ANN ARBOR, Mich. – There’s a lot of excitement heading into the 2024 college football season for your reigning, defending national champion Michigan Wolverines.
Team 145 seems to have quiet confidence as they look forward to what’s next in the program while celebrating its success and the legacy that Team 144 left behind.
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Yes, the Wolverines lost many players and coaches on both sides of the ball.
Not to mention the new landscape of the Big Ten Conference with the addition of the Oregon Ducks, the USC Trojans, the UCLA Bruins, and the Washington Huskies, college football is why pundits are looking past the men in maize.
The Wolverines are ranked to finish fourth in the Big Ten behind the Ohio State Buckeyes, Oregon, and Penn State.
They’re the lowest-ranked defending national champions since the 2011 Auburn Tigers, ranked No. 23 ahead of the season that year.
They also have the 18th hardest schedule in the nation and the sixth hardest in the conference while being the No. 9 ranked team ahead of their season opener when they’ll play host to the Fresno State Bulldogs inside the Big House in Ann Arbor at 7:30 p.m.
With all of that in mind, the team, with all of its departures from teammates to coaches, everyone involved with the defending national champions feels they have the tools to repeat as they have yet again another top-notch defense and a secret weapon that has yet to be revealed.
A statement like that sounds blasphemous, but the team has standouts like CFP Defensive MVP Will Johnson, Mason Graham, Makari Paige, and Kenneth Grant, to name a few.
“I expect a lot from this team,” said team captain Rod Moore. “We have a great schedule and great opponents, and I expect us to do what we did last year and go back-to-back.”
Semaj Morgan, Tyler Morris, Kalel Mullings, Colston Loveland and Donovan Edwards will play on the offensive side of the ball
But there’s one guy who has yet to be named who carries the Wolverines’ success on his broad shoulders, and that’s quarterback Alex Orji.
Yes, Orji has completed one pass attempt for five yards in two seasons for the men in maize; coming into 2024, he’s toted the rock for 123 yards and three touchdowns.
He didn’t start at the quarterback position until his junior year in high school, but as a freshman, he was routing up defenders while lining up outside the lines as a wide receiver, which means his footwork is impeccable.
During his sophomore year in high school, he resembled his older brother’s (Anfernee Orji) teammate for the New Orleans Saints in Taysom Hill, as he was all over the field, but he wasn’t considered a duel-threat quarterback just yet.
“For a long time, It was always try to, you know, flip that script, and then it became kind of, you know, became me embracing the fact that I’m athletic, strong, and that I’m a big guy and that I’m a Black quarterback. It wasn’t easy to embrace that but through a bit of maturation I think that it took time to get to that point and with Michigan and recruitment from everybody it was never I mean you can’t ignore it. It’s an elephant in the room. They always talked to me about how they saw me playing and how they saw my abilities fitting into the scheme. A different scheme or whatever it may have been, and now having had coach Kirk Campbell. You know everything that he does is going to come to light on the field.”
Alex Orji
The 6′3″ 235 pound quarterback resembles something you’d see from a fictional movie.
With his build and athleticism alongside the wizardry of Campbell (Offensive Coordniator) Orji’s ceiling could reach astronomical heights which could bring the Wolverines back to the mountain top in Atlanta in 2025.
Throughout the offseason, players have told anyone who would listen that Campbell is opening up the offense, leading to numerous touchdown passes in practice and during scrimmages against the nation’s top defense for Orji., with Orji’s acclamation into the new-look offense, don’t be surprised if he’s the worst-kept
So, with Orji’s acclamation into the new-look offense, don’t be surprised that he’s the worst-kept secret in the program during their quest to go back-to-back.