The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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36 THE WOLVERINE ❱ FEBRUARY 2026 BY CLAYTON SAYFIE M ichigan hired new head coach Kyle Whittingham Dec. 26, making the official an- nouncement just after the team traveled to Orlando for the Citrus Bowl, and he arrived at the bowl site the next day. A coach who was slated to work his last-ever game at Utah on New Year's Eve quickly pivoted to taking a com- pletely new job as Michigan's coach at a place he hadn't even visited. The 66-year-old Whittingham met with players individually, hoping to retain the bulk of the roster, hired a staff in short or- der, poaching coaches from Utah, BYU, Boise State and elsewhere, and is now recruiting talent out of the NCAA transfer portal, which opened Jan. 2. Go, go, go. "Right now, we're drinking from a firehose here," Whitting- ham said on the "Bussin' With The Boys" podcast. "We're just getting our feet on the ground, talking about me and the staff. Brought in mostly a new staff. We had three coaches who we held over from the previous staff — outstanding foot- ball coaches. Thought that was the thing to do. They've helped bridge the gap be- tween the old and the new. "We're just trying to do what everyone else in the country is doing right now, try- ing to recruit your roster and make sure you're doing the best job of retention. In college football now, you've got to recruit your entire football team every single year. You've got to try to retain the guys you've already got on the team. You've got to go to the portal, bring in some new pieces there, and you've got to recruit your freshman class. "It's a 24/7 recruiting job, especially this time of the year, with the portal open. The portal is flooded with players. We've got close to 5,000 players in the portal right now, so it's chaos. You just try to have organized chaos as best you can." Michigan has seen over two dozen of its players enter the portal, but some have returned to the fold, including corner- back Zeke Berry and offensive linemen Jake Guarnera and Andrew Sprague. Individual meetings with players on Michigan's roster have gone well, but be- hind-the-scenes conversations between agents and other schools have been on- going for weeks. As former Michigan as- sociate head coach Biff Poggi said in late- December, "Everybody thinks the portal opens the 2nd of January. It doesn't. Deals are being done now." "One thing here at Michigan that is a little bit challenging for us right now is, until this year, there were two portal win- dows, which means you had a little safety net," Whittingham explained. "After spring ball in our situation, stick around for spring, get used to the new coach- ing staff, see how you like them, see how things go. And if you don't like it, you've got an out after spring ball, because you can jump in the portal again. "Now, there's a one-portal system, where [players] feel like they've got a gun to their head and they have to make a decision right now before they even have a chance to gather enough information to find out what we're all about with our new staff. That makes it even more challenging." INSIGHT ON DEFENSIVE SCHEME Whittingham swiped one of his former longtime assistants — Jay Hill — as his defensive coordina- tor. Hill spent the last three sea- sons as the defensive coordinator at BYU, following a long run as the head coach of Weber State from 2014-22. "Four-down front — 4-2 nickel setup, which is what 90 per- cent of the people base out of these days," Whittingham said of what the defense will look like. "It's geared toward 11-personnel [1 running back, 1 tight end]. If we go to 12-personnel [1 running back, 2 tight ends], then we go ahead and jump into a 4-3 [four linemen, three linebackers] and we substitute with the offense. But it bases out of that 4-2-5 scheme. "A lot of pressure, a lot of man cover- age. Mix in some zone pressures. A little bit of split safety look, and there you have it." Whittingham and Hill — a former cor- nerback at Utah from 1998-99 — have known each other for decades, and the trust level is high. "Jay Hill, our coordinator, I recruited him at Utah," the Michigan coach said. "He was an outstanding player there. Finished playing, wanted to become a GA, and we hired him on. Finished his GA stint, and we had a full-time spot, hired him for that and he just kept work- ing his way up through the ranks. His last three years, he was down in Provo at BYU and did a phenomenal job with their de- fense. He's from my tree and played in our scheme. "The scheme has been tweaked a little bit along the way, but the real essence of it has stayed intact." — Clayton Sayfie ❱ MICHIGAN FOOTBALL 'Drinking From A Firehose' New head coach Kyle Whittingham has been moving at high speed since his hiring Dec. 26. He met the team in Orlando, quickly assem- bled a new staff and is now recruiting talent out of the NCAA transfer portal as well as top high school prospects. PHOTO BY TY KORNBLUE