Why Bruce Feldman is coming around on Michigan football in 2022
Fox Sports sideline analyst and The Athletic college football insider Bruce Feldman believes Michigan football is much further along than it was a year ago, despite many pundits predicting the Wolverines will take a step back.
Appearing on “The Rich Eisen Show” on Friday, Feldman was asked what he thinks about the quarterback competition and ended up giving a full-throated review of the team, and why he feels like the Wolverines could be formidable in 2022.
“I think it’s better than a year ago at this time,” Feldman said. “I would say this: you have a much deeper receiving corps. At this time last year, nobody knew Ronnie Bell wasn’t going to be able to play most of the season. He’s back, but I think they are so much deeper. I talked to your guy Jim Harbaugh for a while a few weeks back, and that was one of the first things he talked about, how deep the receiving room is. They have a lot of speed. They’ll miss Hassan Haskins — I don’t think a lot of people outside of the Big Ten realize how good he was. But Corum is fast, Donovan Edwards is dynamic. They have a lot of weapons. Erick All, I think, really established himself last year at tight end.
”What’s interesting about them, having been around their players a little bit at Big Ten media days, they have a chip on their shoulder. Which is interesting because a year ago, Josh Ross, Aidan Hutchinson — you could feel them talk about they were disgusted and embarrassed about what had happened against Michigan State, the way the year played out previously. And those guys were real leaders, and I think they established a real standard there.
“If you talk to DJ Turner and Mazi Smith about — they didn’t use this word, but I felt like it sounded like — they both thought it was flukish that they beat Ohio State and won the Big Ten. Maybe some of that was the way they got mauled by Georgia in the playoff. But there is definite talent there and I think if they play with some of the passion I heard from these guys about, ‘You think that was a fluke, that was a one-off.’ If they can take that — they’ve always had enough athletes to be competitive. I think Ohio State has more, but Jim Harbaugh had a really physical team that was really good on both lines last year, right? I’m more of a believer in them now than I was probably a month ago before hearing how these guys, how they felt coming out of last year, how they took it.”
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But he also threw some cold water on his own argument.
Eisen, who absolutely eviscerated the Buckeyes for losing to his beloved Wolverines at the NFL Hall of Fame dinner earlier this month, asked Feldman how much of a hole he dug himself with the 2022 matchup coming on Nov. 26. While Feldman is optimistic about the maize and blue, he simply thinks Ohio State is better.
“Let’s say this: if you told me that Ohio State was a 10-point favorite right now, I’d be like, ‘Ugh, they’re going to cover that,’” Feldman said. “I just think C.J. Stroud and those guys, they gave credit to Oregon and Michigan for beating them, but they felt like they were not at our best. Credit to the teams that either out-coached them or out-played them on those days. But I just think this, I could be way off on Ohio State, but if you asked me right now who I think is going to win the national title, right now I’d actually say Ohio State more than Alabama.”
Of course, that was also what people thought on the morning of Nov. 27, 2021, and Michigan gave 42 reasons that wasn’t the case.
