Our ongoing series covering Michigan's 2010s. Previously: Our Favorite Blocks, QBs, RBs, and WRs, TEs, FBs, and OL, Defensive Line, The 2000s.

Methodology: The staff decided these together and split the writeups. Considering individual years but a player can only be nominated once. Because of the various iterations of defense over the decade we decided on three types: two interior linebackers who could play MLB or WLB, a DE-ish rush specialist like a 3-3-5 Quick, 4-3 Under SAM, or Don Brown's Uche position, and a hybrid safety, considering the guys who played Spur (2010), Nickel (2014-'15), or Viper (2016-'19).

INTERIOR LINEBACKER: Devin Bush Jr. (2018)

Picking a year for Bush is difficult because he is one of those players who burst onto the scene fully formed. His first game as a starter came against Florida, which is a delightful team to debut against when you are a rabid squirrel man.

His numbers were actually better in 2017, his sophomore year, but a large portion of that dropoff was a shift in defensive scheme that forced him to drop into anti-slant zones. He did this with aplomb because he did everything with aplomb. Another chunk of it was the existence of Chase Winovich and Rashan Gary, particularly the former.

Bush got picked 10th overall after 2018 so we'll go with that season. He was the same guy both years he started.

That was the fastest linebacker in the country. You could occasionally get Bush to take a false step; often it didn't matter. Attempting to edge him was a recipe for second and eight…

…if you were lucky.

Bush rewrote the UFR record book for a linebacker because he was a true triple threat LB, able to blitz, play the run, and cover. Not bad for a guy whom Florida State offered a couple of weeks before his commitment.

-Brian

[After THE JUMP: This is MGoBlog, what did you think we were going to carp about?]

INTERIOR LINEBACKER: Ben Gedeon (2016)

​rarely the focus; also rarely out of position [Upchurch]

Ben Gedeon arrived at Michigan as a solid four-star recruit known as "The Freak" since his middle school days for dominating sports in the town of Hudson, Ohio, eventually putting up ludicrous stats while playing whatever position he pleased against overmatched competition:

Michigan has won an athletic consensus four star who, like a lot of guys in this class, could have opted for Stanford if he so chose. Gedeon maintained a 4.3 GPA what with his AP classes and such and meanwhile piled up enough tackles—126 as a senior alone—to become his high school team's all-time leader in that category. He also started at tailback, finishing as, well…

He leaves Hudson as the school's all-time leader in scoring (278 points), touchdowns accounted for (48), touchdowns scored (46), rushing touchdowns (37), rushing yards (3,052), rushing attempts (501) and 100-yard games (15).

In a move that would drive this blog nuts, Brady Hoke burned Gedeon's redshirt so he could spend most of the season on special teams while stuck behind James Ross, Desmond Morgan, and Joe Bolden at inside linebacker. Gedeon performed above expectations while playing more on defense in the near-upset of Ohio State, though Michigan still surrendered 42 points.

With Morgan injured in 2014, Jake Ryan made an unusual (and unusually effective) position switch from rush linebacker to middle linebacker and Bolden, a coaches' favorite, took the majority of the snaps at WLB. Again, Gedeon barely saw the field, this time despite some inconsistent play from Bolden.

That'd carry over to 2015 despite a new coaching staff except, of course, for holdover Greg Mattison, who'd later hire Bolden to work for him at Ohio State. Morgan returned and Bolden held his WLB spot through more frustrating play, even though Gedeon played well when he got a chance—including, again, in increased time against the Buckeyes.

The decks finally cleared in 2016 after both Morgan and Bolden graduated. Gedeon proceeded to post the best season in UFR history by a MLB until Devin Bush came along. While overshadowed by the stars on the defensive line and in the secondary, not to mention strongside linebacker Jabrill Peppers, Gedeon stood out for having the athleticism to cover plays sideline-to-sideline and the strength/instincts to take on blocks, reliably meet the ballcarrier at the point of attack, and finish the play. He was also an excellent blitzer:

With 100 total tackles, he recorded 25 more than any other Wolverine, and he made 15 of them behind the line of scrimmage, keeping pace with Peppers.

After playing unsung hero for his senior season, Gedeon was drafted in the fourth round by Minnesota—ahead of more celebrated 2016 players like Ryan Glasgow, Jehu Chesson, and Jake Butt—and he's started at weakside linebacker on a good Vikings defense for the last two seasons when healthy. He's already started more games in the NFL (16) than he did in college (14). We underappreciated this dude; it's pretty clear the coaches did, too.

-Ace

Second Team: Jordan Glasgow (2019)

Jeeshus, Maizy and Joseph, ANOTHER one? [Bryan Fuller]

Pushing an established starter in Devin Gil to the deep bench while never ceding an inch to a ravenous group of youngsters, the former safety, former viper, former walk-on, and final Glasgow brought a slightly more hybrid flavor to the position that had been an extremely relative weakness to date under Don Brown.

