Michigan football offseason offensive preparation has already begun
Michigan is only a month and change away from its first undisputed football championship since 1948, but head coach Sherrone Moore and his staff are already preparing for next season. Finding a quarterback is step one — frankly, and as expected, that’s got to be a priority given the inexperience returning at the position — but offensive coordinator Kirk Campbell is also looking for other ways to improve.
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Campbell has been poring over film of past Michigan teams, other collegiate teams (distant past and more recent), and one NFL team “down the road” for ideas.
Campbell was watching a Detroit Lions game this year when he noticed offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, one of the best minds in the game, using a play Michigan ran against Alabama. He was flattered, especially since he’d been dissecting their film looking for his own ideas.
“I think they do an outstanding job of complementing the quarterback [Jared Goff],” Campbell said. “They can run the football, which we love to do. They play action pass, and they do it in creative ways. There are plays that when I watch them, we took them from them, and it looks like they might be studying us on the back end because it looks like a play we just ran in the Rose Bowl. I saw them run some of that stuff in there. That’s kind of flattering.
“The Lions are someone I do a deep dive on. We watch every single play of them. I think they do an outstanding job. Other teams … a good handful. And listen, it might not be this year, and it might go back to 2013, 2010, but we get Phil Bromley searching for footage. If a team had a good idea, we need to find it and see if it fits us.”
More than anything, though, they need to continue to self-assess, see what was successful and what wasn’t, and then adapt to the new personnel. There will be plenty of it without former Michigan receivers Cornelius Johnson and Roman Wilson, quarterback J.J. McCarthy, running back Blake Corum and the outstanding linemen who left, but there is talent coming back, too.
“When we go back through all the tapes — we’ll go back through cutups, and that’s actually what I’m doing right now,” Campbell said last week. “Assessing what did we do well, what did we do not so well, what can we do better. Just because we did something not so well doesn’t mean it was a bad idea or a bad play.”
But it’s also about what fits them and their talent level, Campbell continued.
“We talk about a guy like Donovan Edwards, Colston Loveland making sure we have enough ammo in the season so we can put those guys in great situations,” he said. “Because it’s players, not plays lots of times. How can we get [Michigan sophomore receiver] Semaj Morgan the ball?
“It’s finding those things and then hey, you’ve got to find new ideas. Studying NFL teams; studying other successful teams in college football. We may add a thing or two. We’re kind of assessing the season, assessing where we need to go, and assessing our roster.”
There’s plenty of talent on it, he said, and no excuses in the building. Moore made that clear at the first meeting, telling his returning Michigan players championships have been and will remain the expectation. They’ve already gotten to work on both sides of the ball, offense getting a head start with the new coaches in place.
