The quarterback conversation has dominated the headlines surrounding the Michigan Wolverines all year long, and those questions aren't going away anytime soon.
Coming off of a narrow 27-24 win over the USC Trojans, Michigan's passing offense mustered only 32 passing yards in their first Big Ten game of the season. Through four games this season, Michigan has amassed just 491 total passing yards.
Michigan is still trying to figure out what will work at quarterback here to try and re-ignite their passing game. They won't be able to replicate the same game plan they had against USC moving forward.
Related: Can the Alex Orji-led offense keep winning games for the Michigan Wolverines as they enter Big Ten play?
In the latest episode of “The Triple Option” podcast, former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer weighed in on Michigan’s chances of winning the Big Ten or reaching the College Football Playoff without improving its passing game. Meyer had much the same reaction as many of us did.
"They can’t [succeed]. There’s zero chance with that kind of balance. They got to play both quarterbacks. I said that when we were there. Alex Orji is good enough to play. He’s got to play. I think he’s a tremendous player. But, to answer your question: no. You’re going to get zero coverage every snap, and you will see that the numbers disappear. I like how rugged the Wolverines were on offense and defense, and that’s kind of a trademark of who they are, but there is zero chance unless you balance that thing up. At some point, it’s going to be nine up, and you’ll stop the run."
It is pretty fascinating that Meyer said Michigan should play both quarterbacks, being Alex Orji and Davis Warren.
I'm not sure how that works. You simply can't install the same kind of offense with both of them, in my opinion. Michigan has to pick one or the other here moving forward. It's not fair to all the other players on the roster to have this kind of bouncing back and forth game-to-game, drive-to-drive between the two.
To me, I'd stick with Orji and just roll with what you've got. The Michigan passing offense with Warren was equally as unsustainable as it is with Orji, just in a different style. With Warren under-center, the passing game was largely stagnant with one-read concepts that Warren could barely operate. To make matters worse, Warren turned the ball over multiple times in the games he did start.
You can already start to see the barebones of their installs with Alex Orji building around the QB-run game, and from there they will continue to build off of it and add more and more wrinkles to it moving forward.
This might be a hot take, but I'm also not convinced quarterback is their biggest issue this season offensively. I have bigger concerns about the offensive line and their offensive staff.
The offensive line limits an already limited offense, as they struggle to hold up in pass protection, and the team has already constrained their run game with how many blown assignments they started the season with.
They chose to roll with Warren to start and that backfired spectacularly. Now, they're back to where many of us thought they would be with rolling out the QB run game with Orji, this time four weeks into the season instead of earlier in camp or in-game.
While Urban Meyer's idea might sound like an idea worth pursuing, I just don't believe it's practical with this roster for the Michigan Wolverines.
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