Michigan’s 2026 football season was all but lost over the weekend, with the Wolverines suffering a 15-6 defeat to in-state rival Michigan State. The Spartans came to town winless in Big Ten play and dealing with their own set of struggles, but still found a way to hand Michigan its most crippling loss of the year.
It’s been slowly building over the course of the season, but with each passing week, it’s become more apparent that Kyle Whittingham and much of his coaching staff didn’t know what they
were signing up for when they were hired. The offense had been particularly troublesome (choose your own adjective), and it has resulted in offensive coordinator Jason Beck being fired on Sunday despite being one of the highest-paid assistants in the country.
Beck’s firing came too late in the year to make any sort of meaningful change, but that doesn’t mean Whittingham and those around the program were content to sit idly by and watch things continue to crumble.
When speaking with reporters at his press conference on Monday morning, Whittingham added that the efforts to right the ship have also included talks about roster retention and keeping the 2027 recruiting class together amid what’s been a highly disappointing season.
“Those conversations are already in progress,” Whittingham said of trying to get players on the roster back with the program next year. “We’ve had going back weeks and weeks personnel meetings and talking about players that we definitely need to try to keep.”
Whittingham didn’t characterize this as an admission of punting on the remaining three games, but rather that retention efforts are ramping up as the season’s winding down so as not to be a “distraction” earlier in the year. Sitting at 5-4 with games against Oregon, UCLA and Ohio State looming, the writing is on the wall that Michigan could miss a bowl game, signaling the need to get a jump on preparing for next year.
With Beck now gone, there would also be concerns about keeping the 2027 class together, particularly on offense. Most notably, four-star quarterback commit Kamden Lopati was at Utah on Saturday to watch the Utes defeat BYU in the Holy War.
Whittingham said he called every commit in the 2027 class on Sunday night amid the program’s turmoil this fall.
While it’s encouraging Whittingham still has an eye on the future, especially with this season’s team going nowhere fast, it’s fair to wonder if this effort is even worthwhile since it’s not clear whether Whittingham will be back next season. After losing to hapless Michigan State over the weekend, calls from the fan base to fire him reached a fever pitch, and Michigan should certainly consider moving on.
Michigan currently doesn’t have an athletic director set up to take over for Warde Manuel at the end of the year, and new president C. Cybele Raver doesn’t officially start until Dec. 1, a few days after the 2026 season’s conclusion and right in the middle of the prime time on the college football calendar for coaching changes. That shouldn’t (and probably wouldn’t) prevent the university’s biggest boosters or Board of Regents from taking matters into their own hands, but it is worth keeping in mind at least.
Regardless of where things end up a few weeks from now, Michigan has to start planning for what the program looks like beyond this season, and getting the ducks in a row with the roster is a good place to start.
