ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Sometimes, in life, you just have to face reality. For Kyle Whittingham, that reality is that nothing is changing for or getting better; for Michigan football, it's that the Kyle Whittingham era should come to an end.
Now, not later.
Sure, the 66-year-old head coach spent 21 years overseeing Utah, and that was mostly a success. But his single season in Ann Arbor, even through nine games, just isn't working out. In fairness, it wasn't really working out after just the first game, but it was worth waiting to see what would happen. And what has happened is that the offense has cratered, and it's not getting better. While switching from Bryce Underwood to Tommy Carr had immediate dividends with a win over Penn State, and Carr was excellent
against Rutgers, he was not in the losses to Rutgers and Michigan State. Part of Whittingham's charge in taking over the Wolverines was to fix the pass game, and numerically, the pass game is on track, between the two quarterbacks, to be worse than it was last year. And the run game has fallen off a cliff. The offensive line went from being Joe Moore Award semifinalists to perhaps the worst outfit that has ever taken the field at The Big House.
And yet, despite having the highest-paid offensive coordinator across all of football -- not just college football, but all of football -- in Jason Beck, there have been no improvements of any kind, only sharp declines. Michigan currently has the No. 132 offense in the country, the No. 125 passing offense, the 109th rushing offense, and the No. 126 scoring offense. And it had its worst outing of the year against a Michigan State defense boasting a litany of backups and players that wouldn't even sniff the Michigan roster.
Whittingham's mixture of obliviousness and reluctance to fire Beck has sunk his Michigan tenure like a millstone. And that should come with immediate consequences.
Here's what he said when asked about moving on from Beck on Saturday night after the loss to MSU:
"Not right now. As I'm sitting here at this podium, no," Whittingham said. "But at some point we've got to have results. I mean, it's a result-driven business. And it's a bottom-line business. And we're going to die with everything after the season and determine what the best course of action is. But not right here, right now."
Several teams across college football have fired their offensive coordinators midseason. Oregon did weeks ago, when it had the 42nd-ranked offense in the country (it's now 37th). Nebraska fired Dana Holgorsen last week despite having the 34th-ranked offense. And yet, despite the Wolverine offense being near the bottom of every statistical metric possible, Whittingham continues to stick with Beck, even with the meat of the schedule coming up these final weeks. And that should be enough to cost him his job.
Now, not later.
If it wasn't a stubborn reluctance that's held him back, his seeming obliviousness should seal the deal for the powers that be. His postgame answer on why he's confident the offense will be fixed highlights a disconnection from the reality he's living in.
"When you look down the road, the recruiting class we put together for the '27 class, we feel really good about," Whittingham said. "We've got portal season coming up in a month and a half, two months. And just continue to build the depth and the talent level. Just continue to add to what we've got."
For all of the offseason talk about how the scheme would be subservient to the players' talents, Whittingham's inherited roster featured a bunch of four- and five-stars who have already shown they are capable of more than this. Nearly all, if not all, of the starters would be able to start at Power Four schools across the country. The defunct Sherrone Moore regime was able to get more out of a freshman version of Bryce Underwood than Whittingham and Beck have. Moore's tenure saw Michigan win a bunch of games close, as Whittingham's has, but you could at least look at the team and see an identity -- one of toughness in the trenches. While it didn't always equate to wins, it was why the Wolverines were able to beat teams like Ohio State and Alabama in 2024, and go 9-3 in 2025.
Whittingham's Utah teams were reportedly built on the same principles, and yet, the maize and blue got bullied by a team with an astounding five returning defensive starters from its season opener. MSU had lost six straight games, five in Big Ten play, and yet, it got its second conference win in two years (the only win last year was in the season finale vs. Maryland, and its fifth in three years. MSU was allowing over 400 yards per game, no matter the opponent, and yet, Michigan couldn't crack 200 on Saturday.
Sure, the defense under Jay Hill has been stellar, coming in after Saturday as the No. 4 defense in the country (down from third before MSU -- which is an indictment on how Michigan played, given that the Spartans still have the worst offense in the Big Ten, statistically), and has made improvements across the board compared to Wink Martindale, despite not having star players like Mason Graham, Kenneth Grant, Derrick Moore, Jimmy Rolder, Ernest Hausmann, or Jaishawn Barham on the roster. A lapse like Saturday is more commendable when you recognize that MSU scored five times, but none were touchdowns, and that the Wolverines haven't allowed a touchdown in regulation at The Big House the past two weeks.
But the offense is far worse in every single major statistical category than it was last year, and it's not much different, but worse in key categories than the moribund 2024 offense. Here's what each looked like, with the worst stat among the three-year stretch bolded.
In terms of passing and rushing touchdowns, Beck gets an incomplete as there are still three guaranteed games remaining compared to having 13 games each of the past two seasons. But the sharp decline from last year's offense by a coordinator who had the No. 4 offense last year and is the highest-paid OC in football shapes the picture that he's not getting any better. Saturday was proof that games like Rutgers and the second half of Penn State are outliers -- not signs of improvement. In fact, Michigan's rushing yard average per game last year was 201.2, and Beck's outfit has eclipsed that number once in 2026 -- by one yard against the Nittany Lions. And this is despite having mostly the same cast of characters in the running back room and across the offensive line.
Whittingham should have fired Beck weeks ago. His reticence to do so, mixed with his inability to apparently see the forest from the trees, based on his press conference answers (this also includes his insistence that the team was just a few plays away from being undefeated after losing to Indiana a few short weeks ago), should cost him his job.
Now, not later.
"This falls on me. I'm not hiding from that at all," Whittingham said. "If anything happens, it's got my name on it. And so we'll be back at work tomorrow. It doesn't get any easier."
No, it doesn't. Michigan is in danger of not making a bowl game for the first time since the shortened 2020 COVID season, and the second time since Brady Hoke's final year in 2014. Hoke was fired for having a similarly bad offense, but even his was better than Beck's, having scored 20.9 points per game compared to 19.6, and averaging 333 yards compared to 302.6.
Whittingham and Beck's buyouts are prohibitive, with the former's coming in around $24.6 million and the latter around $9 million. But the brand, just three years removed from a three-year College Football Playoff run and national championship, is depreciating greatly as weeks go by. The fact that Michigan has a lame duck athletic director and university president shouldn't stop the powers that be from rectifying that and making an immediate change.
If the Wolverines are serious about football, they can't afford to wait. College football is changing, and Whittingham wasn't hired to oversee a rebuild as much as he was to steward a program mired in off-field embarrassment while maintaining, if not elevating, the standard of play on the field. He's failed in those regards, even if he doesn't have the scandal that Sherrone Moore had. Because the product on the field is so poor, it's causing the Michigan brand to suffer mightily. If the ship isn't righted immediately, while there's still a roster it could salvage, and while the striking is hot without a wide array of vacancies across the sport, then Michigan can count on wandering through the wilderness like USC and Texas had for over a decade before they each improved, or like Florida and Auburn have been for about as long.
It's simple: Beck has to go, and should have been let go weeks ago, before a quarterback change was even necessary. Whittingham could have bought some time and goodwill, but he now deserves neither. And for that, he should be relieved of his head coaching duties in Ann Arbor.
Now, not later.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Michigan must fire Kyle Whittingham immediately | Opinion
