The Only Michigan Starters Kyle Whittingham Would Name On Friday Were The Kicker And The Punter

Somebody asked Kyle Whittingham on Friday who is starting on Michigan's offensive line. He gave two answers in a row, and they point in opposite directions.

"Ah, not ready to divulge that. We know, we're not we're not going to do a depth chart. I guess they haven't done one here for 20 years. So we'll let Western figure that out on the first snap."

Read the first six words. Then read the two that follow them. Not ready to divulge that is a coach declining to release information. We know is a coach confirming the information exists. Those are separate pieces of news, and only one of them got treated as news.

Michigan's offensive line coach put a date on this in public last month, which almost nobody in college football does in August. Jim Harding, on August 6, in the first week of camp: "the way Coach [Whittingham] runs camp, we'll have essentially two scrimmages. You want that thing dialed in as best you can by the end of the second scrimmage. That gives us a mock game week before the normal game week leading into Western Michigan. So approximately two weeks out, you'd love to have it solidified."

Michigan scrimmaged for the first time on Saturday, August 15, at Michigan Stadium, three weeks to the day before the opener, and Tony Garcia of the Detroit Free Press reported it as the first of two. The second one was Friday, which Whittingham brought up himself in a different answer: "the first drive of the scrimmage today was a 16-play touchdown drive."

Both halves of Harding's marker landed on the same afternoon. Harding spoke fifteen days before Friday, and Friday is fifteen days before Western Michigan on September 5.

The deadline held. A first-year staff named its own finish line in the first week of camp and then hit it, which is a small good thing and the opposite of what the silence looks like from outside. Michigan has settled its offensive line. It has decided not to tell anybody.

What he was willing to name#

Here is the same coach, in the same twenty minutes, on the kicking job.

"Butkowski is the kicker. He's the number one guy. He's the guy you'll see on September 5, and Cam Brown, the punter that we brought in in the offseason, is going to be the punter as of right now."

Trey Butkowski, sophomore, in from Pitt. Cam Brown, sophomore, in from UNLV by way of Coolangatta, Queensland. Both arrived in the same transfer-portal haul in December, and that is the pattern in the answer: the two jobs Whittingham was willing to name in public are the two he bought outright in the offseason, and neither was ever a competition to protect. Butkowski got a date attached to his name. Brown got "as of right now," which is a hedge with a shelf life of about two weeks. Returners got the middle treatment, three names and no verdict: Andrew Marsh, Savion Hiter and Smith Snowden, "just about settled in on that, but maybe not quite 100 percent yet."

So the withholding is specific rather than a policy applied evenly across the roster. Two jobs got names. One job got a promise that names are coming. The offensive line got six men and zero positions: Blake Frazier, Brady Norton, Evan Link, Andrew Babalola, Nathan Efobi and Avery Gach.

The two men he did not mention are worth a second. Andrew Sprague has right tackle and Jake Guarnera has center, and Harding settled both of those in public on August 6. Whittingham was answering a question about position battles, so his list is a list of battles rather than an inventory. It is still a map. Six candidates, three open jobs, no assignments.

Michigan's own roster will not help you either. All nineteen offensive linemen on MGoBlue.com are listed as "OL." Not center, not guard, not tackle. Nineteen men, one label. (That is more offensive linemen than the roster carries quarterbacks, kickers, punters and long snappers combined, and all nineteen are filed under the same two letters.)

The coach who despises depth charts published one at Utah#

Asked why he does not put one out, Whittingham was blunt.

"Hate them. Despise them. It's a pain in the rear, and it also causes some, you know, the players. 'What? Why?' It's just better just to go about our business and let the other team figure out who's playing."

That is a strong feeling, and it sits oddly next to his own administrative record. Whittingham was Utah's head coach for 21 seasons, 177-88, until Michigan hired him on December 26, 2025. Utah released a preseason depth chart. Joe Coles of the Deseret News wrote one up on August 24, 2024: ahead of the opener against Southern Utah, the Utes "released their first depth chart of the year Saturday." Coles described the habit around it too, which is the useful part. Utah rarely updated the thing once it was out, only for a season-ending injury, but it did give a snapshot of the two-deep before the first game.