If there is a knock on Glasgow it's that he did struggle when the talent level of the backs he matched with was ramped up to extreme. Scatbacks like Raheem Blackshear of Rutgers and JK Dobbins of Ohio State were too much for him, and he got got by Penn State's inverted veer a few times. There was also the weirdness of Brown trying to use him as a defensive tackle in some situations. He made up for all of it and more by heroic performances against Iowa, Michigan State, and Notre Dame.

As a Glasgow, all of the walk-on credentials are apropos and cover about half of an eminently draftable prospect. He could time and accelerate into blitzes, cover as well as the other guys to play the position, couldn't be fooled, and had deceptive strength to stack and shed a blocker who didn't think he was signing up for a cage match with a wild animal:

Even when Glasgow made mistakes, like missing a tackle, he did it in such a way that space was constricted and his teammates had a chance to rally. His 89 tackles were second on the team behind Khaleke, his 7 TFLs  His final +75/-27.5 grade is tied with Gedeon for highest non-Devin Bush total, with a rate of negative plays lower than any Michigan linebacker but David Harris, 2018 Bush and the Ross brothers achieved.

-Seth

Second Team: Cam McGrone (2019)

It's probably no accident that the best linebacker seasons since David Harris all come out of the Don Brown era. It's likewise no accident that Michigan's latest Death Ferret reminds us so much of the Death Squirrel whom Don prioritized when he got here. McGrone's body of work over 2019 is all the more impressive because it didn't get off the ground until the Big Ten season. The only thing we'd seen from him prior was an obvious hold when McGrone got out of position against MTSU. Then Josh Ross got hurt and this guy came out of nowhere:

He was still missing some playcalls at that point, and there were still some freshman mistakes and bad gambles, but the further we got into the season the more and MORE and more and more and more hard IT became not to say it. I'd planned on doing this ramping up thing where I was like "Reminds me of…" through Demens, Burgess, Gold, Irons, Dhani, etc., except it was already obvious by Iowa:

….and had accumulated enough scientific evidence by Illinois that even some of the people we banned from the message board this week couldn't deny it:

The more Cam got his legs under him, the more Michigan was able to use Hudson and Uche and and Glasgow as blitzers again. There were a lot of mistakes too—enough that we considered awarding this to one of several underratedly steady seasons in the middle of the decade. But measured against his positives, McGrone's 2019 grades out almost equal with Ben Gedeon's 2016, and his 3.5 sacks, 9 TFLs and 65 tackles are solid numbers even before you realize he did it in just eight starts. Provided he stays healthy and out of the dang NFL for a few years, the 2020s version of this exercise probably won't have to wait for a prime candidate.

Honorable Mention:

Speaking of several underratedly steady seasons, Kenny Demens should have been starting over Obi Ezeh in 2010 and improved with the rest of the defense in 2011, but his work as a quasi-Tampa 2 deep pass defender in 2012 enabled Michigan to get away with the range limitations of Jordan Kovacs or play their star safety closer to the line of scrimmage. You may also recall a pair of plays at the end of that wild Northwestern game (the Roundtree catch one) where Mattison invited the Wildcats to run into a gap Demens secretly had on lockdown. Or if not that, the Okie package that used Demens as a quasi-nose.

Desmond Morgan (2015) was solid since taking over the starting WLB gig as a true freshman in 2011, lost 2014 to injury, and centered the 2015 defense that shot up to elite under DJ Durkin. We were spoiled by great D by 2016 and '17, so much so Mike McCray got flack for being a relative weakness when he graded out very much in the positive (+90/-52.5) as a senior.

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SAM/EDGE: Jake MF Ryan (2012)

viking incoming [Upchurch]

Jake Ryan wasn't even the most ballyhooed recruit among his high school's senior class of linebackers; that honor went to Ohio State four-star commit Scott McVey. After taking a redshirt season to marinate, however, Jake was an instant star for new coach Brady Hoke and defensive coordinator Greg Mattison's rejuvenated defense. He displayed his versatility right off the bat, starting 11 games at either outside linebacker or defensive end and finishing second on the team with 11 TFLs.

He became a full-blown terror as a redshirt sophomore in 2012. No season by a SAM/VIPER, not even Jabrill Peppers's Heisman finalist year in 2016, approaches Ryan's +144/-33 mark in 2012 on this site's UFR. His viking invasions of the backfield could come from any number of places on the field and they were always dangerous:

This was the year he became JMFR. 88 tackles (57 solo), 16.5 TFLs, five sacks, five forced fumbles, three pass breakups, All-Big Ten honors, and a Sugar Bowl win in which he hunted down David Wilson for a 22-yard loss:

There was no escaping JMFR.

