Chris Doering discusses Michigan's 2023 title run, how criticism galvanized the Wolverines

Michigan was on the receiving end of plenty of criticism in 2023, plenty of it earned and plenty of it probably excessive. But through it all, the Wolverines seemed to turn doubt and hate into motivation that fueled them to a 15-0 season and a national championship.

Some of this motivation was surely Jordan-esque, turning slights imagined or fair criticism into chips on shoulders as those around college football spoke out about the impermissible scouting scandal that followed Michigan. No amount of levying the cheater allegation could derail the Wolverines. On3’s Andy Staples and SEC Network analyst Chris Doering discussed how the Wolverines overcame the doubters, Doering included.

“Look what happened with Michigan, where everybody saying they’re cheaters gave them a common cause to rally around,” Staples said. “And those guys were probably kind of the right ingredients you’d want anyway, guys who weren’t necessarily superstars from the beginning but built their way into it. But yeah, they had that nice common, ‘Everybody hates us.'” 

Doering wasn’t that strident, but he admitted he doubted that Michigan could hold up in the College Football Playoff, only to be surprised. That includes by the chemistry of the group.

“I didn’t pay as much attention, obviously, with Michigan being in the Big Ten,” Doering said. “I didn’t think a ton of them, I thought they’d get exposed when they stepped out of the Big Ten. But watching them when we were all out there in Pasadena, man, it was really fun to watch one, at media day, how tight they were. They talked about that chemistry. But two, they looked like the legit kind of offensive and defensive lines you need to win a championship.”

Those lines showed up in a big way against Alabama in the Rose Bowl and against Washington in the national championship. And that inside-out mode of team building has Staples excited to see what Sherrone Moore, who oversaw that identity being forged, can do as the head coach.

Doering concurred, especially after Moore showed his mettle for leading the Wolverines during his four games as acting head coach, especially in November in some of the biggest games of the year.

“They were built from the inside out,” Staples said. “And that’s why I like the Sherrone Moore promotion, because he was such an instrumental part in building them from the inside out. When they moved him to offensive line coach is when stuff changed.”