Previously: Podcast 11.0A, Podcast 11.0B, Podcast 11.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. Offensive Tackle. Interior OL. Defensive End.

  Depth Chart

ANCHOR	Yr.	NOSE TACKLE	Yr.	3-TECH	Yr.	WEAK DE	Yr.
Aidan Hutchinson	So.	Carlo Kemp	Sr.	Mike Dwumfour	Jr.*	Kwity Paye	Jr.
Paye	Jr.	Donovan Jeter	So.*	Chris Hinton	Fr.	Mike Danna	Sr.*
Julius Welschof	Fr.*	Mazi Smith	Fr.	Ben Mason	Jr.*	Josh Uche	Jr.

Over the past decade Michigan has been blessed with defensive tackles who tackle. DTs don't have to tackle to be good; DTs who do have a ton of tackles are always good. And Michigan had some dudes. Willie Henry as a junior: 34 tackles. Ryan Glasgow as a senior: 42 tackles. Mo Hurst: an astounding 61. Add in a swing guy like Chris Wormley, who started about half his career games at DT and had 43 and 40 tackles as an upperclassman and you've got the vast majority of DT snaps at Michigan since 2013. Not coincidentally, all of those guys are in the NFL.

Last year every single Michigan defensive tackle (Carlo Kemp, Mike Dwumfour, Bryan Mone, Lawrence Marshall, and Aubrey Solomon) combined to register 43 tackles. 9.5 of these were behind the line of scrimmage. Two games into the season the comedown was obvious:

You know I am sensitive to the performances of Michigan's DTs.

But!

Both Kemp and Mone are both Regular-Ass DTs. Set absurd Mo Hurst goals aside. Let's focus on Ryan Glasgow. Neither guy is anywhere near Glasgow as a penetrator, disruptor, or pass-rusher. Both guys are pushing the pocket and whooping up on single blocking in the run game against poor competition. This is a good base to operate from. But they've still got to establish themselves as top end run defenders against Big Ten competition. And the bit where you fall over backwards in the chair seems permanently out of the question. Which is mostly fine.

[Narrator: It was not fine.]

[After THE JUMP: can someone go from guy to dude?]

THREE-TECH: UNBREAK MY HURST

RATING: 3.

Can get to the QB. Can he do anything else? [Patrick Barron]

Junior MIKE DWUMFOUR was certainly last year's most… uh… interesting Michigan defensive tackle. While Mone and Kemp plugged away doing more or less the same thing on every down, Dwumfour careened wildly. He'd demonstrate why he entered 2018 with "Mo Hurst, but big!" hype from Greg Mattison…

DT #50 to bottom

DT #50 to top

…and then someone would sit on him.

NT #50, dead center

Or he'd get blown out of a hole, or thunked by a single block and removed from the play.

NT #50

Dwumfour was mostly shielded from run game activities after things went very poorly against Notre Dame. Heck, he was mostly shielded in the Notre Dame game: the first major hit to Dwumfour hype came when Michigan decided that journeyman Lawrence Marshall should start. Marshall was the definition of Just A Guy, and the program had been raving about Dwumfour for two solid years. That suggested something, and then… yup.

DT #50 to top

That's what that suggested.

When Dwumfour did turn in something positive on the ground it was usually because he got a single block and was able to productively use his explosion, whether it was driving upfield of a downblock to pick off a puller. The games where he ended up fielding a lot of non-situational snaps popped out on his UFR charting:

Opponent	+	-	TOT	Note
Notre Dame	6	10	-4	Blown out way too much.
WMU	5	1.5	3.5	Nice bounce-back but much of it late potentially against backups.
SMU	4.5		4.5	Solo stuff on QB draw on 3rd and 11 is most of this.
Nebraska	6	4	2	Very aggressive.
Northwestern	8.5	6.5	2	What we have here is a Live Wire. A Loose Cannon.
Maryland	4	2	2	The -2 could have been injury related.
Wisconsin	1.5	1	0.5	PT reduced as M sheltered him.
MSU	6	2	4	Lot of rush on limited snaps, minus the PF.
PSU	5.5	2	3.5	One minus an offsides so this is promising.
Rutgers	4.5	2	2.5	Couple of encouraging double team battles.
Indiana	7	4	3	Out of his lane a couple times but got some rush.

