david long

This week in grimace emoji. Good news: COVID case fatality rates are plummeting. Bad news: it seems like a large reason why is that the average age of the infected is also plummeting, because:

Before and After. COVID-19 is real and the real implications for ignoring basic precautions. #mileg #COVID__19 pic.twitter.com/COEe8qPZW6

— Sam Singh (@singhsam94) June 23, 2020

I am dubious that The Youth are going to change their behavior, and The Youth cluster around college football players for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile, what happens if and when someone has to go to the ICU? This is napkin math but napkin math is probably enough in this situation:

Maybe it's lower than 0.1%. Or maybe only 5% of players catch COVID. Then again, maybe 30% do. The exact numbers are wildly uncertain. But, to a first approximation, it strikes me as fairly likely that at least 1 player ends up in the ICU with COVID, which I think ends the season

— Mile High Brendan (@MileHighBrendan) June 22, 2020

That probably shouldn't be the reason. We accept the inevitability that football will produce Eric LeGrands already. The reason should be the inexorable exponential math when R > 1. But that's not easy to put in a news broadcast.

Anyway, buy HTTV! We'll figure out something you'll enjoy even if the season is one FCS game! 30 pages of hardboiled detective Phil Martelli novella? Wait, come back, I didn't mean it!

[AFTER THE JUMP: some good cornerbackin']

Our ongoing series covering Michigan's 2010s. Previously: Our Favorite Blocks, QBs, RBs, and WRs, TEs, FBs, and OL, Defensive Line, Linebacker, The 2000s.

Methodology: Going by individual years but only one per player can be nominated. We discussed them and decided together, then split the writeups. There will be a special teams and then we're taking requests on offbeat editions to fill the long offseason.

SAFETY: Jordan Kovacs (2011)

Today, even after Michigan has exhausted the eligibility of an entire generation of Glasgows, we call the walk-ons who emerge into draftable players members of the "Blessed Order of St. Kovacs." Secondaries of the rest of the decade would be filled with top-100 types whose natural abilities contributed to top-five defenses. But to get there first Michigan had to survive Never Forget plus three years of Rich Rod and Tony Gibson.

In 2009 I made a sad depth chart to introduce a series—The Decimated Defense—about the recruiting and attrition that led us to the program's defensive back nadir. On said depth chart, all walk-ons, including a redshirt freshman student body one that then-DC Greg Robinson had recently mistook for Matt Cavanaugh, were represented by suicidal cats.

Corner	Safety	Safety	Corner
NFL-ready junior guy (Donovan Warren)	(Jordan_Kovacs)	Current Infinite Safety Disaster, who is worse than the walk-on (Michael Williams)	Legacy who is halfway decent and was our FS until a few weeks ago (Troy Woolfolk)
Dust mite true freshman who was a running back until a few weeks ago (Teric Jones)	(Floyd_Simmons)	True freshman recovering from knee surgery who can't be that great if he hasn't seen the field (Vladimir Emilien)	Redshirt freshman with clear talent deficiency to be serviceable (JT Floyd)

Cats were all the rage on the internet back then, as was abject failure in Michigan's secondary. Many players who might have helped plug the holes abandoned Michigan. We even had a banner.

But then a funny thing happened that we did not expect. In 2011 Michigan was suddenly getting impact safety play from the unlikeliest of creatures: a Hobbit.

And then there's Kovacs. That is a record-shattering performance for a member of Michigan's secondary and it is absolutely deserved. Kovacs led the team in tackles, only half-missing a couple of those. He led ballcarriers into other defenders, which is why Western had to go on long marches—they couldn't bust it past Kovacs. He annihilated Carder on two sacks, one of which produced a game-sealing fumble. While Mattison got him those runs at the QB, his execution was flawless. On the first, he had the agility to slash back inside of Herron and the technique to put his helmet directly on the ball. And he added two PBUs for good measure.

His Kovacsian limitations made him not the guy you want carrying a future NFL slot receiver down the seam—particularly in 2012 when they slapped a Legends jersey on him to honor three historic linemen and Mattison tried to get away with some Ed Reed crap. But even in 2010 Kovacs thrived as a two-high box safety who could come down and play a Viper-like role, and in 2011's patchwork secondary those edge blitzes were a feature.

Also a feature: busts in the front seven that never, ever, ever, ever led to a gain of 40 yards. Remember this was a defense playing high-risk up front because the serviceable depth chart was guys Lloyd Carr recruited and Jake Ryan. After the afore mentioned WMU game Mattison was asked if having a guy like Kovacs allowed him to do more with the defense. Answer: "Well… he allows you to call it without wincing."

This was the Kovacs you had to be a bit of a wonk to fully appreciate, but over the course of 2011 the Kovacs who was ALWAYS THERE when that guy was supposed to arrive was the main thing giving viewers a sense of peace they hadn't felt since the days of…Jamar Adams? Marcus Ray? Tripp? When an option pitch went outside the last defender on the screen, it was Kovacs who appeared, already at top speed, at the perfect angle to end it at the sideline. When a linebacker went the wrong direction on a stretch run and you braced for a long chase, Kovacs came. He was our binky.

We could go with 2011 or 2012; we chose '11 only because there was more Alex Carder annihilation, and because that's the year, at the moment everything was about to fall apart, it didn't, because Kovacs was always there.

-Seth

[After THE JUMP: The Old, the Boring, and the Cat-like]

The draft happened. Michigan results:

• Devin Bush went 10th overall to Pittsburgh, after Detroit took a tight end. Later, the Lions would take another tight end. Keep on Detroiting, Detroit, the Bush family thanks you.
• Rashan Gary went 12th overall to Green Bay, which immediately called him an outside linebacker. This was overshadowed by the general Giants-ing going on. For the record, drafting Rashan Gary as a specialist pass rusher is a Bad Idea.
• Chase Winovich went in the third round to the Patriots, because of course he did. He said he was "awaiting further instruction" before talking to the media, demonstrating that he was already advanced in the ways of Belichick-fu. The Patriots then threatened to cut his hair, because of course they did. 
• David Long went a couple picks later to the Rams. That seems like the Michigan steal of the draft to me. Long was hurt because no one dared throw at him. Criticisms of his game are about his height and how that hurts him on 50/50 balls, which I get but he put up a sub-4 shuttle at the combine and should be an elite nickel.
• Zach Gentry overcame the ugly combine numbers to get drafted in the fifth round, also by the Steelers. That second TE the Lions took was Isaac Nauta, former five star everyone was desperate to get after. He went in the seventh. Recruiting is important—this year's five-star first round hit rate was off the charts—but it is funny how things work out sometimes. Behind The Steel curtain's scouting round-up on him has one of the sentences I feel deep in my core: "Warning, some of the tracks that accompany these videos contains profanity and most of the music is fairly bad."

Karan Higdon didn't get drafted, which says something about running backs in the modern NFL. If you aren't a major piece of the passing game it's a tough world out there.

[After: they Giants'd so hard they're now the Jets]