A series covering Michigan's 2010s. Previously: QBs, RBs, and WRs, TEs, FBs, and OL, best blocks, the aughts.

Methodology: The staff decided these together and split the writeups. Considering individual years but a player can only be nominated once.

DEFENSIVE TACKLE: Maurice Hurst Jr. (2017)

The spread age means defensive material gets moved away from the box, simplifying the game by taking away most of the defense's opportunity to surprise. You can't bring pressure from everywhere if your OLBs and safeties have to split out with slot receivers. RPOs, quick passing games, receiver running backs, cross-motion, run-threat QBs, and read-based rushing offenses nerf the effectiveness of even the elite edge rushers until passing downs take those options away. But the one thing spread offenses have no answer for is a penetrating defensive tackle who won't get doubled and won't get out of his damn lane.

Into this math stepped Mo Hurst, and oh was that first step unholy quick.

The spread has no answer for that.

Hurst was the son of an NFL father who'd left only his name, from a fancy Massachusetts private school his mom had to Mom Out to pay for, and a first step looking to be attached to a football player.

Why Mike Martin? Two words: snap explosion.

Martin was a bit higher rated—consensus four star outside the top 100, IIRC—and an ever-growing slab of pulsating muscle from day one. Hurst isn't going to be quite as ripped, but he is a kid who can get off the ball in a flash, bury himself in the chest of the opponent, and then rip through the dude before he knows what's going on.

We were hype, with distant future caveats. The burst came in 2015, first as a passing down sub for Ryan Glasgow, then a cycler with the aforementioned and Willie Henry. Hurst made his mark on the season with quick flashes into the backfield, but got exposed for his youth when Glasgow was out and Kevin Wilson's fast-paced Indiana stretched him to death.

By 2016 the MGoBlog love for the wrecking ball responsible for Michigan's second line (Gary/Hurst/Mone/Winovich) matching the starters (Wormley/Godin/Glasgow/Taco) in production was expressed in UFR (+84.5/-20) then surpassed by Pro Football Focus—then at the fulness of their scouting, and it was on. We called him the defensive MVP (over Peppers). They put him on the All-American team. We wrote a profile in and put him rubbing his belly on the cover of HTTV, they put him on the top of the top players returning for 2017. We created a maurice hurst is so good he is kind of boring tag. They put him in Heisman territory:

Congratulations to the 2017 PFF All-American 1st Team Defense pic.twitter.com/77eGJzxz1p

— PFF Draft (@PFF_College) December 6, 2017

This site wasn't far off—Hurst's senior season tape is the best by a DT or any other position in the history of the exercise. His +152/-27.5 is the standing record for UFR. The 3-3-5 they routinely deployed, because there wasn't a second line of Mo Hursts anymore, nerfed his statistical impact. This site was saying this after Game 2:

He is Mo Hurst. The end.

How far you want to go with the superlatives after that is up to you. The best player of the 2010s? There's an argument. The best DT in Michigan history? Depends how much film you want to watch. But if you want to know what's different about Michigan's last two defensive efforts against Ohio State and the two that gave wobby offenses a chance to win in 2016 and 2017, he is Mo Hurst. The end.

--Seth

[After THE JUMP: MGoBlog and the mid-teens were good for one thing]

Speaking of Mo's comp…

DEFENSIVE TACKLE: Mike Martin (2011)

When I first started contributing on this blog it was 2009 and bloggers were still pretty out there. It was Wild West enough, at least, that nobody who owned, say, the NIL rights of college athletes or Marvel superheroes much cared if we made a t-shirt of Mike Martin as the Incredible Hulk. So when users caught on to Martin's state wrestling title and freakish measurables they starting making credible MS Paints of Martin smashing things…

…and Six Zero designed a shirt.

(also Will Campbell dressed as Thor once so we had this whole Avengers theme ready)

This wasn't the one that put an end to our unlicensed lives ("Shoelace" was). It wasn't even the nickname we tried to coin for him—that was "Crabman" from a coach quoted in Martin's recruiting profile regarding pad level. But Michigan State players apparently felt the green was Disrespektful and took out Martin's knees in 2010. That he limped through most of the back half of the season (one more thing for Rich Rod's doom) makes 2010's UFR grade (+96.5/-17.5) as incredible for its volume of spectacular sideline-to-sideline plays (from nose tackle!) as for the otherwise wretched play around him.

