kyle kalis accidental murder spree

[Bryan Fuller]

Upon Further Review still has a sponsor. Hey man the feds are going to raid your meth lab. Or raise rates. I'm not sure which agency we're talking about. Unless they're the same one, which would be weird but again we are talking about an entity that thinks alcohol, tobacco, and firearms are pretty much the same thing. I disagree, feds.

What was I talking about again?

Oh, right: low rates won't be quite as low in the near future if you're on the fence.

Matt's got a ticket offer going for a Michigan football or basketball game. If you're buying a home or refinancing, he's the right guy to call. (No pants required.)

FORMATION NOTES: Nothing weird in this one. This will be a pattern, as Michigan put the toys away for the most part. The screens were not anything super clever; other than the fullback wheel this was almost all things already put on film.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: Exceptions from the usual routine were few and far between in this one. Smith and Johnson were the main tailbacks; Houma got a couple carries that must have induced déjà vu in Rudock. Green and Shallman got in some in garbage time.

Tight end was mostly Butt and Williams; Hill got a few snaps. Bunting may have gotten in once or twice, his playing time has dipped significantly. Wouldn't read too much into that since Williams is doing well.

WR was Darboh, Chesson, and Perry. I don't think Ways played. Newsome got a half-dozen snaps as an extra OL.

[After THE JUMP: accurate Iowa Rudock is a good thing.]

Previously: S Jeremy Clark, S Allen Gant, S Jarrod Wilson, CB Terry Richardson, LB James Ross, LB Royce Jenkins-Stone, LB Kaleb Ringer, LB Joe Bolden, DE Chris Wormley, DE Tom Strobel, DE Mario Ojemudia, DT Matt Godin, DT Willie Henry, DT Ondre Pipkins, OL Ben Braden, OL Erik Magnuson, and OL Blake Bars.

Kyle Kalis is one of many presents left under Michigan's Christmas Tree by Tatgate. While others may be sweeter (streak-breaking win, bowl ban, 6-7 OSU season, Brady Hoke raiding Ohio for more OSU-offered players in 18 months than Michigan had acquired in the previous decade), none is more important for Michigan's 2012 fate than an offensive lineman universally marveled at for his immediate readiness.

Josh Helmholdt commented on it($) when Rivals bumped Kalis to five stars:

"In 10 years of covering recruiting, Kalis is one of the most college-ready offensive linemen I have seen. Physically he appears able to step on a college field right now, and his technique is advanced beyond his years."

Gerry DiNardo concurs:

"I don't remember seeing many better high school offensive linemen than Kalis. Alan Faneca, who played for me at LSU, an All-Pro for a long-time, was a great high school, great college, and great pro player. (Kalis) reminds me of Faneca." …

"He's a developed player. He's further along than a lot of high school players. He's a good athlete, not a great athlete. I believe he's one of the guys that could play as a freshman. He's never on the ground, which is a critical evaluation when you're evaluating offensive linemen."

As does his personal OL guru (and former Buckeye standout) LeCharles Bentley($):

"Physically he's probably on the same wavelength as a collegiate sophomore," he said. "He came in at 290 pounds, and we have him down to 280 pounds right now. We're going to work him back up into the 295- to 300-pound range. He'll probably look about 310 pounds, though, because his body fat is so low."

Michigan's considering a walk-on at left guard and the two deep at tackle reads "Lewan, Schofield, bottomless pit"—Michigan needs Kyle Kalis, and they need him now. Thanks, Tatgate!

So Kalis is developed. He also goes to 11 in a couple other categories, most prominently proverbial mean streak and murders run blocking. Darryl Funk talked about Kalis on Signing Day:

"He just wants to tear your head off," Funk said. "He plays like that all the time and practices like that all the time, and we need that. You can Xs and Os all you want, and that’s important, but at the end of the day, it starts up front.

"Everyone thinks it’s coachspeak, but (winning) starts with knocking the heck out of the guy in front of you, and that’s one thing Kyle does real well."

Funk laughed when he described one sequence of film in which Kalis knocks over an umpire “when he was throwing someone around” and couldn’t decide whether to help the guy up or find someone else to hit.

The beastliness/power theme runs through every report you get on the guy, and there are dozens. A selection of quotes about Kalis's beastliness:

• Allen Trieu: "whoever's across from him is destined to spend most of the day picking themselves off the ground."
• Bill Greene: "A true power plant on the offensive line."
• Helmholdt: "appears to derive great pleasure from punishing the man across the ball."
• Bentley: "me and two other guys that saw him, and all three of us said the same thing: that's Jake Long as a guard."
• The excitable Duane Long: "Kalis should not be allowed to play against high school players. What he does to opponents borders on assault."
• The not-very-excitable-after-Isaiah Bell ESPN($): "…capable of mauling defenders and getting good movement when drive blocking…a tough customer; displays a nasty finishing attitude while dominating his present level of competition. … tools to become a dominant run blocker at the BCS level of play."
• …aaaand Kalis himself: "When people watch my film they can easily see that I’m one of the nastiest linemen they’ve ever seen.”

