Kirk Campbell reveals Michigan's QB pecking order to start camp, says they'll take time deciding starter

ANN ARBOR – Michigan Wolverines offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Kirk Campbell spoke Tuesday ahead of the start of fall camp as he prepares to oversee the team’s most consequential position battle this fall.

The starting quarterback and the likely candidates to fill the role – graduate Jack Tuttle, senior Davis Warren and junior Alex Orji – hit the field on Wednesday to take a step toward winning the job. But coming off of spring ball and the offense, Campbell says that the pecking order starts by seniority before moving to merit-based adjustments throughout camp.

“We’re just going to start with the oldest down to the youngest, simple as that starting out that way,” Campell told the media on Tuesday at Schembechler Hall. “That’s a fluid operation that will change daily. We’ll make sure everybody gets the opportunity to run with the ones and we’ll evaluate it as a day-by-day process.”

With that in mind, the order starting out would be Tuttle, Davis, Orji, junior Jayden Denegal and freshman Jadyn Davis. All will get reps with the No. 1 offense, and they will evaluate and tweak from there.

This is not Campbell’s first rodeo in leading a quarterback derby. It is not even the first time he has watched it played out at Michigan. But there is a through-line in each of the battles that he thinks will apply to the 2024 Wolverines.

“Going back to 2019, this is the fourth time I’ve entered a situation that you have to decide on a starting quarterback,” Campbell said. “At Penn State [in 2019], it was Sean Clifford and Will Levis. It was DJ Mack and Hayden Wolff at Old Dominion [in 2021]. You had JJ McCarthy and Cade McNamara a couple of years ago, and now we have a plethora of guys.

“What I’ve learned from all of those is you have a deadline that you have to make a decision, and that’s the first game, or you want to depending on the season. But you don’t want to rush the decision. You’ve got to make sure you prepare those guys and if you make the decision too early, you can put yourself in a situation where halfway through the season, you’re trying to fix that thing and go in a different direction.

“You want to make sure that you take your time, you do a thorough process and evaluate each practice and meeting. Evaluate how they interact with the players and then make the best decision for the team.”

Michigan is starting fresh as it looks for a replacement to McCarthy, and it makes sense that each of the options would start on relatively level footing given that nobody truly separated themselves during spring practices.

Whatever decision gets made, it will be done with a ton of conviction. And it will not be rushed, says the Michigan playcaller.

“I think you have to be confident,” Campbell said. “You gotta prepare them all to be the starters. But when you make the decision, you gotta be confident in what you’re doing and you gotta listen, there’s no second guessing when we leave the room. We make the decision, we’re gonna go forward with it. We’re going to go. That’s how we’re gonna execute that next game, the next two games, unless an injury happens.

“As far as being also open to the possibility that it could be the wrong decision, we’re not gonna sit there and second guess ourselves. We’re gonna make a competent decision and we’re gonna be ready for it. That’s for the outside people to decide. When we make a decision, we’re confident that we made the right one.”

Michigan has a ton of different skillsets in the offense, but is waiting on someone to put it all together. They will always have some meat and potatoes aspects to the offense, but they are not going to force anything that does not fit. The offense will change depending on who is under center.

“You have this pot of an offense, and there are some things that you’re going to ask any quarterback to have to do,” Campbell said. “But then there are things that another guy might do a little bit better than if he became a starter that we would able to pull more than build that package a little bit more.

“So yes, there’ll be this finite amount of offense that is what Michigan is. That is the type of offense we’re to run. But if it’s Jack Tuttle, Davis Warren, Alex Orji, down the list, it may deviate into a smaller package into something else that would highlight and accentuate their skill sets more.”