Joel Klatt believes it is ‘panic time’ for Michigan football

Joel Klatt is sounding the alarm bells for Michigan football. With the Wolverines on their third quarterback of the season and coming off of back-to-back losses, the FOX Sports analyst believes it’s officially time to panic.

It’s been a long fall from the top for Michigan after winning the national title a year ago, but we’ve clearly seen that this is not the same team without coach Jim Harbaugh and quarterback JJ McCarthy. As new coach Sherrone Moore struggles to get things going in his first season, Klatt questioned not only the present of the program, but also the future.

“I think that this is panic time,” Klatt said. “Michigan is in a dire spot right now, not only this season, but maybe even looking forward. The obvious is that they’re getting no contribution from the quarterback position. They’re getting no contribution from the passing game. They’re 129th right now in passing offense. That’s just not gonna cut it. Their turnovers are up. They don’t convert on third down. It’s far too predictable, their offense.

“…They’re doing some quality things in the run game, but they’re not throwing the football well enough to win. Then you compound that with the fact that they have turned the ball over this year far more than they did a year ago, and it’s panic time because this offense is not anywhere close right now.”

Klatt continued by criticizing the Wolverines for not looking to the transfer portal to replace McCarthy at the quarterback position. Instead, he believes they “overvalued” the players that they had returning on their own roster in Davis Warren, Alex Orji and Jack Tuttle.

All three have now gotten their various chances to play after Warren began the year as the starter. None of them have been able to inspire any confidence in the offense. The result has been one of the worst passing attack in the country and Klatt again pointed to what the Wolverines didn’t do in the offseason to prepare.

“They overvalued the quarterback position, they overvalued the wide receiver position because they didn’t address that,” Klatt said. “Remember, in this day and age of college football, you can address areas of needs. Even really good teams have done this. Even some of the best teams in the country have done this.

“…Michigan, maybe they didn’t have enough time to do so and that’s fair because of the coaching change of when Jim Harbaugh left and when Sherrone Moore became the head coach. But the bottom line is, they did not accurately evaluate their own position groups on their roster and they overvalued them. When you do that, man, it doesn’t work out. Now we get to a position where the play at those positions is just not good enough.”