Behind Dax Hill and Chris Hinton, Zach Charbonnet garnered some of the greatest hype in Michigan’s ninth-ranked 2019 recruiting class. He was the 46th-ranked national recruit and No. 4 running back on the 247 Composite — the most highly-touted running back to commit to Michigan since Derrick Green — drawing first-round NFL Draft projections and comparisons to the likes of David Johnson. In some corners of the internet (including this one!), Charbonnet was predicted to grow into Wolverines’ best back since before your author was born. Sure, the program had missed a few times in the past, but it’s not like it was under some sort of curse that prevented any elite running back recruit from living up to his potential or anything. 

Ah. Well. Nevertheless. 

Michigan has a problem — one that began well before the Harbaugh era. Over the past decade and beyond, despite attracting scores of top-ranked recruits at running back, the program has been unable to produce a truly elite rusher. The last Wolverine back to get drafted in the first round was Chris Perry in 2004, and the highest-drafted rusher since then was Chris Evans, who was the 18th pick of the sixth round in 2021.* 

During that time, Michigan turned plenty of average recruits into good backs. De’Veon Smith ran hard and sometimes did fun things. Karan Higdon was reliably consistent and picked up yards after contact. Even now, Hassan Haskins is a decent enough runner, despite being a three-star running back converted to linebacker then re-converted to running back. But the Wolverines’ sole elite back in the last decade and a half was Mike Hart, and even so, his skills never translated into a real NFL career. Any way you look at it, Michigan has failed to produce any top-level players in the backfield. 

Zach Charbonnet was supposed to solve that problem. The consensus at his signing said that he was about as close to a can’t-miss as the Wolverines could get; he had the strength, the speed, the change-of-direction, pretty much everything you could hope for in a college back. Now, with his transfer just two years down the line, he’s the latest rusher to depart a seemingly cursed program without any major accolades. 

It would be easy to slip into hopelessness about Michigan’s backfield situation, yet it also feels unreasonable to do so. Even with Charbonnet gone, the Wolverines have a strong, experienced rusher; an elusive speedster who, because of his height, probably won’t be able to avoid Mike Hart comparisons; and an elite freshman who garnered even more fanfare than Charbonnet out of high school. At least on paper, Hassan Haskins, Blake Corum, and Donovan Edwards make for one of the strongest — even if inexperienced — backfields in the country. It even brings in Mike Hart as the latest Anointed One on Michigan’s coaching staff. Still, the burning question remains:

Can they break the curse?

[After THE JUMP: You've got to not hand it to him.]

*Technically, Chris Evans and Mike Hart both went 202nd overall, but Hart was listed as the 36th pick of the sixth round because the NFL Draft order is dumb and doesn’t make sense. The point still stands, just let me have my damn narrative. 

Why didn’t Charbonnet pan out?

Obviously, Charbonnet left for UCLA before he could fully reach his potential in Ann Arbor, but even so, I don’t think he was quite on pace to get there anyway. 

There are a number of reasons for that, not the least of which was coaching. From a development standpoint, Charbonnet spent two years under the tutelage of Jay Harbaugh, who, even if he’s proven to be an excellent recruiter, had no experience coaching running backs and, frankly, probably wasn’t ready to take on elite talent. Jay’s move to coaching the tight ends tells me that either he or his father recognized the backfield needed a fresh face. 

Even beyond the development aspects, Charbonnet never seemed to be used properly in the offense — none of Michigan’s backs did. It wasn’t quite as egregious as the “never put Chris Evans into space or use him as a receiver” approach, but the staff still struggled to put Charbonnet into situations where he could succeed. He was a player with the potential to be used as a true workhorse back, but there were times where he’d get a few big carries and then not see the field for several drives. Part of that stems from nagging injuries, but it also speaks to a coaching staff that shares the wealth too much when one back is visibly doing better than the rest. It reflects an even broader trend — and I’ve mentioned this before — of the staff to overthink things instead of just sticking to the players and plays that are working. 

