Michigan has the fifth-most returning production in college football for 2023 season
Michigan Wolverines football saw numerous significant contributors decide to return for the 2023 season, none more notable than senior running back Blake Corum. The Maize and Blue won a program-record 13 games in 2022 but return most of their production and appear well-positioned for another run this coming fall.
According to ESPN.com, Michigan brings back 81 percent of its production, the fifth-most in the FBS. The Wolverines have 84 percent of their offensive production (fourth) and 78 percent of their defensive production (16th) returning.
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No. 1 Florida State, No. 2 Kansas, No. 3 FAU and No. 4 Wyoming are the only schools ahead of Michigan in returning production. The Maize and Blue are the highest-ranked in the Big Ten, with Rutgers in second at No. 23. Michigan also brings back much more than the three other College Football Playoff teams from 2022, ahead of Ohio State (48th), Georgia (80th) and TCU (118th).
Michigan is set to bring back 14 players that started at least half of the Wolverines’ games in 2022 (six offense and eight defense).
The offensive side of the ball is highlighted by Corum, junior quarterback J.J. McCarthy and a duo of guards — graduate Trevor Keegan and senior Zak Zinter — who were on the team’s back-to-back Joe Moore Award winning groups the past two seasons. Notable returnees on defense are senior defensive tackle Kris Jenkins, junior linebacker Junior Colson, graduate nickel back Mike Sainristil and junior safety Rod Moore.
The site’s Bill Connelly explained what returning the amount of production that Michigan does means for the Wolverines.
“On average, teams returning at least 80 percent of production improve by about 5.8 adjusted points per game in the following season’s SP+ ratings,” Connelly wrote. “That’s a pretty significant bump! For a team ranked 25th in SP+ last year, adding 5.8 points to its rating would have bumped it to 10th. And in the past two seasons that weren’t majorly impacted by a pandemic (2019 and 2022), the average improvement for teams at 80 percent or higher is 6.8 points.”
That makes Michigan one of the better bets to be improved this season, even though the Wolverines finished last campaign ranked No. 3 in Connelly’s SP+ metric.
“It’s pretty jarring to see a team that made the CFP one year also rank in the top five in returning production the next,” Connelly wrote.
“The Wolverines are projected to return quarterback J.J. McCarthy, running back and Heisman hopeful Blake Corum and nine of their 12 defenders with 400-plus snaps. Plus, [Michigan head coach] Jim Harbaugh made deft use of the portal, adding reinforcements to both the linebacking corps and an already-awesome offensive line.
“Both Ohio State and Penn State enter 2023 with hopes of preventing a third straight Big Ten title for Michigan, but they’ll have to clear a really high bar.”
Connelly revealed his formula for determining both offensive and defensive percentages.
Here are the weights for offense:
• Percent of returning WR/TE receiving yards: 24 percent of the overall number
• Percent of returning QB passing yards: 23 percent
• Percent of returning OL snaps: 47 percent
• Percent of returning RB rushing yards: 6 percent
And the weights for defense:
• Percent of returning tackles: 70 percent
• Percent of returning passes defensed: 14 percent
• Percent of returning tackles for loss: 12 percent
• Percent of returning sacks: 4 percent
