vincent gray

“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. [Patrick Barron]

Hello, fan of an NFL team. MGoBlog excruciatingly scouts every Michigan play, and scores them to inform our coverage. Since mi atleta es su atleta now, here we share what we're sharing.

Series: RB Hassan Haskins, OL Andrew Stueber, DT Chris Hinton, DT Donovan Jeter, DE Aidan Hutchinson, DE David Ojabo, LB Josh Ross, S Daxton Hill, S Brad Hawkins, CB Vincent Gray.

Quickly: Speed-limited long and tall cornerback. DON'T PANIC.

Draft Projection: Undrafted free agent (signed by the New Orleans Saints).

NFL Comp: I could go with the guy Michigan tells every tall cornerback they recruited they will be, but I feel like I should do some research fir—

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Yeah okay Richard Sherman. Gray is a slow, legitimately taller than 6'2" cornerback. He doesn't twist like Sherman, but if Gray's to have an NFL career it'll be because he came as close to Sherman as he can. That would mean learning to use that length better in jams, though. So Michael Ojemudia?

What's his story? We don't like to speak of it but there was this one class when Michigan, tired of competing in the rarified waters of cornerback recruiting (where ability is most of the game), tried to moneyball it by stuffing their class with Richard Shermans. They did this consciously; every recruiting profile that summer inevitably stumbled on the player relating something along the lines of "They see me as another Richard Sherman," be that high 4-star Myles Sims, low 4-star Gemon Green, 3-star Sammy Faustin, or Green's low 3-star twin brother. Gray, a Mizzou decommit with a 4.76 forty, was the last of the bunch.

All of them redshirted, Indiana and Ohio State undid Michigan's slow, handsy press specialist cornerback Brandon Watson, and the fretting began. Come the 2019 offseason, Gray's was the only name from the 2018 long and talls coming forth, and doing so a lot. Indeed the coach-beloved afterthought assumed Watson's #3 cornerback role. There, for a time, the takes diverged; results-based charters (e.g. PFF, the Michigan coaches) saw a guy getting the job done. This tweet got action.

Our (Brian's) charting revealed a lot more luck—there was a decided difference between the balls 4.5-star Ambry Thomas was batting down from perfect position and the passes dropped by Notre Dame WRs who had Gray beat. The week after that Gray picked up a –6, with eight negatives, against Illinois. My prognosis for a 2020 without Thomas (opted out) was a meter set to "panic."

Unfortunately that proved disastrously correct. He was tortured by Roshad Bateman in Week 1, then legendarily abused by MSU's Ricky White in a game Michigan State won with bombs downfield and virtually nothing else. Ricky White's MSU career ended with 223 total yards, 196 of them from that one game. Gray wasn't alone, but he was the #1 cornerback. Michigan subsequently went into panic mode, quickly installing a Cover 3 and leaning on its Cover 2 so that Gray wouldn't be left on any more islands. The season was a train wreck. Don Brown didn't survive, not because of Gray, but certainly for getting themselves in a position where they had to play him at cornerback.

If this doesn't sound like an NFL cornerback, well, it doesn't sound like a team about to finally beat Ohio State, win the Big Ten, and make the playoffs for the first time in program history, all with Gray playing the most minutes of any cornerback. They changed up their coverages again, rotating pattern match principles with quarters, cover 3, and cover 1 (mostly on passing downs), and leaving Gray high on the boundary. That did lead to a lot of dumpoffs beneath him, but Gray was a solid tackler, and expecting it, and no team was willing to make the offense out of 7-yard hitches when Gray might throw off his conservative any moment and go for a pick. When they tried him deep, the head start was plenty to make up for the slowness, and Gray's height and length made it tough even for Ohio State's vaunted downfield threads. MSU's entire team matched Ricky White's output from the year before. The one team that really managed to target Gray and come out the better for it in 2021 was Georgia, on three spectacular busts when Michigan was down and Gray threw conservatism to the wind.

Gray left with two years (2018 was a redshirt, 2020 didn't count) of eligibility remaining, but also with the emergence of DJ Turner II as a No.1 CB opposite him, and a lot of young talent that threatened to relegate Gray to the bench had he remained.

