Joel Klatt impressed with Michigan's offensive line depth

The Big Ten race should be fascinating in 2023 with Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State all featuring excellent teams, but the Michigan offensive line could prove the difference in the long run.

At least, that’s what FOX analyst Joel Klatt believes.

“One of the things that Jim Harbaugh is actually best at schematically is finding different and unique ways to run the ball, add extra gaps and force a defense to defend those extra gaps,” Klatt said. “They’re going to do that, which means Ohio State and Penn State, what’s your avenue to winning the division and representing the Big Ten East in the Big Ten Championship Game? You’ve got to stop the run. You’ve got to control the run game of Michigan if you’re going to win that side of the division. And that seems like it’s going to be very difficult to do.”

One of the reasons it’s going to be so difficult to do is that it might take quite a bit to simply get past the Michigan offensive line.

It’s a talented and deep unit.

“The thing about Michigan’s offensive line is that it’s deep,” Klatt saiid. “OK, there’s six, seven guys that you could argue are draftable players. Like NFL-caliber offensive linemen, in particular once you look at the guys that they brought in from the transfer portal.

“It leads me to believe that with their two backs, Donovan Edwards and Blake Corum, that this is going to be a team that can just bludgeon people to death. I don’t think they’re going to come out and try to be fancy and score 50 points a game. If they’re going to get to 50 it’s going to be the old fashioned way and they’re just going to hammer away with the run game at the entire Big Ten schedule.”

Taking a further step back and looking at the Big Ten schedule, Klatt sees plenty of reason to think the Michigan run game will be able to kick it into high gear well before the games against Ohio State and Penn State arrive later in the season.

And that’s a scary thought, given how good Edwards and Corum were a year ago behind the Michigan offensive line.

“Now their schedule, in particular early, is not very difficult, so that run game is going to get its momentum early,” Klatt said. “I think you’re going to see what we saw from Stanford a few years ago. Remember when Stanford, they had that intellectual brutality mantra and they would come out with a sixth offensive lineman on the field as an extra tight end, they would have a seventh offensive lineman on the field at times?

“Michigan’s going to have the ability to do that. They’re going to create extra gaps. They’re going to run power. They’re going to do all sorts of different creative things in the run game.”

It’ll all get started on Sept. 2, when Michigan opens its season with a game against East Carolina.