The caveats offered are usually along the lines of "not the greatest athlete" in his high school class, which a couple of the Scout guys mention. Scout's profile also lists "arm length" as an "area for improvement," which… uh. Bucknuts dropped him from 2nd to 11th in their state rankings after the year but provided little explanation.

On the positive side of the ledger, Helmholdt noted($) that Kalis "brings the same level of intensity on every play and in every game" and hypes up his intangibles after a St Ed's game versus St. Ignatius. He also thinks the guy didn't get enough credit for his athleticism because he's more filled out that most high school OL.

At the Army game the coaches moved Kalis inside to guard, where he was a bit uncomfortable at first but still held up better than anyone else against the hulking interior linemen they faced:

The 6-5, 305-pound Kalis has been the most consistent performer on the East offensive line this week…. was one of the few offensive linemen who wasn't victimized by the powerful bodies across the line.

 And:

… came out of his stance low and with power and was aggressive in team run drills. In one-on-ones, he engaged, locked up and rode his opponents out of the play consistently. He could play either tackle or guard in college with equal effectiveness and his ability in run and pass protection is balanced. He went against some big defensive tackles and excelled while other interior linemen for the East squad struggled noticeably.

He played RG in the game itself, and said he didn't have a problem($) with the move:

"I'll help the team any way they want me to," he said. "If they want me to play guard then I'll play guard."

His stock remained steady in the aftermath of the game; as a five-star-ish player that is a positive development.

---------------------------------

In this episode of "which Michigan OT commits end up on the interior?" we tell you Kyle Kalis is a guard, man. Side by side shots of Braden and Kalis:

Which one of these guys is an interior lineman? The one shaped like a bowling ball with trees where his legs are supposed to be. Bentley concurs($):

"I would like to see him at guard. Tackle is a different animal, and he's more physically suited for guard. His ability to communicate and be a real leader is right in the middle of the offense."

As does 247's Barton Simmons:

… best suited as an interior offensive lineman, but that isn't meant in a disparaging way at all. He's so powerful and he's such a great road grader in that spot, that he can just really move a lot of bodies… has a chance to move inside and become a real force on the next level, particularly in the run game.

In addition, there's the Army game stuff and many other mentions of a move to the interior above.

Now, Michigan has to endure this season with no tackle depth and since Kalis is the five star who spent his entire high school career at right tackle, he seems like the best guy to turn to in an emergency. When Craig Ross talked to Darryl Funk on Signing Day, that was the tentative plan:

Kyle Kalis: looks like an initial shot at RT according to Darrell Funk. No particular reason, he might end up elsewhere, but my impression is that Funk thinks this might be the best place for him to push for PT this year.

As soon as there's reasonable tackle depth, he's a guard. And possibly even before it, as Borges just announced that Kalis was competing at the left guard slot that is currently the only question mark in the starting five.

Etc.: OSU derp a derp. Named HS AA by SI. OSU derp a derp. Named finalist for Anthony Munoz OL of the year. OSU derp a derp. Parade All American. OSU derp a derp. Diary on the Sporting News.

Kalis's "blood on the field" comment originated from Tremendous. Mattison on Kalis at the Glazier Clinic:

Kyle Kalis. Mattison saw one of the St. Ed's guys and mentioned that Michigan had recruited a "real man" out that school, one that "may just maul some of our guys."

Coach quote:

“Kyle in our opinion is the top tackle in the country,” Finotti stated. “He could have gone anywhere, but really embraced the tradition and everything at Michigan. There are not too many tackles out there with his work ethic, size and ability and will to succeed. He’s a strong-willed young man.”

Why Steve Hutchinson? Michigan's guards deviated from powerful sonsabitches who would put you in the turf and steal your girlfriend before third down a sorrowfully long time ago. Michigan has had a series of guys who get all conference recognition because they're multi-year starters and seniors at Michigan but hasn't had a really great guard-type player since David Baas in 2005, and he was a center his senior year. Before that you have to reach back to the ridiculously loaded OLs from around the turn of the century to find the sort of players that match up with the Kalis hype above.

Like Steve Hutchinson. Yeah…

…that'll do. Sometimes you have to pull the big guns out. For what it's worth, both Drew Henson($)…

Dominates his comapetition more than any other OL prospect. ... Physical beast, a great run blocker, with a dare I say Steve Hutchinson mentality. Almost like he takes it personally.