A year later he said that was ending, and the reason he gave was not distaste. Coles reported it on August 19, 2025, with Whittingham's explanation attached: "We probably won't release one though with the new health rule that the Big 12 put out. That's really all we'll release each week is who's available, who's not."

So what finally moved him off it in Salt Lake City was a conference rule about injury disclosure. The hatred is presumably genuine. It also coexisted with an athletic department that was publishing a preseason two-deep as recently as August 2024.

The other half of his answer, "they haven't done one here for 20 years," is his own estimate and he hedged it himself with an "I guess." Michigan's practice is at least a decade old and documented: in September 2016, Adam Rittenberg wrote in ESPN's Big Ten blog that among the items Jim Harbaugh withheld was the weekly depth chart, and Colorado's sports information staff answered by publishing an invented one populated with cartoon characters. How much further back the run goes is not established.

What the secrecy does not cover#

The five is decided. The room around it is thinner than the head coach wants, and he said so in the same answer that produced the six names.

"We've had seven or eight guys that have stepped up, and ideally, as I mentioned before, getting to 10 is the goal. But if we can have eight really solid guys, we can work with that. But 10 would be ideal."

Take that apart. Ten is the target, eight is the stated floor, and seven or eight is where the count actually is. Michigan's line is sitting at or just under its own head coach's minimum with two weeks to go. Whittingham also announced Friday that freshman lineman Ace Hamilton is out for the season with a lower leg injury; Hamilton is a first-year interior player who was not among the seven or eight, so the count does not move.

One of the six he did name has not practiced in days. "Andrew Babalola was really progressing. He's had a minor setback, so he hasn't been out there for a few days. It'll probably be a few more at least before we get him back." Babalola is a sophomore who did not play at all in 2025 and who was, on August 6, one of two men competing for left tackle.

Which leaves a fork nobody outside the building can resolve. Either Babalola is in the settled five, and the five contains a man who has not been on a practice field in a week. Or he is not, and a competition his position coach called live on August 6 got decided while one of the two candidates was hurt.

Neither of those is a scandal. Both are things a depth chart would tell you.

The calls#

Two, and the participation report settles both. First: Michigan starts the same five offensive linemen in each of its first three games, Western Michigan on September 5, Oklahoma on September 12 and UTEP on September 19. That is what "solidified" is supposed to mean, and it is the cheapest test available of whether Friday's answer was a decision or a camp answer. Second: Babalola is not one of the five who start against Western Michigan.

Michigan opens at 7:30 at night on Saturday, September 5, in Ann Arbor, and Whittingham's plan for the Broncos is to make them find out in real time. "So we'll let Western figure that out on the first snap," he said, and then, of depth charts generally: "After one game, they'll all figure it out."

He is right, which is the honest price of the exercise. Sixty minutes of a September evening against a MAC opponent buys the secret. What it protects is the Saturday after that, when Oklahoma is in the Big House.

---

Sources: Alejandro Zuniga, 247Sports (The Michigan Insider), "Everything Kyle Whittingham said," August 21, 2026, for every Whittingham quotation. Anthony Broome, On3 (The Wolverine), August 6, 2026, for Jim Harding's quotations and for Sprague and Guarnera. Tony Garcia, Detroit Free Press, August 17, 2026, read in syndication, for the August 15 first scrimmage. Joe Coles, Deseret News, August 24, 2024 and August 19, 2025, for Utah's preseason depth chart and for the Big 12 health rule that ended it. Adam Rittenberg, ESPN Big Ten blog, September 13, 2016, for Michigan's practice under Jim Harbaugh and the Colorado response. Michigan Athletics' release of December 26, 2025, for Whittingham's hiring, his 21 seasons at Utah and his 177-88 record there. MGoBlue.com's 2026 football roster, read August 22, for the nineteen "OL" listings and for the class years above; Maize n Brew and 247Sports, December 2025, for Butkowski's and Brown's transfer-portal arrivals from Pitt and UNLV. Michigan Athletics' schedule release of January 27, 2026, for the Western Michigan, Oklahoma and UTEP dates, and MGoBlue.com's 2026 schedule page, read August 22, for the September 5 kickoff time.