment, two motivations for Michigan Football

Fox Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt lays out the biggest disappointment of the Wolverines' season, and two motivations for the program moving forward...

Matt Lounsberry

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Coming off a national championship, most expected Michigan to take a step back as a program following all the turnover which occurred last offseason.

However, the Wolverines fall from winning college football's grand prize to fighting tooth-and-nail for mere bowl eligibility has been disappointing, to say the least.

In a recent episode of his podcast, Fox Sports analyst Joel Klatt described what he perceives as the biggest disappointment in Michigan's season, as well as the two things that should motivate this program to close out the year.

"I don't think a loss to Oregon is actually the disappointing part of Michigan's season. A loss to Texas is not actually the disappointing part of Michigan's season. The disappointing part of their season are the losses to Washington and Illinois," Klatt said. "That's what fans will be more upset with.

"This team was never going to have a huge margin for error, so in those games against teams they needed to beat and were going to be in close games, they had to play clean. No turnovers, play well on defense, not get penalized, win the field position battle — and when they didn't, they got beat handily."

In a sobering reminder, Klatt pointed out that Michigan has gone just 3-4 in games against Power 4 competition this season. Those three victories have come by an average of 4.3 points per game, while the losses are by an average margin of 16 points per game. That's indicative of a team and program no where close to competing for anything meaningful.

"Remember, a couple of those wins could have very easily been losses for Michigan," Klatt said. "USC, Minnesota come to mind. Now, you look up and you lose to Oregon, and it's like, this is not the game that I'm disappointed in. The other ones were."

From Klatt's perspective, there's only one in-season goal that can still motivate this current Michigan team, and one other goal that should motivate the coaching staff in preparation for 2025.

"Moving forward for Michigan fans, the season comes down to two things," Klatt said. "You can spoil Ohio State's chance to win a Big Ten championship, potentially, depending on what happens in the Ohio State-Indiana game. But, that's always going to be motivation for Michigan, trying to get their fourth straight win over the Buckeyes.

"The next motivation is, you've got to turn over the roster. I know that's not motivation for the locker room, but it should be for the coaching staff. Because, the coaching staff is going to go out there and they're going to have to recruit. They're going to have to identify the players on their own roster that they need to keep, then they need to identify players on other rosters that they need to get and then they need to identify recruits that they have to have. They've got to do all of those things."

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