…and the anonymous former Wolverine evaluators at Rivals who give eBay ratings to everyone (A+++++++, would recruit again) also dug up Hutchinson as a comparable($). Henson went so far as to call him a "probable All-American." As far as frame goes, Hutchinson is 6'5" and topped out around 310-315, where Kalis will end up as well.

Guru Reliability:  Very high. Close to universal agreement. All star appearance.

Variance: Low, OL variance be damned. I'll break out "low" for a guy who is widely regarded as a college sophomore-ish player and the most advanced OL in analysts X years of covering stuff.

Ceiling: Massive. If healthy has a good shot at being the top rated guard in his draft year.

General Excitement Level: Massive. XOXO, Tatgate.

Projection: If he's as college-ready as he's supposed to be, Michigan has a tough choice between tossing him in the mix for an uncertain left guard spot or giving him a crash course on playing right tackle so he can be somewhat kind of okay in the event Lewan or Schofield gets hurt. Initial returns indicate the former.

I don't think they can redshirt him; the chances both starting tackles take every snap this year are very low and there's literally no veteran on the roster who is a plausible tackle. So he'll get spot minutes in blowouts and for (hopefully just) dings to the starters.

Next year the tackles come back and redshirt freshman versions of Braden and Magnuson seem poised to back them up; meanwhile Patrick Omameh and Elliott Mealer graduate. Kalis will be a full-time guard then and crubberate people there for three additional years.

I think this means we win. Kate Upton is a Michigan fan. She is also a moderately attractive young lady!

 
hours spent finding SFW photo: six

High fives for everyone!

[Pay no attention to the following SEO-oriented paragraph:

So I heard you like Kate Upton in your Upton so I put Kate in your Upton and Uptoned your Kate so you can Kate while you Kate and Upton while you Upton. Sex tape.

]

The Ten Year War ends. WH compiles the 1978 Michigan-OSU game:

A few weeks later Woody Hayes would bonk a Clemson linebacker and that was that.

Ref bump noted. Kyle Kalis's epic ref bump…

…is something OL coach Darrell Funk also picked up on:

"He just wants to tear your head off," Funk said. "He plays like that all the time and practices like that all the time, and we need that. You can Xs and Os all you want, and that’s important, but at the end of the day, it starts up front." …

Funk laughed when he described one sequence of film in which Kalis knocks over an umpire “when he was throwing someone around” and couldn’t decide whether to help the guy up or find someone else to hit.

The ref was shaken but not badly hurt. This is because Kalis was hurting someone else.

Funk also notes that none of the four guys currently in the class projects to center; that will be a priority in 2013.

The old mean guy. Meanwhile, David Molk adds to his Scrooge-McDuck level quote vault:

“The awards were never anything that I strived to get,” Molk said, before correcting himself.

“I take that back,” he said, laughing. “The only award I wanted was the Rimington mostly because a guy who worked with us, (Michigan assistant strength coach) Dan Mozes, was a Rimington winner at West Virginia. I’d say something, and he’d say, ‘Hey, Molk, shut up. I’ve got an 80-pound trophy and you don’t.’"

He's being told he could go anywhere from the bottom of the first(!) to the third round.

Three point defense: random. This Kenpom post at ESPN($) caught my eye after I previewed a Nebraska team that is thoroughly awful at all basketball activities except opponent three-point shooting. Here are the year-to-year correlations between various defensive stats:

Opponents' 3-point percentage: .204
Opponents' free throw percentage: .266
Opponents' 2-point percentage: .558
Opponents' 3-point attempt percentage: .575

There are just four numbers here, but they provide a very powerful context. What stands out is that opponents' free throw percentage correlates more strongly from season to season than opponents' 3-point percentage. In other words, we can predict a team's "free throw defense" in the future based on current stats better than we could predict its 3-point defense. And I think everyone understands that a team has little control over its opponents' free throw percentage.

IE, the percentage of threes your opponents hit is not a particularly useful thing to look at, but the number of threes they get off is. Wisconsin is a particularly excellent example of this phenomenon. Last year their opponents hit 37% of their threes, good for only 299th nationally. This year that's dipped 10 percentage points and they skyrocket to first.

What does this mean for Michigan? Not a whole lot. Their three-point D is a little below average; so is their ability to prevent opponents from launching. It will be interesting to watch how that latter number changes next year as Michigan adds a ton of height.

No elite teams, continued. Following up on Monday's assertion that there don't seem to be many elite teams in college hockey this year: KRACH provides strong evidence of that. KRACH is a ranking system that's more pleasant to statistically minded folk for reasons I won't get into in case some of you are operating heavy machinery. For purposes of this argument it's useful because it not only provides a ranking but also has a strength rating.