Positives: Height and length are very hard to throw over. Reads the play well, has a natural feel for Cover 2 zones, superb tackler (except one time when he took a bad angle on Stetson Bennett). Good ball skills when he has a chance to get his head around, anticipates slants well and uses his size to reach around and break them up. Has the body/hands to be successful at press if he can regain his confidence. Good head/football IQ for possible conversion to safety (UM needed him at CB too much to consider it).

Negatives: Not fast. Trusts his brain to read pre-snap too much and panics when trying to adjust on the fly. This happened often when in press, with Gray often going into grab mode and picking up flagrant pass interference flags.

[After THE JUMP: What others say, scheme fit, grading, video, conclusion]
I was once voted the worst audience participant Cirque du Soleil ever had. [Bryan Fuller]

Formation Notes: Bowl games tend to get a lot of looks because coaches use the extra time to install more of them. Georgia used a lot of multi-TE sets and varied formations with them to hunt good matchups. I stuck with numeric conventions to make it easier to follow, so for example this is Gun 13 Heavy (shotgun, 1 RB, 3 TEs, heavy formation).

And here’s the next play with the same personnel, which we’ll call “Gun 13 Empty 5w.”

I referred to this defensive setup as “4-4 Zero” because there are no safeties.

The offense is a “Gun 12 Str F Flex’ since it’s a normal 3-wide with the extra guy to the strong side (“Str”) with an "F" (not on the line of scrimmage) TE flexed out.

Finally, this is Bone:

Substitution Notes: TrueBlueinTexas provides. As in the second example above, Michigan tried to have a 5-2 unit that replaced Moore, Ojabo, and the starting DTs with Jeter-Speight-Jenkins-Harrell. It immediately got burned in a matchup problem. They also ran a lot of 4-3 with Barrett at SLB and Dax Hill on the bench.

[After THE JUMP: Dead dove, do not eat]
Job is done. Hail to you, Vincent. [Patrick Barron]

This one is less surprising. Though a returning starter, with the emergence of DJ Turner II as Michigan’s top cornerback, Gemon Green’s return from injury, the progression of Ja’Den McBurrows, and a wave of elite freshmen, including five-star Will Johnson, inbound, Gray was going to have to win a tough battle to keep his job. Already graduated, he will pass that up to see if he can catch in in the League, he posted on his instagram account.

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Gray won a spot in the rotation behind Ambry Thomas and Lavert Hill in 2019, but there was a substantial difference between the production numbers…

…and the charting, which showed a marked difference between how well Gray and Thomas played the ball. Gray’s 2020 was rough, particularly the MSU game, but he bounced back to stay in phase or over the top as a switch to zone coverage made up for some of his limitations. While those limitations still left Michigan exploitable in the flats underneath him, Gray was a steady presence and won far more routes than he lost until Georgia got to him a couple of times in the playoffs. That’s a remarkable senior run considering how his junior campaign went. Though he leaves a redshirt and a COVID year of eligibility on the table, I think we got all we could ask out of Gray in his four years at Michigan, and hope he catches on as a pro. The dark times would have been much darker if he'd not been around.

Though Gray is the fourth CB to leave the program with eligibility remaining since the Orange Bowl, Michigan was expected to lose at least that many from a packed roster. DJ Turner is still around, and Gemon Green and his twin brother German are planning on returning for their 5th years, so the Wolverines should still have two experienced starters unless someone loses his job to a younger guy.

There’s a good chance at least one does. Ja’Den McBurrows passed a lot of guys older than him over the course of his freshman year in 2021, and combined with incoming Will Johnson, Kody Jones, and Myles Pollard, Michigan should be able to find two or three impact underclassmen to load the depth chart. Walk-on speedster Keshaun Harris, stolen off the track team, passed seven scholarship players to be the 4th corner for most of last year, until McBurrows overtook him. One of those passed, Jalen Perry, has seen over 50 live snaps at cornerback as well. So/Sr Quinten Johnson and Fr/Jr Eamonn Dennis, a converted slot not expected to be competing until 2022, could factor in as well..

Give him the trophy.

the past is nothing 

someone give Sean Clifford a hug

you've been living inside a derangement machine your whole life 

Is there life after Hutchinson?

John Donovan's secrets are revealed.

You tried to edge Dax Hill didn't you. How did that work out for you?

scrabbling for walk-on silver linings 

someone get a stuffed beaver to rub in kenny demens's face 

not great bob