Kyle Whittingham and his Michigan Football coaching staff are being forced to answer tough questions quickly. Here are 5 questions they’ll need to answer soon:
There’s no doubt it has been a whirlwind first few weeks on the job for new head Michigan football coach Kyle Whittingham. By all accounts he has done an admirable job. However, there are more than a few imperative questions he will not only need to identify but resolve in incredibly short order.
Here are five questions the new staff will need to answer quickly.
Can they keep the roster intact?
This is easily question No. 1 for me. In the portal era where no one is in charge and tampering runs rampant, Michigan could have very easily lost half its roster. As of this writing, there are 20 Wolverines in the portal. However, not all are assured to leave Ann Arbor. Yesterday, Zeke Berry (who had been in the portal) announced he would return for the 2026 season — Jake Guarnera also announced similar news last night.
Other players like Cole Sullivan and Andrew Sprague are being heavily pursued by the new staff in order to retain them. The Wolverines had the youngest team in the Big Ten last season, so roster continuity will be key to their success or lack thereof in 2026. Whittingham will need to be active to keep others players out of the portal as well as to reel back in those who have already entered.
Can they establish trust with the players after just being burned?
Establishing trust sounds simple, but it tends to be done over time. For Whittingham and the new staff, time is the one luxury they don’t have. Establishing trust in such a short amount of time can be incredibly difficult.
Fortunately, Whittingham has given no reason not to be trusted over his illustrious career. A future Hall-of-Famer, he has not had a single noteworthy scandal himself and was a pillar of the Salt Lake City community for two decades. For the players who felt burned by Sherrone Moore and the circumstances surrounding his exit, Whittingham was the perfect hire to establish trust quickly.
Can they identify the strengths and weaknesses of the roster without ever coaching a game or practice?
This is arguably the toughest question to answer. Not only does the new staff need to identify talent in the portal, but they also need to identify talent at home. The outgoing staff was intimately familiar with the players on Michigan’s roster. However, with so little staff retention, the new coaches have had to go through film to figure out what they have in each player.
When you were a full-time coach at another university just a month ago and are just meeting every single player, it’s incredibly difficult.
Can they attract portal talent to Ann Arbor despite being there for less than a month?
A decade ago, this would have been significantly harder. It’s tough to sell players on tradition, facilities, fit and more when you’ve barely been on campus yourself. But in the NIL era, this is a bit easier since money talks. That said, it’s still a tough sell to get a player to transfer to a school that just went through a scandal and lost their head coach in the way it did. Michigan will surely need more than a few incoming transfers to fill out the roster, so the coaching staff may need to get creative here.
Can they grasp how Michigan’s academic requirements and NIL budget factor into recruitment on the fly?
One thing we can still give credit to Sherrone Moore was his ability to get Michigan up to speed with NIL. Bryce Underwood flipping from LSU to Michigan should be all you need to know about that. However, the University of Michigan has surprisingly stringent requirements when it comes to incoming transfers. It’s been difficult for coaches of various sports to bring in juniors or seniors due to academic requirements. Look no further than the last few years of the Juwan Howard era for proof.
For Whittingham, he may or may not have experienced this at Utah. If he hasn’t, he’ll need to quickly learn and grasp the hurdle that has been placed in his way.
Category: General Sports