KRACH tends to get enthusiastic about strong leagues and teams; it has a tendency to proclaim certain teams nigh invulnerable. Here's last year's version:

Note the huge jumps in rating as you climb. There's a pretty tight bunch until you hit BC and North Dakota; there's also a cliff after #7. This year there is no such gap:

Rk	Team	Rating	RRWP	W-L-T	Rk
1	Boston University	357.8	0.7546	17-8-1	3T
2	Boston College	337.6	0.7445	17-10-1	11
3	Michigan	336.4	0.7439	17-9-4	9
4	Mass.-Lowell	314.8	0.7322	18-7-0	1
5	Ferris State	314.4	0.732	18-8-4	7
6	Minnesota-Duluth	294.3	0.72	18-6-4	2
7	Maine	287.6	0.7158	16-8-3	8
8	Notre Dame	270.5	0.7044	16-11-3	19
9	Merrimack	261.7	0.6982	15-6-5	3T
10	Michigan State	260	0.6969	15-11-4	21T

KRACH ratings add to the same number every year and so provide a baseline: this year's most dominant team would be… eh… fourth last year, and the gaps between the top teams and the bottom of the top ten are significantly smaller than they usually are.

This promises to be the most wide open NCAA tournament since… well, not very long ago. Single-elimination playoff hockey remains an exercise in blind terror and weird bounces. A couple years ago three of the four one seeds crashed and burned before the Frozen Four. But if you like your barely-weighted plinko to be really hardly weighted at all this is your year. Anyone who makes it in will be eyeing the Frozen Four.

Hockey draft bits. NHL draft rankings multiply like rabbits. Hockey Prospectus has Jacob Trouba #7, Boo Nieves #30, and Phil Di Giuseppe #43. TSN has Trouba sixth…

Strengths: A mobile defenceman with length, strength and range. Plays a physical game and not afraid to take a run at an opponent. Has some offensive skills, is a good passer with vision and a hard point shot. Weaknesses: there are some questions about his overall hockey sense, needs to learn to rein in the physical play at times and play with composure.

…PDG 27th…

Strengths: Very quick skater with soft hands, a sneaky release and he competes. Good offensive instincts, good size, tough to contain along the boards on the cycle. Weaknesses: Needs to keep working on his defensive duties and could play with a bit more edge more consistently. He will likely require more time in college to round out his game but has been rumoured to be leaning towards playing all four seasons in Michigan. His production has waned in second half of season.

…and does not rank Nieves in their top 45.

Bad incentives. The United States of Hockey takes on UND coach Dave Hakstol's assertion that playing in the CHL shouldn't hurt your NCAA eligibility:

First off, allowing CHL players to retain college eligibility could have a gigantic impact on the USHL. More top-end players would go to the CHL fully knowing that they’ll have a fall-back plan. So they can go up and get added exposure, get in front of more scouts on a nightly basis. The top end in the USHL could be significantly diminished in such a scenario.

While this move would help the NCAA’s depth, it would most likely eliminate many of the top-end players from ever making it to the NCAA. By the time a player’s Junior career is over at age 20, most would go to the NHL or AHL. Only the guys that would have otherwise played lower-level minor-league hockey would end up in college. The quality of play gets dragged down in the college ranks. While the NCAA would remain a developmental option, it also becomes a safety net for CHL players similar to what the Canadian Interuniversity Sport is right now. That’s an ugly scenario for American college hockey, which has produced NHL talent as long as it’s been in existence.

The USHL is a hugely important part of the route to college hockey and should be protected at all costs. Allowing players to go to the CHL and maintain collegiate eligibility cuts the decade-long rise of the league off at the knees. It's a nonstarter.

The only way I could see this happening is if the NCAA restricted post-CHL eligibility to just Canadians. That wouldn't hurt the USHL. Because of the double standard in place between USA Hockey and their Canadian counterpart Canadians wanting to play college hockey have to cool their heels in Junior A leagues far inferior to the USHL. If the NCAA opened the door for Canadians coming over immediately after high school, I could see it working…

…except the CHL would immediately make it not work by finding sufficient NCAA regulations to violate so that any kid in junior would never make it to campus without an inquisition. Saban teaches that it is not a good idea to give people in charge of high school/college kids incentive to not have their charges graduate. So nevermind.

Etc.: GLI outdoors officially. Seniors on next year's team will have played outdoors all four years.. Michigan gets three million for renting out Michigan Stadium. Boo Nieves will make a move to the USHL after his prep season ends.

I talk with Lake the Posts about the Mattison transition and why Northwestern shouldn't expect the same miracle with a new coordinator. The Bylaw Blog on revamping transfer restrictions. Mock Rock recap. Ace on the GBMW podcast.