Michigan picked up a commitment today from transfer cornerback Josh Wallace of UMass. A grad transfer, Wallace will join the team in fall camp and compete for a spot in the rotation at corner during his final season of NCAA eligibility. Let's give him a hello: 

 

GURU RATINGS

RATINGS BY SITE
247: 6'1/170	On3: 6'1/170	Rivals: 6'1/170	ESPN: 6'0/170
3*, 84, NR Ovr #142 CB, #21 MD	n/a	no profile	no profile
3.39	n/a	n/a	n/a
COMPOSITE RANKINGS
247 Composite	On3 Consensus	MGoBlog
n/a	n/a	2*, #733/790 Ovr #67/75 CBs since 1990
n/a	n/a	3.39

UMass, eh? Wallace's recruiting profile back when he was coming out of high school was more or less "not applicable". Only 247 bothered to rank him and so we weren't able to get a composite/consensus ranking on Wallace. As you'd expect, Wallace registered as a low 3*, 67th out of 75 corners in our database dating back to 1990. But of course he's not coming to Michigan as a high schooler, he's arriving as a molded four year college player. As a transfer, 247 still has him ranked as a 3* but his rating is up to 88 from 84, showing the strides he made from UMass. The point about this paragraph is simply that Wallace is not your blue chip burning out at one program and going to a new one sort of transfer portal kid. Which you probably knew the moment you heard "transferring from UMass". 

[AFTER THE JUMP: takes, game tape, and a projection]

 

SCOUTING 

Unfortunately there is not much third party scouting we can draw from, also explainable by the phrase "transferring from UMass". Their 247 site seems to be run by one person and the forums are *crickets*. The UMass football program gets zilch coverage or analysis and Wallace has only been in the portal for a couple weeks, so it's not like there has been much time for scouting reports to pop up plentifully. There are a few to draw from, but not a whole lot. As a result, I'm going to do my best to piece together what shards of information I can find on Josh Wallace from other sites, but will be relying on the game tape and my own evaluation for this section. 

Let's wind the clocks back all the way to 2019, when Wallace was graduating HS and enrolling at UMass. Despite Wallace being a largely irrelevant recruit at the time, Steve Wiltfong of 247 put together a piece on Wallace and why he could be a dark horse prospect. Wiltfong's piece is centered around an interview of DeMatha Catholic defensive assistant Josh Wilson, who was at a 7-on-7 camp for more highly touted recruits on the team like Nick Cross (who went to Maryland), with Wallace mentioned in the classic quiet and under-the-radar tone: 

In helping DeMatha reach the finals of that 7-on-7 tournament, Wallace quietly covered several receivers who held Power Five offers. He has a chance to be an instant impact player for Walt Bell and the new staff on the next level after only playing one varsity season at DeMatha. He fancied himself a basketball player before this past season.

Wilson praises Wallace for his play in the fall 2018 season, saying that he surrendered only one touchdown, to 5* Julian Fleming (please don't look up where Fleming now plays). Wilson then goes on to give us some finer scouting: 

The footwork, the hand placement, when the ball is in the air to go track the ball, the speed to be able to run with any receiver, and I noticed man I think we may have just found something here. This was all without me putting any personalized training into him. This is all just his pure ability as a athlete.

The remainder of the article underlines this point, talking about how Wallace's basketball abilities (particularly as a leaper) have helped him translate to football. After that, Wilson tells us that Wallace checked star receiver Rakim Jarrett with success as a senior and then tells us about Wallace's character, which sure makes him sound like a Jim Harbaugh kind of guy: 

Great person who comes from a strong household. A quiet kid who brings his lunchpail to work. He’s not going to talk about it or himself or what he can do, he’s just going to show you.

Mike Traini, the guy who apparently runs the 247 site Fight Massachusetts all by himself, had a short piece when Wallace committed to the Minutemen. That piece references the Wiltfong one but then has some quotes from Wallace himself, including this one that stood out: 

“I would say I’m a good man-to-man corner and like press coverage,” Wallace said.

And it was then followed by a short take from Traini: 

Wallace is a very interesting prospect for UMass, a great deal of raw potential in an under-recruited player. The dual-sport athleticism he possesses is a major draw, and while he only had one football offer from UMass, he has the skills to develop into a quality cornerback with the right system and coaching.

That was the read on Wallace coming into college, intriguing dual-sport athleticism, seems like a good kid, super raw because he didn't play football as a junior in HS after transferring... maybe with the right coaching he could be something. 

