[Bryan Fuller]

EVENTS:

Thursday, Ann Arbor: FOOTBOL EVE, 6pm ‘tis Football Eve at 327 E. Hoover—the same place as last year. Also the same food as last year—Scratch BBQ and Catering—since Adam and David didn't get to try it. And I think we’re getting beer from Wolverine If you’re coming say so in the form so we know how much beer to get.

Friday, South Bend: PEP RALLY, 7-9pm, with Jon Falk, hosted by the Michiana Club of the Alumni Association

Saturday, South Bend: TAILGATES. The Alumni Association has two: the big on-campus one (exact location to be shared gameday morning) in the Library Lot, and another at The Triangle, which will convert to a huge watch party if you don’t get tickets. If you’re looking for something more low key, Matt Demorest will have the MGoBus parked at a reader’s backyard—reach out to him if you wanna stop by.

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Probably not going to do another of these as we’re now into THE WEEK THAT THEY PLAY THE FOOTBALL so here’s a quick roundup that’s mostly observations from the boring practice they probably could have done without.

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Injuries/Not Present

I’ll list first the guys who weren’t in pads or I didn’t see on the field, and we’ll discuss in their position groups. Just because I couldn’t see him doesn’t mean someone else didn’t—let me know in the comments if you spotted someone or something I didn’t.

• Dressed but didn’t participate in drills: HB Karan Higdon (did some, not all), WR Nate Schoenle, DE Rashan Gary, DE Chase Winovich
• Spotted in street clothes (a t-shirt jersey and shorts): RB Christian Turner, RB Berkley Edwards, FB Jack Wangler, WR Tyler Grosz, WR Jack Young, TE Mustapha Muhammad, OL Griffin Korican
• I didn’t see him out there: OT Andrew Stueber, DE Luigi Vilain, CB Benjamin St-Juste, CB Casey Hughes the Utah transfer, P Brad Robbins

St-Juste, Vilain, and Robbins are injured per people who talk to me; process of elimination made Hughes the center of speculation for that rumored guy no longer with the program, though (UPDATE) insiders report that is completely false.

The running backs and defensive line were practicing at the two corners opposite from where everyone was allowed to sit (the tunnel side), so I couldn’t read the backs of the t-shirts of anyone over there. QBs were right in front of us with CBs to the left and WRs to the right so that’s what we were able to see the most—you could see the offensive line pretty well but couldn’t tell much except the pecking order. Someone else was standing next to Jack Young (#81) on the sideline but I wasn’t able to identify him.

[Hit THE JUMP for the positional breakdown]

Quarterback

Of course eyes were on the QBs at the open practice (photo right via the M football twitter account). They didn’t do anything too hard but we got to see some on-the-run throwing and bomb tests. Those pretty much let you see whatever you wanted to see. I thought Patterson was the most on target, with Peters good except on one roll-out he underthrew. Patterson looked more steady and had the best deep accuracy. McCaffrey has a pretty throwing motion but he’s still lightly covered bones and he was throwing a few at his receivers’ feet. Joe Milton is a large human being, was dead-on-balls accurate on a 40-yarder, and underthrew his touch passes. I felt the program owed us at least one ball thrown to Wyoming but they didn’t do that. Walk-on Michael Sessa is hard to miss because he’s the tallest guy on the field, and he can launch a ball that floats in the air for days if anyone can go up and get that.

Brian Griese and Adam Schefter mentioned Milton on their podcast this week as a guy the staff see as a future #1 pick, but that’s a long way’s away.

Final word: All systems go for Patterson, and I think Michigan has that all-important backup in Peters. You can extrapolate some more about next year, but I think for now we’ve got two guys I’d be comfortable with under center and I’m anxious to see Patterson live.

Running Back

Karan Higdon was named one of Michigan’s captains and was the first guy off the offense bus, though he was a bit limited in practice. He did some of the movement drills then sat out the contact drills. Seems precautionary. Berkley Edwards showed up for the team photo but he left right after. Couldn’t tell much else from watching them except Tru Wilson changed his number again—he’s now 13. Also in RB number changes, Kurt Taylor was in #39, so that #5 pileup isn’t so large anymore.

O’Maury Samuels looked good to me on a couple of cuts. He was in line behind Wilson. Hassan Haskins looks like a giant pair of legs with a scrawny man’s upper body attached to it. Christian Turner wasn’t wearing the “soft cast” he was reportedly in earlier this week, but he was held out.

Fullback

Ben Mason was getting everyone fired up. BVS (can we call him that now?) is a very big dude—looks like a Big Ten fullback already. Wangler was in shorts and watching.

Wide Receiver

Nico’s the last man standing from the Leap Brigade [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Michigan lost Tarik Black for 6-10 weeks for a foot injury—not the same foot as last year. The latest I heard (from someone who should know) was he was going into the MRI  after news went public. Harbaugh said today that it’s a fracture, and they don’t yet know if it will require surgery:

"He'll be out for some weeks," Harbaugh said of Black. "He has a right foot injury. He had one fixed last year, this injury is very similar to the one he had last year. The good news is that both will be fixed. He's being evaluated right now."

Devastating for Tarik, and really bad news since he was the best of the group.

The receivers group was indeed pretty tiny without him. WRs coach Jim McElwain was running the same drill most of practice, where you run out from behind a tackling dummy and there’s a bad pass in your area right out of your break—for the most part everyone struggled with that except Grant Perry.

Peoples-Jones and Nico Collins looked big and scary, and DPJ flew downfield on the downfield drill then got badly underthrown by McCaffrey. Nico was having some fun with us, making easy catches look more difficult. The Funchess comparison is very strong once that’s in your mind. Also in Nico, Sam put up a VIP post ($) promising to name a new favorite breakout player and tipped it by the link.

