College Football: 5 reasons Michigan wins 2017 National Championship

4. The progression of Wilton Speight

The elephant in the room when it comes to Michigan last season was their quarterback play. Wilton Speight won the starting job and held onto it. However, when you look at their late-season struggles when they wheels came off for the Wolverines, you’ll notice that the play of Speight was largely at fault. He was bad against Iowa, struggled down the stretch against Ohio State, and failed to make plays in the Orange Bowl when he was called upon.

However, what many people seem to forget about that end-of-season stretch for Speight is that the quarterback was also quite banged up. He was dealing with a litany of injuries and, by some accounts, probably should’ve taken to the sidelines for at least one of those games to heal up. Instead, he took up the onus as a leader on the offense and muscled through the pain. If nothing else, that’s quite admirable.

When a player has that type of mentality, it bodes well for his progression going into the next season. No one is going to mistake Speight as Sam Darnold by any stretch of the imagination. However, the Michigan quarterback has a chance to be better than he was a year ago and will be healthy to start the year. It doesn’t take a great quarterback to make it to the College Football Playoff. Sometimes all you need is just a steady hand, and there’s reason to believe Speight can provide that.