By the time Martin was all the way back from that it was 2011, his coaches had been replaced with Brady Hoke and Greg Mattison, he was team captain, MGoBlog was definitively banned from using references to individual players (Disney, incredibly, still doesn't seem to mind /cue the muppets), and we'd gotten the thing with Screw Fair Use Because YouTube Lets Us LLC squared away just in time for video to exist of the most incredible DL play ever captured:

That backside guard is supposed to cut the while the quarterback jets outside with a pitch man to erase whichever linebacker or DE is supposed to be setting the edge. Martin forced the pitch! Five yards in the backfield and the DT is forcing the pitch. The DT—the DT!—is forcing the pitch!

Apparently these things happened around Mike Martin. "I be like dang" was embraced around these parts immediately after Jibreel Black used it in reference to The Hulk:

"When I see some plays that Mike (Martin) makes in practice, I be like dang. His explosiveness, his technique that he uses. You can tell the work that he put in with it.”

It wasn't UFR'd but Martin (with Ryan Van Bergen) was the beefier half of the combo that played every snap of the Sugar Bowl and held VT's offense in check, calling their own stunts when they sensed the time was right. I'd like to think it was MGoBlog's appreciation that had something to do with Martin's rise to elite, but if we're being honest it's totally the other way around.

—Seth

Second Team: Willie Henry (2015)

I KNOW YOU HAVE SOME SALMON [Patrick Barron]

If Willie Henry got injured you could have put a bear in a helmet and get away with the swap. Henry was one of the more obscure players Michigan recruited this decade because he was sushi raw. Even late in his career he had a tendency to get slashed to the ground because bears don't expect folks to go after their knees.

Bears do inspire tags like "willie henry throws humans," and Willie Henry threw humans. The quintessential Henry clip actually came in 2014, when he got blown off the line by an MSU OL and then rescued it by hurling the dude past him:

That dichotomy persisted but the downs got less frequent and the pocket crushing more frequent in his junior and final year.

Henry put up 10 TFLs and 6.5 sacks before heading off to be a mid-round pick in the NFL draft. Folks were a bit worried that a young Mo Hurst would be a downgrade, but not so much.

—Brian

Second Team: Ryan Glasgow (2016)

Ripper and Rubber [Bryan Fuller]

One is chance, and two is coincidence, so you can hardly blame us when the Football Bits of 2014 came back with slightly panicked reports that a walk-on was ahead of five-star Ondre Pipkins. This wasn't full-blown panic: Graham was Ann Arbor's best offensive lineman at that moment, and there were reports from Ryan's redshirt year that Michigan thought they had something.

What they had was an apex push-pull ripper who ripped all day 'till the rippin's done. Sometimes he stood a guy up before ripping, or hammered a guy before ripping, or feinted inside before ripping, or took on a double before ripping through it, or thumped his guy to the ground and ripped by him, or tapped the guy's opposite shoulder to make him look away before ripping his heart out.

Don't get me wrong, the old walk-on adages still applied. Glasgow was a heady player (and super-fast for his position), who was always in the right spot (because he'd thrown a guard into the backfield), got the job done with effort (plus the strength to drive a center yards into the backfield), advanced technique (paired with the agility to juke a future NFL guard out of his jock strap), and a certain je ne sais quois, which is French for "accelerates so quickly off the snap that you have to block him on screens or he'll rip down your quarterback before it gets set up."

—Seth

Honorable Mention

Ryan Van Bergen (2010) was forced to play mostly 3-tech in the bastard 3-3-5 and graded out around Terrance Taylor's senior season. He reprised the role in late 2011 when he and Heininger swapped jobs. Honestly that's it: Jibreel Black (2013) and Carlo Kemp (2019) are next but well into the just-serviceable range.

------------------------------------

STRONGSIDE END: Chris Wormley (2016)

[Bryan Fuller]

One of my first assignments upon taking a job at MGoBlog in 2011 was to scout Michigan commit Chris Wormley in Toledo. I learned an early lesson about checking the quality of opponent, as I spent the evening watching Wormley wreck a line of tiny Canadians for a half before mercifully sitting out the rest of a blowout. Even accounting for context, however, Wormley had a size/power combination that was impossible to ignore:

In the end, what stood out to me the most was Wormley's impressive size. Even when he took off his pads near the end of the first half, he was easily the most noticeable player on Whitmer's sideline, and it looks like he's added a decent amount of good weight since last year. At 6'5", he appears to weigh in the neighborhood of 270 pounds, and he's not carrying any unnecessary pounds.

Years later, I was walking down Main Street in Ann Arbor when I began passing the most orderly, single-file line outside The Ark, the concert venue that hosts the likes of the local folk festival. While it's usually a pain in the ass to maneuver that stretch of sidewalk when people are waiting for a concert, the path was clear. The reason became apparent when I reached the front of the line; there stood all 6'5" and 300 chiseled pounds of Wormley stretching the limits of his The Ark polo, cheerfully working the door of a legendary local music hall safe in the knowledge the only people in town that could disrupt this line were on the football team he captained.

