Michigan Football Preview 2025: Are the Wolverines True Contenders Under Sherrone Moore?

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Jim Harbaugh was gone, a whole slew of stars from the national championship team had moved on, and the schedule appeared to be - and turned out to be - a killer.

Seriously, Texas, USC, at Washington, Oregon, at Ohio State, and in the end, Alabama. All of that, and going to Indiana, turned out to be a really big deal. And going to Illinois last season was brutal, and Minnesota was really good, and that’s all before bringing up what goes into beating Michigan State.

There was a lot for new head coach Sherrone Moore and Michigan to deal with, including his own stuff with the fallout from the Connor Stalions shenanigans.

So going 8-5 was okay - once. It wasn’t great, and there weren’t any totally unforgivable losses, but now it’s time to get back up to national title contender speed.

I spent years honing my Jim Harbaugh Apologists Club bit - the whole idea is that it’s really, really hard to win lots of football games every year, even at a place like Michigan, or Ohio State, or Penn State, or Georgia - but there’s no reason why Michigan shouldn’t at least be a regular in the expanded College Football Playoff.

Winning a national title takes something magical, years of building, and a slew of breaks. That’s been the brilliance of Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, and to a lesser extent lately, Clemson in the College Football Playoff era. Keep throwing elite runs out there and see if something sticks.

There’s a difference between “there’s always next year” for the Crimson Tide and Buckeyes than it is for TCU and Washington.

Ohio State went 12-1 the year after winning the 2014 national title, and the one time it dipped below 11 wins in the CFP era was 2020, and that year it lost to Alabama in the National Championship.

These are catastrophic times in Alabama after the first year post-Nick Saban, and it went 9-3 in the regular season and should’ve been in the CFP over SMU - long explanation, but just trust me on that.

What happened to LSU in the first season after the epic 2019 national title run? It went 5-5 in 2020 and crumbled to 6-7 the year after.

So what’s Michigan going to be?

Will it be one of THOSE programs that wins no matter what, just because it’s better and more talented than all but a handful of teams in a given year, or is it one of the programs that gets nice things because it’s big and powerful, but flies first class and brags about its CLEAR membership instead of pulling up to the private jet?

Is Michigan a true player under Sherrone Moore, or not?

We’re about to find out. 

Michigan Offense Breakdown
Michigan Defense Breakdown
Season Prediction, Win Total, Keys to Season