tyrone wheatley jr

The kaiju dream is dead:

We got an insider report a few days ago that this was likely because Wheatley arrived at fall camp OT-sized and didn't want to move to a spot—OL or DT—where a 300-pound person generally goes on the football field. When Wheatley was around the right weight he looked like a potential star, but maintaining was never in the cards for whatever reason.

Michigan should be fine with returning starters in Sean McKeon and Zach Gentry plus third-year player Nick Eubanks; this might accelerate one of the incoming TEs if they're ready. Since Wheatley was almost exclusively a blocker last year they might be able to get away with jumbo OL snaps and keep that extra year around for Mustapha Muhammad, who'd presumably be the next guy in line.

Please keep MGoBlog in your thoughts as we place our Tyrone Wheatley Jr shrine next to Dennis Norfleet's in the Basement Of Sadness.

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REMEMBER US?!?!? [Patrick Barron]

Apologies to everyone for interrupting your hoops and hockey tournament coverage but Michigan football’s spring practice got underway on Friday, and a few things have happened or were said to be happening with that other sport some of us still follow. If you’ve been kind of tuned out since the derpy bowl game I’ve tried to compile the most important bits we’ve learned since into this post.

By the way AZBlue wrote an excellent distillation of things Sam’s been putting out on the radio. I’ve bumped that to the diaries. Let’s go by position I guess:

Quarterbacks

Gone: Wilton Speight, John O’Korn, Alex Malzone.

Off redshirt: Dylan McCaffrey

New faces: Shea Patterson, Joe Milton.

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North! North I say! [Bryan Fuller]

Shea Patterson’s eligibility is held up for the moment (scroll down about half-way) because Ole Miss is going to be petty. They have Patterson’s reportedly ironclad case to be freed of sitting out a transfer year, but they don’t have to respond until 10 days after the ??? days it takes the NCAA to send a hard copy to Oxford of the same thing Michigan sent.

Harbaugh said the coaches are still treating it like a three-way race between Patterson, Peters, and McCaffrey, with snaps split equally. Joe Milton is on campus and impressing in his preparation but a redshirt is most likely.

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Running Back

Gone: Ty Isaac

Off redshirt: Kurt Taylor

Arrive in fall: Christian Turner, Michael Barrett, Hassan Haskins

It’s more or less the same depth chart as it’s been since Isaac’s injury last year. That is your co-starters remain Karan Higdon and Chris Evans, with Kareem Walker and O’Maury Samuels in competition for two hundred-odd carries behind them. Sam spoke with RBs coach Jay Harbaugh who mentioned Karan Higdon’s growth at running the counter cutbacks that we wrote about last year. The incoming freshmen were mentioned with the walk-ons, so I’m reading that as a four-man stable for the moment.

[after THE JUMP: the rest]

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[Chris Cook]

“How’s everybody doing?”

Good. How are you?

“Getting cold.”

What have you seen from some of the younger guys at tackle, Stueber, some of those guys?

“They’re doing really well. That transition of coming from high school to college is going really good. You’re seeing them move around do things more natural now than six weeks ago, seven weeks ago, so really excited about the young group. There’s a good group and it’s going to be fun to watch them continue to grow and compete and prepare and the whole nine yards.”

Is that typically a pretty big transition coming from high school to college as an offensive lineman?

“Oh yeah, absolutely.”

What’s been the difference for Juwann [Bushell-Beatty]? He started out no. 2, now he’s in there moving people.

“Juwann’s—he’s really maturing in just his outlook and how he goes and it’s been really fun to watch and interesting to see, like you said, overcome some adversity early on and continue to battle and continue to press. Certainly not where we want him to be or where he feels he can be but I think he’s on that road and it’s been really fun to watch.”

He’s been moving people. Is the pass pro part still where you’re really—

“Yeah, it’s always because every defense presents different challenges, and so as a group and watching these guys, they’re attacking those challenges. Still making some mistakes. There’s still some things we’ve got to get where maybe a guy gets anxious or something happens where we’ve got to calm him down a little bit but he’s solidly moving forward to become what we think he can become.”

[After THE JUMP: how Frey approaches TEs, updates on Hudson, Newsome the player/coach, and a Maryland scouting report of sorts]