cornerbacks

If only he could fly. [Patrick Barron]

Previously: Last year’s profiles. S Damani Dent, S/Nk Zeke Berry, S/HSP Keon Sabb.

 
Brentwood, TN – 6’2”, 185
 
image

[Marc-Grégor Campredon]
247:

                   3.55*
3*, 87, NR overall

#61 CB, #24 TN
Rivals:

                   3.68*
3*, 5.7, NR overall

#47 CB, #17 TN
ESPN:

                   3.53*
3*, 78, #343 SE

#79 CB, #25 TN
On3:

                   3.52*
3*, 87, NR overall

#53 CB, #20 TN
Composite:

                   3.74*
3*, 0.8742, #603 ovr

#53 CB, #20 TN
Other Suitors Aub, WA, Tenn, UF, UK, BC, VT
YMRMFSPA Jeremy Clark
Previously On MGoBlog Hello post by me.
Notes Twitter.

Film:

Senior film; suggested title: 6 minutes of receivers from the whiniest state in the union begging for PI:

 

vs D'Andre Martin. Junior film. Hudl page.

Oh no, we did not just insult all long and tall cornerbacks just because Don Brown's attempt to recruit a class of them yielded starters Vincent Gray and Gemon Green. For the kids whose football interest came online after the 2018 class, there was a time, back when all the Harbaugh jokes were still being written, when canceling was just something that happened to fade merchant receivers when they played Michigan. Strapping lads like Stribling and Clark explored the deepest reaches of the sideline. From Tom Curtis to Gemon Green, the gallant goliath cornerbacks of Michigan have long protected their enemies from contact with oblong spheroid projectiles in much the same way that Gary Gray here did not.

Pollard wasn't so much a guy that Michigan identified they wanted as a guy that Michigan fans demanded they go get after we all watched him and teammate Junior Colson take on IMG and J.J. McCarthy. In case you missed it, Pollard was the guy no-no'ing all the five-stars.

The receiver getting sorry'd there was Jacorey Brooks, a 2021 Bama 5-star signing, who drew Pollard all game and was held to 36 yards on three catches on something like (going from memory here) 9(?) targets.

Shortly before that Sam Webb had gone down to look at Colson, and returned singing panegyrics for the corner in the next class. Between the IMG game and 2020's ignoble end, Sam had everyone on board except Michigan, probably because Zordich/Brown knew they were out the door, possibly because they under orders never to touch anything that looked like the Sims+Faustin+Gray+Double-Greens class again.

That immediately changed with the hire of Mo Linguist, certified Tennessee recruiting magician. Agent Will Johnson was dispatched to court his fellow 2022 CB like a five-star, as Michigan frantically worked to catch the rest of Pollard's now impressive suite of suitors: Oklahoma, Washington, FSU, Oregon, and "Bama" having joined Kentucky, Virginia Tech, PSU, and BC.

When Linguist left to become head coach of Buffalo there was only guy Michigan could have hired to rescue, let alone improve their chances with Pollard, that being his main contact at Kentucky Steve Clinkscale. By June it seemed likely, but we sweated out trips to Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Auburn before uncorking the champaign at Sam's.

Pollard enrolled early, so we got to see him in spring. In fact you already saw a photo of it in this profile. It was that play when converted linebacker Kalel Mullings turned the corner on a corner.

image

Maybe Mullings is really fast? [Marc-Grégor Campredon]

That's a one-play sample that may not mean what you think, but it's also the reason the twitchy, heady, physical playmaker who's taller than most of the guys he'll be covering wasn't ranked like a Will Johnson. Of course, it was a spring game, not The Game. Like the school who ultimately caught him, Pollard's a guy who might fall behind, might even stumble, flail, grasp around, but just when you think he's toast, he finds something nobody else has. And then there he is.

[After THE JUMP: I swear up and down that it's not 2018]

How do you pick up the threads of an old life? [Bryan Fuller]

Previously in 2021: The Story. Podcast 13.0A. Podcast 13.0B. Podcast 13.0C. 5Q5A Offense: 2021. Last year: 5Q5A Defense: 2020. Defensive End. Defensive Tackle. Linebacker. Cornerback. Safety. Special Teams.

As with the offense, we are going from saddest question towards hope.

1. Do they give up 100 to Ohio State?

image

Not a great matchup [Bryan Fuller]

The standard has been set: If Ryan Day’s offense can’t score 100 on Michigan’s defense this year with the kind of talent they’ve acquired, he is a failure and Ohio State must jettison all of their coaches and start over. Can the Wolverines do anything to make sure that happens?

We had an entire article in HTTV about the ways Ohio State, Alabama, and Clemson have broken the game. I could show you all the data to demonstrate that those schools’ advantages are well beyond anything even in the top-heavy history of college football. It’s certainly not fun. And the people in charge aren’t even smart enough to understand it’s a problem. Michigan could “sell its soul” to be like Ohio State and it wouldn’t change the math. Kirby Smart’s Georgia is in the running for the scuzziest program in the history of the game, recruits like bonkers in the best place to do it, and even they haven’t broken through.