We didn't get to see Ryan at his full-blown edge-rushing peak again. He tore his ACL the following spring, limiting him to eight games with significantly less down-to-down impact. While he looked back to his old self in 2014, he had to move to middle linebacker to cover for Desmond Morgan's season-long absence. That year was remarkable, too, but my fondest memories of Ryan will always be of him running step-for-step with athletic ballcarriers before throwing them into the sideline.

That was the truest JMFR experience.

-Ace

Second Team: Josh Uche (2019)

i get around [Upchurch]

It was a tossup between Jake Ryan and Josh Uche, who stacked up the same level of havoc in half the snaps. Situational as he may have been, any situation with Uche on the field was a bad one for opposing quarterbacks.

A Don Brown special from the very beginning I was vocally hyped about Uche years before I could pronounce his name correctly:

That's what Don Brown was going after in his pursuit of Uche, who's got some of the best acceleration from square of any Michigan DE prospect in recent memory, and at least in his highlight reel, seems to know not to unleash it until the offense can't back out. Once the QB keeps in this scheme, both he and the DE are in a race for the edge. A DE in pursuit can chase the QB into help, but a DE who can outflank the QB is going to own that edge all by himself.

That and because he was unblockable. The play of his career was the sack that sealed the Northwestern game in 2018, but he was only getting started. Uche forced Michigan to use a 3-3-5 for much of 2019 to keep him on the field. That season Uche and the young DL developed a nasty stunt that Craig Roh used in one of his recent DL teachtapes.

But focusing on his pass rush misses the bigger picture: Uche paid off that recruiting profile as the kind of edge protector you can't make the read guy under any circumstances, and was too quick and too smart to take advantage of with doubles when you tried to run at him. Uche was also more than competent at dropping into coverage, meaning the linemen terrified of his edge rush were suddenly swimming around to find the guy who was really coming and the quarterback had nowhere to put it. And he held his own against an Army offense that provided zero pass rush opportunities and was made of guys who've spent four years practicing how to screw with the guy in Uche's shoes.

Also: there was the pass rush.

-Seth

Honorable Mention:

Opponents figured it out and he was passed by Uche as a senior, but Noah Furbush (2017) as Devin Bush's fullback had a spectacular debut. There are no other good candidates; Ryan (2011-'13) Craig Roh was so miscast here in 2010 he had to give his coaches an ultimatum to move back to DE—J.B. Fitzgerald and Obi Ezeh (when Demens took over MLB) were not great in his stead. Brennan Beyer acquitted himself well while covering for an injured Jake Ryan early in 2013, but was mostly there as DE.

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HYBRID SPACE PLAYER: Jabrill Peppers (2016)

There is no better summation of the Jabrill Peppers experience than the time he clocked a fair portion of the Colorado sideline:

This is poetry, from the miraculously spinning hat to the gratuitous "BTN Standout" logo that pops up midway through. I wrote at the time:

The system was designed with certain tolerances and Jabrill Peppers has just blown through all of them. You are now staring winged death straight in the facemask. What a terrible time for it to be, now. Before is good. Later is good, assuming that there will in fact be a later. Now… now is bad. You spin the fight or flight wheel and land on "soil yourself."

And who can blame you, really?

Sphincters are also designed with certain tolerances. In your own way you've just blown through as many of them as Jabrill Peppers has in the realm of physics. So you've got that going for you.

Peppers was a five star who felt exactly like a five star should: not quite human. Before attempting to edge Devin Bush was a hilariously futile activity undertaken by opposing offensive coordinators who couldn't break out of their dink and dunk ruts, attempting to edge Peppers was the same.

Any sort of swing, flare, or screen to the wide side of the field was going to die horribly. Peppers was truly, literally unblockable in space. He'd slow up, pick his moment, and just explode past the wide receiver who drew the short straw.

The utter consistency with which this happened became a defensive bellwether. I eagerly awaited the moment when the offensive coordinator got fed up with having zero access to a big chunk of his playbook and said "screw it." One snap later the OC was reminded why he wasn't doing this:

Like Bush, Peppers saw his stats suffer after an electric start because teams made him their #1 priority on a defense with some dudes on it.

Unlike Bush, the nominal idea he was a safety saw him come in for a lot of meathead rival fans declaring him overrated because he didn't have any interceptions. Instead he was entirely shutting off the wide side of the field on one of the best defenses in the country.

