Jake Guarnera is stepping into the kind of role Michigan has always asked its best offensive linemen to own: center, leader, tone-setter, and now one of the faces of a unit trying to get back to Joe Moore Award level.
That’s a lot to ask of a player who admits he isn’t naturally wired to be the loudest guy in the room. But Guarnera has been pushing himself into that space anyway, and Michigan needs that from him as it builds its front back up.
“I think our offensive line can be a Joe Moore offensive line,” Guarnera said. “We have to work at it and work everyday towards that. We have to work at it and work everyday toward it, we can’t just let off the gas because everyone is giving us high expectations.”
Michigan sees Guarnera as its next starting center, and that position has long carried real weight in Ann Arbor. It’s not just about snapping the ball and calling out protections. It’s about setting the standard for everyone else around you.
What makes Guarnera’s rise more interesting is how close it came to never happening. When Sherrone Moore was let go in December of 2025, Guarnera took a hard look at his future and briefly entered the transfer portal with teammate Andrew Sprague.
He had reason to draw attention elsewhere, too. Michigan viewed him as its best interior lineman a season ago.
Instead, he stayed.
Guarnera chose to return and be part of the turnaround he wants to see. That matters because Michigan is trying to climb back to the level it reached when the offensive line was the engine of the whole program.
The Wolverines won the Joe Moore Award in 2021 and 2022, powered through Big Ten play, and reached the College Football Playoff in both seasons. They were a finalist in 2023 before losing out to Washington, then beating Washington in the national championship game in January of 2024.
Since then, the line has slipped. Good in 2024, not great.
Same story in 2025. Now the push is to reclaim the top spot, and Michigan believes the pieces are there.
Jim Harding was brought in to steady the group, and the roster around Guarnera gives the staff options. Former five-star recruit Andrew Balabola has been added and could start at left tackle or serve as a swing man. Guarnera and some combination of Evan Link, Nate Efobi, Blake Frazier, or Brady Norton will fill out the interior next to Sprague at right tackle.
“And so, like I said, the five best football players are the five guys that we got to find a way to get out there. And to answer your question, I believe he can do that,” Whittingham said.
Whittingham also said he believes the team is 10-deep on the offensive line, and that kind of depth is exactly what Michigan has traditionally expected up front. Still, depth alone doesn’t get you all the way back. The truly elite lines have a centerpiece, someone who makes everyone else better.
Michigan had that in 2023 with Zak Zinter and Trevor Keegan, both of whom were leaders in the room. It had it in 2022 with Olu Oluwatimi. That’s the lane Guarnera is being asked to enter now.
He’s already working at it. In the spring, Guarnera talked about making himself uncomfortable so he could become more vocal.
“"I don't think, naturally, I don't see myself as a vocal guy, but just being able to like work on it throughout the spring and just making myself uncomfortable has been something that's helped me start being more of a vocal leader rather than just someone that comes in and works every day and just puts his head down," Guarnera said in the spring. "I knew a lot of things that I needed to fix.
And also, I spent time like when I was getting, I guess, recruited back here by Coach Harding, talking about things I need to work on and how he would be able to help me improve those things. So I've just been like focusing on one thing each practice that I need to work on, or I want to perfect, and being able to do that and emphasize that one practice will help me get better for the next."
The coaching staff has made discipline part of the mission, and Guarnera has been part of enforcing that standard through the leadership council. In February, he described a demanding routine that reflects the tone of the program right now.
“They’re actually very intense,” Guarnera said about the coaching staff in February. “Now we have a team run.
We do more acceleration work and technique stuff. And then we’ll have a lift, as well, which will contain more of olympic lifts, like barbell weights and cleans and squatting.
We’re really focused on our technique and detail and just getting after it in the weight room, which is something I really like. We team run at 6:30, and then we have a lift in the afternoon at 4 o’clock.”
That’s where Michigan is now: building from the inside out, with a center who is still learning how to lead while the rest of the line tries to become something special again. The best teams are player-led, and Guarnera is moving into that role one uncomfortable rep at a time.
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