Michigan 2023 season preview: Offensive line

Fall camp is underway for the Michigan football team, and the Wolverines are gearing up for their most anticipated season in decades. With returning starters, an incoming transfer class with starter-caliber players and former top-flight recruits another year older waiting in the wings, Michigan is the No. 2 team in the country, and aims to build off of its two consecutive College Football Playoff appearances.

To get fans ready for the coming season, we’re taking a look at what to watch this season at each position group. We look at each position’s biggest strength, biggest question mark, a defining stat to watch, a position battle to watch, an X-factor player, make a bold prediction and break down the depth chart for the position group.

quarterback, running back, wide receiver and tight end positions. Below, we look at the offensive line room.

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Biggest strength: Depth and experience.

Michigan has never had an offensive line with this much starting experience, and may never again. Between the transfer portal, NIL convincing a couple starters to come back and some bonus years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wolverines are loaded up front.

The Wolverines lost starters Ryan Hayes and Olu Oluwatimi from last year’s Joe Moore Award-winning line, but return Zak Zinter, Trevor Keegan and Karsen Barnhart, who have respectively started 31, 23 and 16 games in their Michigan careers. Backups Trente Jones, Giovanni El-Hadi and Jeffrey Persi have combined for 12 career starts, and incoming transfers LaDarius Henderson (Arizona State), Drake Nugent (Stanford) and Myles Hinton (Stanford) respectively bring with them 29, 24 and 16 career starts.

In all, Michigan's offensive line room has started a combined 151 games at the Power-Five level, and eight starters with Power-Five starting experience.

At Big Ten Media Days in Indianapolis, Jim Harbaugh mentioned that he felt there were 10 offensive linemen who could compete for a starting role. It’s an easy offseason quote to say, but Michigan could probably roll out its second-string offensive line, and it would be a top-15 unit in the country. The Wolverines have size, depth and experience at every position, which likely makes offensive line coach Sherrone Moore a happy man.