Wallace showed he was something very quickly. He arrived at UMass in fall 2019 and jumped right into the deep end. Wallace played in all 12 games and started eight of them, snaring his first career interception against Northwestern, forcing a fumble, and recording 33 tackles. His PFF grades for that season were solid, 65.1 overall and 64.5 in coverage. Independent analysis of Wallace during the course of his UMass career is scant because football analysts paid to break down UMass football tape are an endangered species on the brink of extinction, their existence quite possibly resting on whether Traini wants to keep putting himself through it for another season. 

An article written about Wallace published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette in 2022 recounts how the COVID pause in fall 2020 before Wallace's greatly abridged sophomore season helped Wallace get caught up on college football: 

He joined UMass for the 2019 season but received an education in 2020 when the season was briefly canceled before being revived. All of the time spent quarantining gave Wallace time to adjust and study after transitioning so quickly from high school and AAU basketball to college football.

“It was kind of quick playing college football, adjusting to it,” Wallace said. “That COVID year luckily helped me out, learn a little bit about things.”

Wallace played in all four games as a sophomore in 2020, starting three of them, and earned Phil Steele All-Independent 2nd Team honors, for whatever that is worth (probably very little). He was voted a team captain in 2021, playing in 11 games and starting all of them (he missed one against Toledo with injury). The tape of Wallace in the 2021 season is difficult to get a read on because as Seth noted in his commitment stub, UMass was playing such a soft zone (Quarters/Cov2). Wallace was often in the parking lot in a system designed to limit the damage rather than do anything to stop it. Example of how deep he was lining up: 

That's a legit 10 yards of cushion! 

You end up getting plays that looked like this: 

#12 lined up to the bottom

Wallace is still given a big cushion in that soft zone despite it being 4th & 6(!!!!), which allows Pickett to take what they're giving him. Technically that one is charged to Wallace, but the scheme is not exactly demanding him to make a PBU there. If you keep the tape rolling, the very next play shows Wallace dropping nearly 10 yards off the line of scrimmage pre-snap and then "giving up" a catch on a comebacks route. 

While the scheme was making it difficult for Wallace to make plays, he still managed to make his fair share in that game. Here he is getting a PBU on the exact same sort of route we saw be successful: 

This next one is a free play after the UMass DL jumps, but Wallace puts himself in good position (better than the Pitt WR), tracks the ball, and ends up deflecting it to his teammate for a (fake) INT: 

That was the most I can glean from the 2021 footage, a defense that was trying to emulate the schematic elements of the MSU pass defense from the last two years. 

Things changed in 2022, when Don Brown arrived in town and changed things to his usual aggressive Cov1 system. Wallace was again a captain for the Minutemen, playing in all 12 games as a starter to earn Pro Football Network All-Independent Second Team honors at CB (also for whatever that is worth). He posted his best overall PFF grade (70.1) and best PFF coverage grade (71.2) as a senior under Brown and this tape gives us a better sense of Wallace's abilities. 

Seth and I looked at tape of games against Tulane and Temple and found plenty of nice plays from Wallace, but also some of his limitations. On this 3rd & 9 play Wallace is covering the underneath option that the Temple QB wants to find, but Wallace has it locked up and it allows his teammates to sack the QB: 

#12 to bottom of the screen

He provides great press man coverage on this next clip, even as he defense is getting burned by a slot fade (never change, Don Brown): 

#12 to the bottom of the screen

There are also clips of Wallace being victimized on mesh crossing routes because of course. I will not embed them in the piece for your sake and will instead share my tweet about it as evidence: 

scouting a corner in a Don Brown defense, watching tape of him trying to cover mesh routes, screaming loudly into the abyss

— Alex Drain (@Alex_Drain) June 6, 2023

Back to happier times, Wallace's contact into the back of the receiver on a high throw forces an incompletion: 

There does seem to be limitation to his long-speed ability, as he got beaten deep for a TD by Temple: 

Wallace is not obliterated but he's a step or two behind and Temple's QB puts it where it needs to be. On the flip side, though, the basketball ability comes out in his fluidity and leaping ability seen in his interceptions. Here's one example: 

UMass CB Josh Wallace has offers from multiple Big Ten teams - Penn State, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan State - and would be one of the #B1G’s top DBs if he lands there.

