'You have to work harder than you've worked before ... we're obligated to do it again': Best quotes from 'Michigan Made'

Michigan Wolverines football released episode one of the 2024 version of ‘Michigan Made,’ a video series that takes fans behind the scenes as the team prepares to defend their national championship. Below are the best quotes from the first episode, which focuses on the head-coach transition from Jim Harbaugh to Sherrone Moore, the Wolverines having a target on their back and more.

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Looking back at last season’s national championship

Senior RB Donovan Edwards: “I think it’s just amazing, the fact that we are national champions.”

Junior DT Kenneth Grant: “What comes to mind is just being on top.”

Junior CB Will Johnson: “All the work we put in last year and just a lot of joy.”

Junior TE Colston Loveland: “Day by day, rep by rep. Just so happy we got that done.”

Edwards: Everything that’s going on now is, can we do it again?”

Sophomore WR Semaj Morgan: “As I look back to last season and the championship, I just feel like I want to be on a team like that forever. We’re just gonna prepare how we prepare. We were just all on one page last year, and that really kept us going.”

Junior DT Mason Graham: “I feel like everyone just came closer together, and just Michigan vs. everybody was really exemplified, especially in those Penn State, Ohio State, Rose Bowl games. I feel like all the work we put in, especially last year, it was just everything coming true — all of our dreams, all of our goals.”

Junior LB Ernest Hausmann: “It’s still surreal to this day. When you think about it, it’s just like, wow, we won a national championship.”

Loveland: “Just wouldn’t want to be out there with any other team, any other coaches. It was like the perfect ending to everything we worked hard for.”

Johnson: “That’s like a dream come true. You never can picture yourself doing something like that. I was trying to soak it all in as much as I could.”

Grant: “The next day, that feeling was crazy. It was just like, ‘Wow, we did that.’ Everyone just kept saying that on the way home, like, ‘Wow, we just did that.'”

Graduate S Makari Paige: “Grateful for that team, grateful for the coaches and for everything that we put in.”

Junior WR Tyler Morris: “I look back at it now, and I wouldn’t say I get so emotional, but it’s kinda just motivation, I guess, to get back there.”

Graham: “It was just a great team, and that’s what a team should be. It’s why the emotions come when talking about that.”

Edwards: “The obligation has been completed, you know, so why can’t we go do it again?”

Head coach Sherrone Moore on being the successor to Jim Harbaugh

Sherrone Moore: “Life since becoming the head coach has been fun, has been amazing, has been busy. It keeps you on your toes. Like Coach [Jim Harbaugh] always used to say, you always gotta keep your knees bent, you never know what’s going to come. It’s been exciting, though, and it’s an extreme blessing to be a head coach here.

“For me to continue to this journey here at the University of Michigan has been nothing short of amazing. I love this place. This place, I consider home. I’ve said it many times — I hope whenever it’s said and done that people call me a ‘Michigan man.’ I just come in here and enjoy every single moment of it.”

Junior QB Alex Orji: “If it would’ve been anybody else, it wouldn’t have felt right. That’s our guy, that’s a Michigan man. That’s a guy that went from tight ends to O-line to O.C. to head coach. He earned everything that he’s done. He’s family.”

Michigan’s team culture remaining intact despite coach/player changes

Grant: “Maybe the people have changed, but the culture certainly hasn’t changed.”

Morris: “I think just getting everybody to buy in and everybody to be on the same page, that’s what’s going to get us to where we need to be.”

Moore: “The No. 1 goal is for us to uphold what we’ve built here and continue to do that.”

Michigan’s goals for 2024

Grant: “The bar is never set. I mean, it only keeps getting higher and higher. There’s no limit to [our] success.”

Edwards: “It starts between the white lines every single day — the blue jerseys versus the white jerseys. We’re building a callous every single day to be hard-working, blue-collar Michigan guys.”

Moore: “I just want to get better every week. We all know what our end goals are and where we want to be every year.”

Johnson: “We do that by building the foundation now and just being one. And I think that’s what we’re trying to do right now.”

Grant: “I feel like we’re being chased, definitely, because everyone is trying to do what we’re doing. And we just gotta keep doing what we’re doing but just get better at it.”

Edwards: “You have to work harder than you’ve worked before, because you know that you have a target on your back now. We’re obligated to do it again.”