NFL draft should have killed one Michigan football narrative. Here's why it may still exist

A look of pride flashed across Jim Harbaugh’s face on the second night of the NFL draft. He had just seen bunch of his former Michigan football players selected in the first three rounds.

“It got emotional for me," the new Los Angeles Chargers’ coach said three time zones away. "The little hairs on the arm were standing up.”

He then grabbed the lapels of his navy-blue blazer, peeling it open to show the back lining, which was imprinted with an assortment of Michigan emblems.

“Those are my guys,” he continued.

Among the seven Wolverines chosen the first two days were quarterback J.J. McCarthy and receiver Roman Wilson — two stars of the national championship team who, in theory, should have helped squash the narrative concerning the program’s shortcomings at developing top-flight talent specializing in the passing game.

Up until last weekend, the draft record at Michigan under Harbaugh validated that common perception. After all, only two offensive skill players coached by Harbaugh — receivers Amara Darboh in 2017 and Nico Collins in 2021 — were chosen within the first three rounds before McCarthy, running back Blake Corum and Wilson were taken with the 10th, 83rd and 84th picks last week. Had Harbaugh still been Michigan’s coach, he could have pointed to their selections as proof that Ann Arbor isn’t the wasteland for quarterbacks and wideouts that outsiders have portrayed it to be.

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In fact, coming out of the draft, he may have been better able to sell that point more effectively than his successor, Sherrone Moore, whose most noteworthy coaching move during his four-game audition as Harbaugh’s stand-in last season was his decision to greenlight 32 straight runs in a November victory over Penn State. In the months since that bold flourish, Moore has made it clear he’s unwilling to deviate from Harbaugh’s ground-and-pound approach, which yielded 40 victories in the 43 games the Wolverines played over the past three seasons.

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“If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” he said in January.

In fact, Moore may have no other choice but to lean further into Harbaugh’s smash-mouth blueprint this fall. The absence of a proven quarterback has raised questions about the viability of Michigan’s passing game. So too has the dearth of experienced receivers, a thin position group that lost four players to the transfer portal since December.

“There is only five or six of us,” sophomore Frederick Moore noted at the end of spring.

The attrition there forced the Wolverines to seek reinforcements by bringing back wideout-cum-cornerback Amorion Walker following a 3½ month stint at Ole Miss and adding Youngstown State's C.J. Charleston to the fold on Wednesday. But those additions did nothing to negate the fact Michigan has struggled to both attract and retain blue-chip level pass catchers in recent years. Among the quartet of four-star receivers Michigan has signed out of the high school ranks since 2021, only two are set to be on the team this fall. It’s not all that surprising considering Michigan affirmed its run-first approach coming out of the doomed speed-in-space era.

But the choice in strategy has made it difficult for U-M to counteract the common viewpoint that its program is not a welcoming environment for elite quarterbacks and wideouts. In that regard, the picks of McCarthy and Wilson should have offered enough convincing evidence to suppress a narrative that dogged Michigan for years.

Then again, the positive impact of their selections may soon be mitigated if the Wolverines can’t find a way to move the ball through the air when the games begin at the end of August.

Michigan survives portal chaos

At midnight Wednesday, the most recent NCAA transfer portal window officially closed. While some players could still pop in the marketplace over the next day or so as deadline requests are processed, it seems safe to say Michigan has emerged from this fraught, anxious stretch relatively unscathed. The departures of DJ Waller Jr., a sophomore cornerback competing for a starting spot, and Jeremiah Beasley, the Belleville linebacker who just enrolled this past January, qualify as the biggest surprises. But the Wolverines didn’t suffer any debilitating losses.

Through a coaching change, a complete reorganization of the defensive staff and two separate periods when every member of the Wolverines had the opportunity to defect, Michigan kept the guts of its team intact over the first 96 days of Moore’s regime. Consider it a major victory for U-M, which managed to hold on to its Core Four: tight end Colston Loveland, cornerback Will Johnson, and its two mighty defensive tackles, Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant.

One of the secrets to Michigan’s success during its rise over the past three seasons was its uncanny ability to preserve its roster. Through the collectives supporting the program, Michigan wisely opted to funnel its NIL funds toward player retention instead of acquisition by rewarding its top contributors. Johnson said in March that the compensation offered was a major factor in preventing a major exodus.

“It was very important,” Johnson asserted.

So too was the existence of a healthy, player-led culture that has existed inside Schembechler Hall since the Wolverines began their rebound in 2021.

“The brotherhood that we have for each other,” Grant said, “is bigger than anything. ... We just try to stick together as best we can.”

In total, 10 scholarship players have exited since Harbaugh left for the Chargers in late January, which has helped ease the transition for Moore during this volatile era in college athletics.

Can Michigan remain a developmental program in transfer era?

While the attrition wasn’t substantial, there was enough of it to suggest that Michigan could have a tough time surviving as a developmental program in the age of the transfer portal.

The departures of Waller, Beasley and a pair of sophomore linebackers — Semaj Bridgeman and Hayden Moore — signal that it’s not easy to keep young reserves in the fold who yearn to start and may have opportunities to do so elsewhere at a time when there are no longer restrictions on players moving from one school to another.

The backbones of the Wolverines’ national championship squad were guys like Mike Sainristil, Michael Barrett, Kris Jenkins, Trevor Keegan, and even McCarthy — players who had to wait their turn before they became significant contributors. In fact, Sainristil, Barrett and Jenkins were three-star recruits who eventually transformed into high-level starters towards the end of their college careers. They were patient and dedicated. All of them saw the benefits last weekend, when they were among 13 Wolverines drafted into the NFL.

Michigan celebrated their selections in a tweet with a graphic that read, “Player Development U.” The social media post noted the program has produced 45 draft picks in the past five years — the most of any Big Ten school. It was a testament to Michigan’s ability to nurture pro-ready players.

But it was also a reminder that the vast majority of those chosen spent at least four years in Ann Arbor, working their way up the depth chart before making a splash. Michigan’s slow-roast model under Harbaugh was successful. Whether it is sustainable in the microwave era of unfettered transfers and NIL is the question. Moore and the Wolverines will find out soon enough.

Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him @RainerSabin.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan football takeaways: A transfer portal-sized headache dodged