Consider 2019 against Penn State, where the Wolverines fell one play short of completing an improbable comeback in Happy Valley. Charbonnet was far and away the best rusher for Michigan that night, averaging 5.4 yards per carry for 81 total yards. And yet, he split time almost exactly (15 carries to 13) with Hassan Haskins, who averaged just 2.2 yards per carry for 28 yards. There were entire drives where Charbonnet hardly saw the field at all. Don’t get me wrong — Haskins is a solid back, and I think he’ll continue to do well in 2021. But in that game, the coaching staff hampered the rushing attack by insisting on splitting the carries when, clearly, it was not working. 

I can’t read minds. I don’t know exactly what went into Charbonnet’s decision to transfer, or all of the circumstances at play during his time in Ann Arbor. But it certainly wouldn’t be unfair to think that, if the coaching staff had used him properly (or, in some situations, used him at all), things could have played out very differently. 

What about Corum and Edwards?

The coaching staff has an interesting problem on its hands with how it approaches splitting the load in 2021. I would bet that Haskins is the busiest running back — mostly by virtue of his experience and the staff’s risk aversion toward fumbles — but that role should diminish as the season wears on. Like Charbonnet, Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards both have higher ceilings than Haskins, but since they’re also both young, it becomes a question of how much the coaches are willing to use them and how they want to go about doing that. 

Let’s start with Corum. We got a clue as to how the coaching staff wants to use him on the very first play of last season, with a little play-action swing pass that befuddled Chris Fowler and gave Corum enough space to make something happen: 

Give me one moment to geek out over the design here. Nobody expected Michigan to set up a true freshman on the very first play of the season, and Gattis went with a play directly aimed to exploit that. These little flares could go a long way in the future in forcing linebackers to hesitate and preventing them from cheating on the run. 

Okay, geeking done. In Corum’s albeit limited snaps in 2020, his biggest plays seemed to come through the air, though he did tally just five receptions in six games. Michigan’s wealth of short and fast receivers might mean Corum doesn’t see that much use in the passing game, but I would expect that they’ll try to include him as a counter to the defense cheating in one direction or another. Generally speaking, he’ll be an all-purpose back, with maybe some focus on using his speed on plays where he needs to get around the edge. 

For Donovan Edwards, it’s tough to project what the coaches will do with a back that can do anything. Obviously, he will get snaps. He’s the highest-ranked running back the Wolverines have picked up in years; to have him on the bench for a season would be downright criminal. I would guess that he gets a decent amount of carries in the first few games, and as the season goes on, he continues to carry more and more of the load on offense — a process that could be accelerated by an injury. By the end of the season, I wouldn’t be shocked to see him supplant Haskins as the No. 1 back, but with this coaching staff, it might also be more of a 1a and 1b situation. 

Long term, the sky's the limit for where Edwards could go. At the risk of placing the same expectations placed on Charbonnet (and literally every other significant running back commit in the last decade), if he doesn’t pan out at Michigan, I’m not sure anyone will. By the end of his time in Ann Arbor, the expectation should be First-Team All-Big Ten; any failure to at least come close to that should be seen as an indictment on the program. 

Of course, there’s one more major addition to the running back room: Mike Hart. Maybe I can’t mentally separate the achievements of Mike Hart the player with Mike Hart the coach, but to me, this was a home-run hire. At Indiana, he took a three-star recruit in Stevie Scott and developed him into a Second-Team All-Big Ten rusher. He’s everything that Harbaugh was looking for in his offseason staff reshuffling — young, energetic, and a strong recruiter who loves Michigan. 

After years of woeful development in the backfield, maybe that youth is exactly what the Wolverines need. Sure, to some extent, those problems have been caused by bad luck. Maybe the program really is cursed to never have an elite running back, and Corum and Edwards are doomed to the same fate as Zach Charbonnet, Derrick Green, Kareem Walker, and the rest of the bunch. 

I’ll put it this way: If the best back of Michigan’s last generation can’t turn Corum or Edwards into one of the best backs of this generation, I’m not sure the curse can be broken.