Productive, fluid, ball-hawk with the ability to assert himself in all phases.pic.twitter.com/VyF60NPa8F

— Oliver Hodgkinson (@ojhodgkinson) May 31, 2023

In the non-coverage aspects of the game, I liked this example of Wallace getting off a block to bring down the ballcarrier: 

On this next one Wallace slams into the blocker in front of him, giving no ground and closing off a lane for the rusher to turn up field: 

#12 in white to the bottom hammering #3 in light blue

Wallace received pretty solid PFF grades in run defense from PFF, 69.4 in 2022 that was only a hair behind his coverage grades. 

I'll conclude this film section by leaving you a mixtape of Wallace's first two seasons shared by the player himself: 

pic.twitter.com/wySP235Tdh

— Josh Wallace🏝 (@Joshwallace_12) February 6, 2021

We can now dip back into the scouting well, because a little more about Wallace has come out in the last week. Michigan's On3 site consulted two transfer portal aficionados to get takes on Wallace ($). Here's one: 

“From an athletic standpoint, when you’re evaluating the cornerback position, you look at fluidity. He checks that box — he’s extremely fluid. You can see a lot of that basketball heritage in how he plays the cornerback position. He’s fluid, he’s smooth backpedaling. You look at how he elevates himself at the catch point — there’s a lot of explosion there, and that was evident in his basketball tape" 

The other expert consulted focused on Wallace's ball-hawking ability: 

Looking at ballhawk rate, he tied [former Virginia and new Florida State corner] Fentrell Cypress with the top ballhawk rate in this transfer class. Passes defended per target — almost a quarter of his defended passes were altered in some way ... But like a few other aggressive corners, sometimes that results in explosive gains, downfield completions

The projection from the two analysts was as follows: 

A lot of people have him pegged as an off-man corner, particularly as it pertains to the NFL level. In the exposure I’ve had to him, I don’t think he’s got the true burner long speed. I don’t think he’s going to blow the socks off of anyone

They both mention Wallace's comfortability playing bully ball and fitting into the B1G physically, helping to make up for the limitations in long speed.

One more note here on Wallace's level of experience from Seth: Wallace's 36 career starts leads the team and is tied for the 5th most of any Michigan player before his final season (Mason Cole and Craig Roh had 38, Henne, Jeff Backus, and Jon Jansen were at 37, Stephen Schilling also had 36). His 2,197 career snaps is the most on the team. LaDarius Henderson is at 1802; Drake Nugent is next at 1577, and Mike Sainristil leads the non-transfers at 1486. However, Sainristil and Barrett (47) have played in 8 more games overall (4 bowl games, 2 conf championships, and M got in two more games in 2020). Josh Wallace has played a lot of football. 

OFFERS 

Wallace's HS recruitment was close to non-existent, which is how you end up at UMass. Basketball was actually more interesting, with reports that he had offers from UMBC, Binghamton, James Madison, and St. Joe's, but Wallace wanted to play football in college. Not surprisingly, his transfer portal football recruitment was the one with the most star-studded offers. Wallace's arrival in the portal was notable, because it's not every day that a corner with four years starting experience at an FBS program (no matter how abysmal of a program) ends up in the portal. He picked up offers from Michigan, PSU, Oklahoma, MSU, Iowa, Virginia Tech, Oregon State, and Indiana within a couple days of entering the portal ($). The pursuit of Wallace quickly narrowed to three programs that he took visits to, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Virginia Tech.

Michigan boasted the connections (Don Brown as head coach, Mike McCray is linebackers coach, Chris Patridge's cousin is on staff, Wallace played HS BBall with Hunter Dickinson) and the ability to play for a team whose on-field performance is opposite of UMass. Virginia Tech was geographically closer to his home, has his former HS coach Elijah Brooks on staff, and offered Wallace the ability to start without much competition, as Brent Pry is in the midst of a multi-year rebuild. Oklahoma had neither the geography nor the litany of connections, but is also a respectable program. In the end, it was the mix of connections, a shot at playing time, and the chance to play on an elite team that won out and sent Wallace off to Ann Arbor. 

PRIOR SCHOOLS

Josh Wallace played at DeMatha Catholic in Hyattsville, MD, though Wallace himself hails from Bowie, MD. He played his first two years of HS at St. Mary's in Annapolis, MD, before transferring to DeMatha. As stated in the offers section of this piece, Michigan has some familiarity with DeMatha in multiple sports, a national athletic powerhouse. Olu Oluwatimi played at DeMatha and Wallace overlapped for a season with Hunter Dickinson on the basketball team.