After a freshman redshirt, Wormley immediately found a home in the rotation and worked his way to a part-time starter as a redshirt sophomore on the cursed 2014 team. He found a home at strongside defensive end, where he used his preternatural size and strength to overpower single blocking, hold up against double-teams, and snatch the souls of anyone smaller than a lineman tasked with blocking him. This site has a "chris wormley vs te only ends one way" tag.

He thrived once Michigan got Jim Harbaugh at the helm. In the 2015 opener, Wormley posted a career-high three TFLs at Utah. Despite frequently having to work through two blockers, he finished that season with 14.5 TFLs and 6.5 sacks.

While the numbers didn't quite match up, Wormley was even better as a senior with Don Brown in charge—Michigan line's just had such an embarrassment of riches that it was hard for any single player to rack up major counting stats. He rarely made mistakes. Meanwhile, when opponents made the error of taking him on with a tight end—what did we say about that?—it only ended the one way (DE to the top of the screen):

Yup, just the one way (top of the screen again):

Much like concertgoers maintaining a single-file line, opponents had a choice to send two blockers or suffer the consequences. Unlike the concertgoers, opponents were occasionally willing to test Wormley. It never went well.

—Ace

WEAKSIDE END: Chase Winovich (2018)

I don't totally blame Harbaugh for thinking this guy might be a fullback [Eric Upchurch]

When they canceled the 2018 spring game we had already planned on taking the kids to the Children's Museum, and kept the appointment. In the open play room my preschooler hit it off with Chase's nephew, so I introduced myself to Chase's mom.

o anyone who attended a Michigan game—home or away—in those years Nina Winovich was easily identifiable: curly yellow hair, a #15 jersey, eyes that hold a certain hardbitten, wild determination that apparently is trademarked by Western Pennsylvania. I introduced myself, shared the photo of Chase wearing Upchurch's signature hat, and since the draft came in while we were talking I showed her son on the back cover of HTTV, exclaiming he's the best player on the team. "If he's the best player on the team, why isn't he on the front?" she asked.

While Gary's final season was more than fine, Gary never got close to the impact Winovich in 2018, or 2017 for that matter. Chase could destroy any tackle left one-one-one by pairing this swim/speed or stack and shed combo outside…

with this stiff-arm & rip interior move…

or some combination of the two plus grown ass man strength. Add to that a relentless pursuit that turned what looked like a safe result into a paw on the QB's shoulder. The result 17(!) TFLs, five of them sacks, and a season behind only Brandon Graham's 2009 in the annals of charting.

The rushing was only half the story. Winovich routinely snuffed out running games that were designed to mess with him, and overpowered or discarded blockers, to the point where you almost felt bad for the tackle who'd probably seen this thing totally work in practice against some punk-ass Panasiuk. Then he'd go and tell you about it.

Hold this L

— Chase Winovich (@Wino) October 20, 2018

Matt Canada's Maryland gameplan was 100% Winovich avoidance. The late issues against Indiana were diagnosed as a case of doubling Winovich and Michigan's DTs not winning the single-blocking matchups that created for them. The Ohio State disaster began when a goon from Indiana got sick of being made the fool and jumped on Winovich's hip after the play, knocking Michigan's best player out for the game. Winovich probably shouldn't have played against Ohio State, but he did anyway. He also played in the Peach Bowl when many of his teammates decided not to.

Mea culpa, Mom.

—Seth

Second Team: Frank Clark (2013)

[Bryan Fuller]

Frank Clark assaulted his then-girlfriend towards the tail end of 2014, spent three days in jail, and got kicked off the team. Later he pled down to a disorderly conduct charge. Afterwards he acted like a complete asshole to a woman who wrote something about the Seahawks drafting him, more than two years(!) after the piece was posted. His apology afterwards was obviously insincere and then obviously massaged by Chiefs PR. I doubt much has changed. It was off-putting when the program talked him up as an alum after the Chiefs made the Super Bowl.

Clark got drafted in the second round after the assault because he was super talented, even if the numbers didn't show it. He was one of the more snakebit defensive linemen in recent memory, constantly missing out on stats because someone blew a coverage or got out of their lane or got to the QB first. His 2013 season was completed on the field; he tallied 12 TFLs and 4.5 sacks, improving from a guy who wasn't making much impact against MAC teams to one who handed soon-to-be first round pick Brandon Scherff his ass:

DE #57 to top

His 2014 was much better before its unceremonious end. Clark never got to have a full season of demolishing the opposition; that's probably for the best.

