transfers

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Sponsor note.

WolverineWeekend_MGoBlog

Hey folks, Wolverine Weekend is back at Grand Traverse Resort and Spa from June 9 – 11. The weekend includes:

  • Meet-and-greets with Donovan Edwards, Will Johnson, Colston Loveland and Junior Colson,
  • Dinner featuring John U. Bacon, Devin Gardner, Sam Webb and football players,
  • Golf Outing on The Wolverine, and
  • a Woodson Whiskey Tasting Event.

Great opportunity to get your Michigan on and support some NIL initiatives.

Harbaugh gonna Harbaugh. Pat Forde profiles Harbaugh, and his world champion dad status never wavers:

If Harbaugh hadn’t gone to Michigan and become a famous football player and coach, what skilled trade would he have undertaken?

“A lawnsman!” Harbaugh enthusiastically responds. “That’s what I do. Mowing the lawn is one of the great feelings I have in life.”

I don’t think this will work and I don’t think it should. Deion Sanders has detonated the Colorado roster:

Colorado recently updated its 2023 football roster. All of the names of players who are departing via the portal have been deleted. The revised roster lists 76 players: 12 returning scholarship players, 21 incoming transfers, 17 new freshmen and 26 walk-ons. Not listed are 17 more transfers who have verbally committed. …

A total of 53 scholarship players have left the program since Sanders was hired in December.

A large number of them were told to hit the bricks after spring practice, which is really doubling down on the idea that you can import a roster from whole cloth. Folks are skeptical:

“It is just absolutely unreasonable to think you can sign 25 players out of the spring transfer portal and make your team better,” the Big 12 DPP said.

There’s a reason the NFL sees far less in-season trade activity than any other major sport. In hockey, soccer, baseball, and basketball you can kind of just go play even if there’s some transition costs moving from system to system. In football one busted assignment is a touchdown. And we’ve seen transfer-heavy teams fail to live up to expectations. MSU, which recently aspired to become Portal U, seems to be cratering. Adding a few guys here and there to plug holes is reasonable. Getting a whole football team on closeout from TJ Maxx? Maybe not so much.

[After THE JUMP: how this makes me feel]

Godspeed, Bows. Yours was the second-most visual Michigan podcast. [Patrick Barron]

Michigan has once again lost one of its podcasting athletes. Quarterback Alan Bowman announced he's in the portal, with a year of eligibility remaining.

It bites that he can't stick around for the Playoff but teams are making their decisions now, so it's important for guys looking to find a place to play next year to be on the market sooner rather than later. UPDATE: Bowman will be with Michigan through the end of the season, while letting teams know he's available.

Bowman transferred to Michigan in 2021 after making 16 starts at Texas Tech. At the time, he was expected to compete with Cade McNamara and JJ McCarthy for the starting job. A starter for TTU in 2018 under Kliff Kingsbury's Air Raid, Bowman lost most of his 2019 season to injury, earning a medical redshirt, and then lost his starting job in 2020. If you're wondering how a guy who committed to Kliff Kingsbury (in June 2017!) still has eligibility, well:

2018: Fr/Fr

2019: Medshirt/So

2020: COVID/Jr

2021: So/Sr

2022: Jr/5th

2023: Sr/6th

Told ya it was gonna get weird.

As a Michigan media person, Bowman earned a lot of fans, specifically for producing a refreshingly frank podcast with fellow backup (and fellow transfer out) Dan Villari last year.

As a Michigan quarterback, however, he never got higher than third on the depth chart, as McNamara seized the QB1 job last season, with McCarthy his up-and-coming backup. Even with McCarthy starting now and Cade in Iowa, Bowman wasn't likely to see the field, getting passed by 2020 walk-on Davis Warren (who had freshman eligibility this year) last spring. True freshman Alex Orji also assumed a role as wildcat back this season. Michigan doesn't have any more QBs coming in but seems comfortable moving forward with McCarthy and Warren for the foreseeable future, so Bowman wasn't likely to see the field again.

Do not under any circumstances tell your 2018 self that a playable 4-star DT is leaving the program.[Patrick Barron]

The future of Michigan's defensive tackle roster took a hit yesterday as RS freshman George Rooks announced he's entering the portal, probably because the present of Michigan's defensive tackle roster is stacked.

Rooks was an important recruit for Shaun Nua after several cycles of whiffing on 4-stars and trying to build DTs out of Anchor prospects. Rooks…was an Anchor prospect, but one who seemed likely to grow into a DT, or in the new defense, one of those tackles that plays a little bit of SDE when the Harrell type backs into coverage (IE the role that Kris Jenkins plays).

In limited opportunities in that role Rooks looked like a hit, showing surprising agility and speed for the position in front of his hometown crowd in New Jersey:

#54 the 2nd DL from the bottom

And showing impressive pad level and awareness in his few appearances during the nonconference blowouts.

same spot

same spot

Unfortunately for Rooks he only got to play in late blowouts because Michigan's DT recruiting has been spectacularly successful since his commitment late in the 2021 cycle. True freshman Mason Graham was instant star, Rooks's classmate Rayshaun Benny is trending that direction, and Kenneth Grant, another true freshman, was seeing regular rotation by the end of the season. Even with Mazi Smith expected to move on to the NFL, Michigan has two years left from Jenkins and a solid rotation with Benny, Graham, and Grant. Since Michigan likes to play three DTs at a time they certainly had room to play Rooks, but it's understandable if he would rather not be the fifth banana.

Michigan does have two more developmental DTs from the Rooks/Benny class in Ike Iwunnah and Dominick Giudice. UCF transfer Cam Goode was one spot ahead of Rooks and has a COVID year left, but it's unlikely he'll want to use it. Ike and Dom can probably give them what they got from Goode and Rooks this year, and Michigan's close to adding a potentially playable freshman to a class that already has a Rooks-like in Brooks Bahr, so they probably don't need to look in the portal for a 5th DT. It would have been nice to have Rooks in line when Jenkins departs but that's quite a luxury in the portal era. Good luck Rooks!

mmm angles

What?

Pleasant journeys.

Where Austin Panter is recalled.

It's spelled Filaga but pronounced 'Chili-anga.'

0/2 on 2019 slot receiver recruits named GJ.

Waited patiently.

Aw man.

who likes making up six digit numbers? 

Bless these kids that are about to get hit by Cornell.