Wallace played only basketball his junior year, before re-engaging with football as a senior. DeMatha is better known as a basketball superpower, where Wallace was one of the better players on their team after being a do-it-all superstar at St. Mary's, but they are also a good squad with football too. Plenty of talented players on the team and they play legit competition too. 

As for UMass, most everyone reading this is well-versed in how bad UMass is. Since moving up to FBS they are 21-103, their best season in that decade-long span being 4-8. Over Wallace's four seasons, UMass went 3-37 with wins over Akron, UConn, and Stony Brook. Wallace is almost certainly going to win more football games in September at Michigan than he did in four seasons at UMass. With UConn and NMSU making bowl games in 2022, UMass is now (for my money) the worst program in FBS. 

STATS

We already went over his PFF grades in the scouting section, so here's a table with his traditional counting stats over the four seasons at UMass: 

	GP	SOLO	AST	TOT	TFL-YDS	SACK-YDS	INT	PD
2019	12	25	8	33	0	0-0	1	1
2020	4	13	0	13	0	0-0	0	5
2021	11	32	21	53	4-10	1-2	0	12
2022	12	32	9	41	3-4	0-0	2	10

FAKE 40 TIME 

I haven't seen a specific time posted anywhere, but we got this nugget from Sam Webb's blog about last weekend's recruiting scoops, via Mike McCray ($): 

McCray, who sources tell me compares Wallace to a mid-4.5 version of David Long, also pushed the value of being a part of the Michigan network as another major advantage over the competition

DJ Turner, he is not. Mid-4.5 is Vincent Gray/Brandon Watson territory, which is what you somewhat expect getting a guy out of UMass and largely jibes with everything we put in the scouting section. 

VIDEO 

I've already shown you a ton of video from Wallace's college days, but if you want to go back in time, here's HS tape from his Hudl page:

Basketball highlights can be found on the Hudl page too.

Here's one more mini-reel featuring three plays in coverage from 2021: 

Josh Wallace (@Joshwallace_12) is a long and springy perimeter corner for @UMassFootball

Former division I hoops prospect now a soon-to-be four year starter with smooth transitions, natural tracking, and easy recovery burst #ShrineBowl1000 https://t.co/PzJhBWnc3m pic.twitter.com/FJVzEXcIYK

— Shane Coughlin (@Shane__Coughlin) July 27, 2022

ETC

2x captain at UMass. Well-established basketball player exploits. 

 

PROJECTION BASED ON FLIMSY EVIDENCE 

The biggest need coming out of spring practice for Michigan Football was stability and veteran experience at corner. Josh Wallace gives you that. He's played a ton of football over four seasons in the NCAA, a starter nearly wire-to-wire on a team that had no better options than giving him as a true freshman who didn't play as a junior in HS. His number of starts/snaps dwarfs that of Amorion Walker and Ja'Den McBurrows by a prodigious amount. Michigan has raw talent at corner in Walker, McBurrows, and Jyaire Hill, but what they were lacking was experience. Wallace checks that box. 

Wallace will be going through a major upwards adjustment in the level of competition as a whole, but UMass played P5 teams in buy games over his time there. In five games against P5 competition across his four seasons, the average PFF grade is a tick below his baseline both overall and in coverage, but not dramatically so. I haven't seen anything to suggest Wallace won't be a competent player up-transferring to the B1G, but I also don't see much to suggest he will be a star either. The height is adequate, length is better, leaping ability and fluidity are good, raw speed is a limiting factor. That's a fine package. Though Wallace himself said he was more comfortable in press man, I concur that the best course of action is to play Wallace in more zone than man. The Wolverines were able to turn Vincent Gray into a surprisingly effective corner in a Macdonald/Minter defense by tailoring the scheme to his strengths in 2021, I don't have much worry about them doing that with Wallace too. 

By adding Wallace to the fold, you're raising the floor for the 2023 team picking up a stopgap at that #2 corner spot. Will Johnson may or may not be ready for week one, but realistically he is not needed for some time. That's fine. So long as he's there by November, Michigan is fine. Wallace figures to plug in at the #2 spot when Johnson is available, at least until one of Walker, McBurrows, or Hill is ready to pull through in the second half of the season. Methinks that most of us will be rooting for that, but you can do a lot worse than leaning on Wallace. If none of the young'uns are ready at any point in the year, Wallace will probably be an acceptable B1G corner. If one of them puts it together and passes Wallace on the depth chart, awesome. What Wallace changes is giving you that first option, a stable, experienced solution for the start of the season (and possibly the entire year) that Michigan didn't have before, and that's why landing him was a big deal for 2023.