If Dwumfour had more than 2 in his minus column it was because he got utilized outside of passing downs. The 1.5-1=0.5 against Wisconsin is particularly revealing. UFR grading favors DL since it gives them bonuses for pass rush but socializes the downside by putting most pressure minuses in an overall metric; you need to be meaningfully positive to be an average player. Given Dwumfour's snap counts he was meaningfully positive… as long as he was protected.

In addition to major problems on the ground Dwumfour offset some of his undeniably quality pass rush with a lack of lane discipline. If a quarterback busted out of the pocket it was usually through the area Dwumfour had vacated. Sometimes this was frustrating but understandable, like on third and fourteen. Sometimes it was a missed assignment, which is bad but also exists outside of down-to-down competence and can be wished away by increased experience. And sometimes it was third and six and cumong man:

#50 DT to top (also his compatriot)

The dichotomy of Dwumfour's season: per PFF he had 20 total pressures, just three short of why-aren't-you-in-the-NFL Raqeuan Williams and four short of a couple Nebraska 3-4 DEs for tops amongst returning interior defensive players. He did this in a slender number of snaps—10 against Wisconsin, 19 against Michigan State, ranging up to 40 against Northwestern—because Michigan couldn't play him on standard downs without risking a gash. A version of Dwumfour who Michigan could play on two-thirds of its snaps is easily the top pressure DT in the conference this year. That is not the Dwumfour we saw.

Injuries give us Dwumfour hope, and injuries threaten to take it away. Harbaugh revealed that Dwumfour had been held out much of spring with an injury:

"Michael had a torn plantar fascia right before the bowl game. You start to worry when injuries linger longer than previously thought or longer than the time it usually takes."

And then Dwumfour took to twitter asserting this was incorrect, because he'd had the injury since the Maryland game early in the season.

I did not tear my planta fascia in the bowl hame I tore it against Maryland and still played did not miss any games I don’t know where this false information is coming from. Rehab is going great I will be back healthy very soon in Jesus name!!

— Michael DwumFour (@HON5H0) April 3, 2019

I don't have the heart to tell him.

Anyway: this was great news. If a hurt Dwumfour was able to put up those pass rush numbers, a healthy one could double—triple!—his rushing impact while also being an adequate rush defender. Then it didn't go away. And it still may not have gone away?

Dwumfour practiced “the first few days" but has been held out of practice ever since, Brown said. A reason was not provided. … expected back to practice on Thursday.

A couple weeks ago Brown mentioned they were "still working our way through a little bit from a health standpoint" with Dwumfour but that he had practiced. If this is a foot thing that seems very bad. FWIW, we received a social-media-derived image of Dwumfour sporting a soft cast on his arm, which is the best kind of injury to have to miss some practice for. Fingers crossed that he'll be full go—if not immediately, then by Wisconsin in week 4.

What's a reasonable expectation for a healthy Dwumfour? If Michigan can just get him to be an average run defender they can run him out on an every-down basis (minus rotation), and that would change the prospects for Michigan's defense immensely. Another year of technique work and a healthy foot and maybe he could get there. Dwumfour flashed the ability to get some things done on the ground:

NT #50

He had positive blips against Penn State and Notre Dame, too. The explosiveness doesn't go away when the opposition runs the ball. He just hasn't tamed it. He could blow up. That is clearly within his grasp. And then you get to have this guy out there all the time.

That is a potential dude, and probably the only potential dude Michigan is going to have at DT this season. But the injury led to a complete cessation in what had been a non-stop torrent of camp hype, and it's been mostly quiet this fall. Virtually anything could happen here. Dwumfour could be stuck where he was last year, or he could be All Big Ten. There is no bigger X-factor on the team.