-Brian

Second Team: Ryan Van Bergen (2011)

"I deny the premise; I don't get knocked down, so I clearly can't get up again." [Eric Upchurch]

When coming up with comps for what a young Michigan defensive end might become there are two ways to file: 1) edge rushers of various shapes and sizes, or 2) Ryan Van Bergen. There has never been a more accurate type specimen for the species of just-under-300, DT-ish, long-armed DE tasked with standing up to tight end doubles and dictating how the favored rushing edge battle will go down.

And that was the thing about Ryan Van Bergen, the fourth of the Those Who Stayed™* to appear on our two-deep: Whatever you did to him he did not fall over, despite adding frequent stunts as the season progressed which should give the OL an edge in balance issues. Not falling down included after the play: forced to play out of position for most of 2010 and parts of 2011 (including passing downs) due to the atrophy of the position under Rich Rod's staff, RVB was most appreciated because he stayed on the field in a time when losing him meant playing multiple walk-ons (Nate Brink and Will Heininger) beside each other. He played every snap of the rivalry games and Sugar Bowl.

There are no monster games in the RVB legacy, just a lot of consistency: standing up to doubles, pressuring here and there on the advanced stunting game he and Martin worked out between each other, and doing the right thing versus cut blocks and traps and the like. If the offense screwed up, RVB wouldn't miss. The craziest thing he did all year was adopt a flow. Most of his outings however were a steady diet of +1s and +0.05s that tallied up to a +9 with no mistakes.

—Seth

* [Guys who committed to Carr then held the team together through the Rodriguez years and into the Hoke regime. David Molk, Junior Hemingway, Ryan Van Bergen, and Mike Martin mainly, but Troy Woolfolk, Elliott Mealer, JT Floyd, Kevin Koger, and Mark Huyge also count]

Also 2nd Team: Taco Charlton (2016)

When I went down to see Taco Charlton and his Pickerington Central squad take on Jake Butt's Pickerington North team in a cross-town rivalry game, I knew of Charlton as a camp-wrecking physical marvel with the reputation of a one-trick pass-rushing pony. While he displayed that talent as a speed-to-power rusher, he also held up really well against a strong running game:

As a pass-rusher, Charlton showed off more of a power game than what I've seen from him on camp film, getting his hands inside the blocker and bull-rushing to great effect. He still has that impressive speed around the edge and got pressure on a couple of speed-rushes, but for the most part he went right at his blocker—likely due to his contain responsibilities against the run.

Overall, I was very impressed with Charlton as an all-around end, which I didn't expect given that he's known almost entirely for rushing the passer. He played a very intelligent game and sacrificed his personal stats—at least sack-wise—to make sure he helped limit North's vaunted rushing attack.

What stood out to me the most, though, was how hard Taco played—he also played tight end and even special teams and brought it on every snap—and how much he cared. In this game, Central lost to North for the first time and the game wasn't very close. As the game wound down, I noticed Taco on the sideline. He was devastated—too devastated, as it'd turn out, to even have the words for a postgame interview.

[Anbender]

Charlton cared a lot. He advanced so much faster than anyone expected when he first hit the radar as that skinny pass-rushing specialist that he didn't take a redshirt year in 2013, and by 2014 he flashed his NFL potential as a situational rusher, a role he'd reprise with greater production in 2015. As a senior, he moved into the starting lineup.

Much like Wormley, Taco's impact isn't captured by the stats. As an oversized weakside end, he also commanded extra attention. Watch #33 to the bottom of the screen absolutely destroy this goal line run play:

While he generally used a bull-rush to get to the quarterback, he had some other moves in his arsenal:

No sack there; it turned out better for the defense that way.

In addition to playing a major role on the best defensive line Michigan's had in a while, Taco was, of course, a fan favorite. His name is Taco, after all, and he fully embraced his lifelong nickname. Both fun to watch and fun to cover, he's been one of my favorite players to follow since I first started writing about him—he once gave me a long phone interview while his dad was cutting his hair. For both on- and off-field reasons, it was easy to root for Taco.

—Ace

Honorable Mention

Rashan Gary (2017 and 2018) had two partially injured seasons that bordered on, and occasionally forayed into, the brilliance zone. The fifth guy (sixth-best DE season overall) by UFR grade is Aidan Hutchinson (2019), with a +102/-21, so that's nice. Craig Roh (2012) and Kwity Paye (2019) had very good years that didn't quite match RVB's senior one, but were in that vein.