Ronnie Bell leaping one-handed one of his deep balls even though he didn’t have to. He’s good at basketball at least, and probably playing now that Michigan has just Perry, DPJ, Collins, and O.Martin available among scholarship players.

Nate Schoenle is a scholarship player now, but he wasn’t available; he was dressed but not participating in drills. Tru Wilson, Cam Cheeseman, and Andrew Vastardis were the other walk-ons to get schollies. Oliver Martin has switched from #2 to #80 (since Patterson gets 2). That caused some confusion in the crowd because walk-on Jake Martin, who wore 24, and who’s running back sized/shaped, was also with the receivers, and had “Martin” on his jersey.

I guess you have to throw me on the pile of Michigan bloggers who hate on McElwain too much for saying this, but there was a noticeable difference between the other position groups, which were up-tempo and always had something going on, and receivers, who did a lot of standing around and waiting—sometimes because they were getting a piece of equipment, sometimes because they were waiting to combine with the tight ends.

Tight End

Schoonmaker is very skinny but, Nick Eubanks is way thicker than he was last year, and starting to look like the other tight ends. Zach Gentry underran a bomb that was overthrown by Sessa and we all got bummed because at his full speed he could have run it down I think. Also it triggered that one from the Ohio State game to McKeon.

Offensive Line

The one great nod to the fact that fans were coming to learn something about the team was the first team took one snap at the start of practice together so we could all see Juwann Bushell-Beatty at right tackle. The rest of the OL were Runyan, Bredeson, Ruiz, and Onwenu, as expected. I still think Hudson passes JBB by the end of the week but here’s a reminder that this is a projection, not the current state of things [UPDATE: umbig11 says JBB's the starter or ND]. FWIW Balas ($) thinks Mayfield is also in that RT hunt.

In drills the starters mostly hung out as the backups got work and the scout team mimed linebackers or tight ends. I didn’t catch where Ryan Hayes was playing, unfortunately. Second team was—left to right—Mayfield, Filiaga, Spanellis, Vastardis, Hudson, with Spanellis taking some snaps at right guard. Stueber is supposed to be back but I don’t remember seeing 71 practicing.

Korican might be because of the walk-on rule—he’s a true freshman who was going to walk on at Oregon State before Warinner was named OL coach and flipped the guy. I have unreasonably high hopes because Warinner was so keen on that.

Defensive Tackle

We managed to get through the entire practice with no Michael Dwumfour hype. This was because the DL were practicing in the corner of the endzone opposite from us, their drills don’t give away anything, and over the course of practice the half-eaten carcasses of people who tried to block him were piling up and getting in the way, but we can confirm at least that he’s about 9 feet tall, 500 pounds, and was shooting some kind of light weapon from his lower body region. Meanwhile The Fort was talking about a different guy pushing to start at 3-tech ($). I guess we’ll have to wait for the season.

Defensive End

Rashan Gary spent the whole practice with his right hand in his neckroll, and used his left arm for expressing something that might have been “One day, all this shall be yours,” lending credence to the rumor he tweaked his shoulder in Saturday’s scrimmage. Chase Winovich was with him on the sideline but ghosting drills.

Linebacker

I can confirm that Don Brown’s voice can be heard and clearly understood if he’s standing on the 25 at midfield and you’re at Row 30 on the 50 yard line. Devin Bush Jr. was wearing some kind of earpiece and was doing some of the coaching. The Vipers were all with the linebackers, and all three of them—Khaleke Hudson, Jordan Glasgow, and Michael Barrett looked about the same size as the rest of the linebackers.

They did one drill in four lines that I took for depth chart order, and if that means anything that pecking order was as follows:

• MLB: Bush, Singleton, Anthony
• WLB: Gil, Ross, Reeves
• SAM: Furbush, Uche, Dunaway
• Viper: Hudson, Glasgow, Barrett

Don’t quote me on Reeves my eyes couldn’t tell the jersey number. Might have been Offerdahl.

UPDATE: A couple of readers said they did see McGrone in there.

Safety

I couldn’t see anything because they were directly across the field and other groups were between us. Sorry. Everyone was out there, Kinnel and Metellus were leading drills next to Partridge.

Cornerback

Add David Long to the list of players who got the proverbial “rocked up” this offseason—Long looks almost like a running back now. Brandon Watson looked the best in a double-move man-to-man drill we watched—every corner was close but Watson was sticking to his guy for every microexpression. Ambry Thomas played it differently; he got shook short but saw the ball in the air and went up 40 feet to intercept it. As mentioned up top I didn’t see St-Juste or Hughes out there.

The new guys are tall but Spider Sims is in another category—he might be legit 6-3 and the others are 6-1 or thereabouts. While chasing down a sideline drill bomb Gemon Green got up to full speed, was looking for the ball, and hard-slammed into a guy on the sidelines wearing a bucket hat (whom we’ll call “Devin”) and for a moment the crowd gasped thinking we’d just lost Donovan Peoples-Jones.

Special Teams

We all came to see who would be punting but the program is going to keep that a deep secret so we had to watch the quarterbacks all day instead. We did get some clarity on the mysterious three candidates.

The three punters that Partridge may have alluded to: Hart, Moody, Caratan

— Zach Shaw (@_ZachShaw) August 26, 2018

And I can confirm Brad Robbins is injured; guessing he led before that occurred.

They started practice with a punt drill where DPJ stood back and they punted it to him and he threw a different ball 2 feet in the air and caught it, and the whole team ran at him, and then everyone stopped. This is why I’m not a football coach.