-Brian

Second Team: Khaleke Hudson (2017)

perfect. [Marc-Grégor Campredon]

Almost exactly a year ago I sat down with Khaleke Hudson to interview him or a profile that ran in HTTV. In the course of our conversation the 2017 Minnesota game came up because of course it did, and I told him nobody appreciated that game more than me; it was the first time I had taken a game recap on my own and his performance made writing easy. He chuckled, which is a great way to ensure the ice has been broken in an interview with someone whose nickname is “Hit-Man.” The interesting thing about that is the nickname isn’t self-promotion. It came from a youth-league coach who started calling him that and kept it going for years. It’s fitting, not only because of the way Hudson plays but because of who he is. Hudson helped start a Pop Warner team in his hometown of McKeesport, Pennsylvania before his senior year of college. Before my senior year I took the kid I was babysitting to the local pool about once a week and I thought that was helping support youth in our community. Swimming: it’s exercise! Hudson practically aches to help his hometown. It was the most obvious thing when talking to him: football is about everyone else, not just him.

But oh, what he could do from the line of scrimmage. Minnesota electing not to block Hudson led to a ridiculous stat line—15 tackles, eight TFLs, three sacks, one forced fumble—but his real strength was in his timing and get-off, and those allowed him to generate pressure and disrupt the backfield even when some poor soul did attempt to block him. (He did this often.)

There were times in 2018 that the defensive staff probably asked him to do too much and put him in situations that didn’t work to his strengths, but hey, these days Taco Bell has fries and Burger King serves tacos; overzealousness happens. He rectified things in 2019 and closed his career with something of a return to form without the counting stats. Brian even got to dust off the “khaleke hudson shatter machine” tag:

Hudson used his knack for timing and twitchiness to write himself into the record book as Michigan’s career leader in blocked punts with five. One of his more memorable blocks came in this year’s game against Michigan State on a play that’s a good summation of what he did best at Michigan. Hudson slid inside a blocker and teleported to his target, slapping the ball and the game away from the Spartans; as with the run game, Hudson didn’t miss when he got a free shot at closing. All told it’s been a heck of a first act, and Hudson has a mix of talent and purpose that has me excited to see what’s next.

-Adam

Honorable Mention:

Again, the above already represent 5 of the 6 years in this span that Michigan had a hybrid on the field for most downs. Thomas Gordon (2010) should have been playing free safety over Cam Gordon/Ray Vinopal/Michael Williams/Jordan Kovacs, but his stint at Spur between winning the job from Carvin Johnson early in the season and inexplicably losing it to Cam made us frustrated fans. Cam Gordon (2013) found a limited role as an effective hybrid specialist in 2013 while platooning with Beyer.

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How things stand:

Skill Players	1st Team	2nd Team	Hon Mention
Quarterback	Denard Robinson 2012	Devin Gardner 2013	Rudock '15
RB (Flash)	Fitz Toussaint 2011	Karan Higdon 2017	V.Smith '11, Evans '16
RB (Thunder)	De'veon Smith 2016		-
Slot Receiver	Jeremy Gallon 2013	Roy Roundtree 2010	R.Bell '19
Wide Receiver	Jehu Chesson 2015	Nico Collins 2019	DPJ '18
Wide Receiver	Amara Darboh 2016	Junior Hemingway 2011	Funchess '13

Blockers/OL	1st Team	2nd Team	Hon Mention
Fullback	Khalid Hill 2016	BEN MASON 2018	Poggi '17, Houma '15,
Tight End	Jake Butt 2015	Zach Gentry 2018	McKeon '17, Koger '11
Off Tackle	Taylor Lewan 2013	Mike Schofield 2013	Runyan Jr. '18
Off Tackle	Mason Cole 2017	Erik Magnuson 2016	-
Center	David Molk 2011	Cesar Ruiz 2018	-
Guard	Michael Onwenu 2019	Ben Bredeson 2018	-
Guard	Patrick Omameh 2010	Graham Glasgow 2015	-

Def Line	1st Team	2nd Team	Hon Mention
Tackle/3-Tech	Maurice Hurst Jr. 2017	Willie Henry 2015	Ryan Van Bergen '10
Nose	Mike Martin 2011	Ryan Glasgow 2016	-
SDE/5-Tech	Chris Wormley 2016	Ryan Van Bergen 2011	Gary '17, Hutchinson '19
Weakside End	Chase Winovich 2018	F.Clark 2013 & Taco 2016	Roh '12, Kwity '19

Linebackers	1st Team	2nd Team	Hon Mention
Mike/ILB	Devin Bush 2017	Cam McGrone 2019	Demens '15, Morgan '15
Will/ILB	Ben Gedeon 2016	Jordan Glasgow 2019	McCray '17
Sam/Edge	Jake MF Ryan 2012	Josh Uche 2019	Furbush '17
Viper/Spur	Jabrill Peppers 2016	Khaleke Hudson 2017	T.Gordon '10