troy woolfolk

Who on this team will win the Pitbull Mr. Worldwide Trophy?

— Jawn Legend (@iamstefanzonia) August 20, 2019

Important! First we must define the parameters of the Pitbull Mr. Worldwide Trophy:

• Mr. Worldwide must be versatile. Mr. Worldwide must impact as many facets as the game as possible. This means different things for different positions—a Peppers type is always going to have an advantage, but if an OL catches a pass? Forget about it. Advantage: Mike Sainristil, Ben Mason, Josh Uche.
• Mr. Worldwide must make his teammates better. Pretty much every Pitbull song is featuring someone else, and he is the greatest emcee in history. This favors unsung heroes who pave the way for their compatriots, whether that's a fullback blocking for his teammates, a center telling folks what to do, a safety doing the same, or a defensive tackle allowing his linebackers to grab the glory. Advantage: Mike Onwenu, Josh Metellus, Cesar Ruiz.
• Mr. Worldwide must be cool against stiff odds. Pitbull is essentially a cave salamander who is a famous rapper. I don't want to see his high school yearbook photo. Do you have Kenny G hair? A hyphenated name? Tourette's syndrome? This is your award. Advantage: Ben Mason, Jordan Glasgow, Donovan Peoples-Jones.
• Mr. Worldwide must enjoy spending time under highway overpasses. Advantage: Julius Welschof.

My favorites for the award—which is now very, very real and will be tracked in game columns—are Sainristil, Ruiz, Uche, and Peoples-Jones.

[After THE JUMP: Gattis timelines, I have not played XCom 2]

Melanie Maxwell/Ann Arbor.com

The Question:

What it says in the title duh. Note: other than Drake Johnson, who was obviously the inspiration for this.

The Responses:

Ace: Two years ago, it was hard to imagine Caris LeVert would make a list like this. After forcing John Beilein to burn his redshirt and contributing to the 2012-13 title game squad, he played an effective second banana to Nik Stauskas on a 2013-14 team that nearly made it back to the Final Four and set the (since surpassed) KenPom standard for offensive efficiency. The blueprint was there for LeVert to step into Stauskas’ role as a junior, play at or near an All-American level, lead a deep tourney run, and then face a difficult decision about whether to turn pro early.

Lucy will let him get back on the court next time, Charlie Brown. [Bryan Fuller]

Instead, Michigan struggled out of the gate in 2014-15, suffering a few humiliating defeats as the team failed to gel around LeVert, who struggled to maintain his sophomore-year efficiency. As Michigan survived a last-second, game-tying attempt by Northwestern at Crisler in mid-January, LeVert went down clutching his foot while the rest of the team celebrated. On a seemingly innocuous play, he’d suffered a season-ending injury; without him, Michigan missed the postseason, and LeVert returned to try it again his senior year.

LeVert looked fantastic, putting up All-American-level numbers as the team’s centerpiece, and Michigan made it through non-conference play with a quality win over Texas and no bad losses. LeVert was poised to lead his team to a decent NCAA seed while cementing his standing as a first-round NBA prospect. Then, in the waning moments of the conference opener at Illinois, it happened again: LeVert stepped on a defender’s foot, rolled his ankle, and came up limping.

[Continue at THE JUMP even though you don’t want to, because you know you should, even if it’s painful. If you make it to the end there are 24 minutes of Denard highlights]

One of these is Jamar Adams, the other Jarrod Wilson (by Fuller)

Here's a little tradition from around these parts that you're not happy to bring back: who's going to be the new safety starter? Yeah, remember that conversation? Remember how it went around picking up all the we-hope-he's-at-least-an-Englemons out of Gibson'ed secondaries?

The best of all that. This last bout of hand wringing finally ended with the best safety tandem we've had in the Cover-2 era. In their two years together Kovacs and Gordon were the first capable pair since Brandent and Jamar, easily the best since Marlin and Ernest, and probably ranked higher than any since Marcus and Tommy or earlier. We can actually chart the stuff since '07, thanks to Brian's Upon Further Review charts (which total up the plusses and minuses accrued in each game into a rough net contribution stat). I've got my UFR database now updated that far (any further and the knowledge isn't really there to make it relevant or comparable). Remember this is a game-by-game exercise that wasn't meant to remain standard across the ages; that said the Chart?-Chart! chart totals for Michigan safeties in these six seasons very much fit your recollections:

Chart notes: maize is positive, blue negative so that can stand out more. Time spent at the Spur in the 3-3-5 years was counted as linebacker, likewise Brandon Harrison's 2007 at nickel, which was a starting position on the English defenses. I tried to separate Woolfolk's corner games from his safety games; for the record here's the breakdown for 2009:

…when he was obviously a better corner than a safety but as you can see from above, was needed more at the latter.

Still the totals at the bottom tell a story of a moderately positive '07 (Stevie Brown—0/-8/-8 in The Horror) did most of his damage in one game, which itself did plenty of damage to that season), three years of atrociousness, and dramatic improvement under the new staff. If you remember 2010 as worse than '09 that's because the cornerbacks were just as bad. The disparity between Kovacs 2011 and 2012 is easy enough to explain by there being far fewer opportunities for him to make those Kovacsian stops after 7 yards as Michigan faced either Alabama or teams who either didn't test or schemed against him (Air Force, Nebraska).

Also I had to chart The Horror myself because Brian didn't at the time. Thanks Brian.* Anyway the charting says Thomas Gordon (!) was the best safety at Michigan in the last six seasons. Should we be talking about all-conference stuff for ol' Prison Abs in addition to the leadership stuff? Gee, maybe. He had a spectacular spring game, which I don't think many people noticed.

As for what's opposite him Michigan has to find something out of the blues above plus another year of progression.

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*Had this been done under modern UFR standards it would have doubled any record for RPS debacles. Just to know I tried doing that, handing out the remainder of expected points for any play that weren't on the players as Brian does in UFR-ing and came out with this staggering figure of +23/-46/-23. RPS is never that much of a variable, except in this game it was the alignment of linebackers, stunts (!), not stacking the box, and not responding to the QB draw even though they only ever ran one play out of that alignment.

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[After the jump: Candidates]