But we don’t really need to overcome the systemic rot of a thoroughly broken institution. We need to win a college football game. Which is way, way more doable. Last year’s Buckeyes beat IU by a touchdown, and they were in a dogfight with Northwestern until turnover luck turned both games. Penn State played them close in 2019. The year before that Ohio State got boat-raced by Purdue, barely beat Penn State and Nebraska, and needed a guy named Piggy to miss an open receiver in the endzone to not surrender the Big Ten East title to Michigan a week before The Game. The last time they visited Ann Arbor, Michigan had the ball down 2 scores with 12 minutes to go and the blocking to make it 1 score. Also JK Dobbins dribbled the ball. College football games are dumb, and Ohio State has been riding a wave of good fortune as effectual as the bad luck that’s plagued Harbaugh. We reject this because human brains would rather shape information into nonsense than accept the existence of no sense. But luck is just luck.

And here comes my one crazy statement: I think Mike Macdonald probably gives Michigan a better chance of winning a dumb football game against Ohio State than Don Brown, or at least Macdonald’s philosophy does, because it ratchets up the degree to which the result is determined by luck. I don’t believe Michigan upgraded DCs—Brown deserved his fate but he’s still a coaching legend while Macdonald is a first-time coordinator. Don Brown’s system made the ultimate sense: I dare you to beat my players at something hard. Most college teams didn’t have the talent to do that to Michigan’s talent and that led to elite performances. But even at BC, when the talent ledger angled enough the other way, Brown’s defenses got rolled.

Offenses are at such an advantage these days (for regulatory as well as schematic reasons) that anybody’s defense can get shredded no matter the talent. The smart coaches long ago learned to shift their understanding of the game from a military perspective of winning field position to the basketball paradigm of winning possessions.

Macdonald’s philosophy—or at least the Grantham/Ravens ideas he comes from—is more of a gamble. I dare you to find where I left the weak spot…NOPE NOT THERE!

Ohio State with Justin Fields could break those traps on the regular, but Ohio State with CJ Stroud? It could work. A lot of young NFL quarterbacks threw mistakes into the amorphous fronts that the Ravens showed. And this has nothing to do with the front; the way they play zone is to risk having guys out of position by having fast defensive backs get to places they weren’t supposed to threaten by alignment.

They can probably get away with that with Dax Hill.

Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson and the other mercenaries who can’t name a non-athlete graduate of the university they’re loosely affiliated with will get theirs. They're extremely talented, well-coached, hyper-football-focused players who are better than our players. In 2019 Ohio State scored a TD on 8/11 non-garbage drives against Michigan. If you can get that down to 5/11 by putting more of the game the outcome of dice rolls, do you care that those five came on coverage busts instead of a dusted cornerback? This is how Indiana approached it as well, and with even luck they win a title. If you want a nonsensical result, ratchet up the nonsense. The worst that can happen is you still lose 98-39, which isn’t going to cut it for Ryan Day.

That’s all I’ve got.

[After THE JUMP: More dumb football.]

[via Twitter]

Here’s the second of the Tennessee secondary fellas that Mo Linguist stuffed into the class while the ink on the last one, and Mo’s own contract for that matter, were barely dry. And make no mistake: this guy committed to Linguist:

“The relationship I had with Coach Mo, I felt it deep down inside. Coach Mo is a great coach and I feel like he can get the job done for me on and off the field.” …

“Really the things he was saying I felt it so fast,” Jones said. “The things he was talking about, the future, the small things, I just took in those moments and knew they was real.”

I mean, ask my brothers what I sounded like after my first first date with my wife:

“I’m committing to Michigan because of the relationship I have with Coach Mo,” Jones said. “Really, it’s Coach Mo. The relationship we have is crazy. What we talk about and how we talk about it is real. I felt it in my heart. That’s where I want to be. I know it in my heart, so why wait?”

My wife and I met in late April and her rock star grandma, who passed away last Thursday, was knitting the chuppah by early May. Jones’s Michigan’s offer came on January 19th, and he committed the same hour we lost her, which is why I couldn’t get this up until now. We also took forever to find a date to do the thing in Ann Arbor, while Jones apparently plans to enroll by next winter. Let's see what's coming down the aisle.

GURU RATINGS

Rivals ESPN 247 247 Comp
4*, 5.8, NR OVR, #13 S, #12 TN 4*, 81, #280 OVR, #22 ATH, #117 SE, #7 TN 4*, 90, NR OVR, #19 ATH, #6 TN 4*, 0.9021, #279 OVR,

#15 ATH, #9 TN
4.02* 4.02* 4.00* 4.02*

Bottom row is my conversion of the above to a 5-star scale. Links are to profiles.

They all agree he’s exactly a four-star, and can’t seem to decide which position he’ll play. Rivals lists Jones as a safety (erp?) while the other two sites say ATH. They’re also pretty close on size, with 24/7 at 5-11.5, and the other two at 6-0, with all three giving a weight of 180.

Shelby County canceled the Red Devils’ 2020 season so we’ve yet to actually see Jones play for Germantown, which is one of the state’s largest high schools and plays in its top (6A) public division. Jones was at Fairley High, a 2A (second-lowest division) school, in 2019, so the competition on his latest highlight reel isn’t great.

[After the JUMP: Backpedaling]