NOSE TACKLE: BE MORE THERE

RATING: 3.

man in pile [Eric Upchurch]

Senior* CARLO KEMP was just a guy. He played way more snaps than any other Michigan DT except Bryan Mone, who was comparable, and finished with 10.5 tackles. Was he secretly paving the way for Michigan's linebacker level? Not really. UFR grading:

Opponent	+	-	TOT	Note
Notre Dame		1	-1
WMU	8.5	1	7.5	Hello sir.
SMU	9.5	2.5	7	Ejected once otherwise maintained MAC-crushing level from last week.
Nebraska	0.5	1.5	-1	Got moved a wee bit on few plays where relevant.
Northwestern	2.5	3	-0.5	Quiet day with few snaps.
Maryland	5	0.5	4.5	Drove single blocking, mucked up many interior runs.
Wisconsin	4.5	3.5	1	Huge play on pick six, picked on otherwise.
MSU	3	2	1	One good rush, one pancake suffered.
PSU	3		3	Solid outing, few snaps.
Rutgers	1	2	-1	Blowout ended up inconsequential.
Indiana	3.5	6	-2.5	This is Not Good.

Kemp had a couple decent days against overmatched opponents and was otherwise a non-entity. A majority of the clips I have from last year were from the SMU and WMU games, and he got an extended discussion after WMU. All of that now feels useless since he did not carry over any of it to higher-tier opponents.

When Kemp did a thing that got a plus it was almost invariably this:

DT #2 to bottom

Engage a single block, drive it back productively, someone else cleans up. That's a nice thing to be able to do but if it's your only tool you're going to be stuck with the kind of numbers you see above.

You're also going to be doing nothing rushing the passer, and that's what Kemp did. I clipped one pass rush win for him in games against P5 teams. (He did have a couple against WMU.) That doesn't mean there weren't more… but since I spent much of the year seizing on any morsel of hope a DT provided, yeah, there probably weren't more. The win in question was admittedly badass:

That stands alone.

Meanwhile Kemp did not do particularly well against doubles last year, whether it was grinding inside zone blocks or quick chips. He stalemated sometimes, rarely got a win, and from time to time he got clunked. MSU put him on the ground for a –2:

DT #2 to top

Didn't matter because MSU, but still. This is not exactly what I want to see from a guy kicking down to NT:

DT #2 to top

These are the reasons Michigan's pass rush collapsed late in the season when the DEs got dinged up and nobody else was able to do anything about it.

Kemp has been getting a ton of offseason hype himself. In spring Brown got a question about Mazi Smith and more or less ignored Mazi Smith while answering it:

What has Mazi Smith brought to the d-tackle spot and are you pretty confident with the depth you have there?

“At d-tackle?”

Yeah.

“Yeah, yeah. I feel really good about it. You know, I think the bigger key is Carlo Kemp; 290+, more athletic than a year ago. I think he’s really brought a sense of maturity to the inside position.

Both Brown and Harbaugh continued that sort of talk this fall. Brown:

“Probably the most improved guy that I could speak on behalf would be Carlo Kemp,” Brown said. “Stronger, way faster. Confident, just body language and the whole deal. Leadership – really playing at a high level.”

Harbaugh:

"…really been outstanding. He’s really elevated his game as he’s done throughout his career…. playing at a very high level right now."

This does not move your author much. It's the kind of hype you get when there's a really hard working, well-liked guy who is being relied upon without much competition. Kemp's a captain. He's related to a zillion football coaches Harbaugh is bros with. And he had no competition in spring aside from Smith. That's a little different now… but not much different.

Kemp will improve. He'd have to pull the full Bennie Joppru to sniff All Big Ten. A more realistic expectation is that he gets 20 tackles instead of 10 and can push the pocket a bit to help other rushers. Average is a good thing to shoot for here.

*[We had been operating under the assumption that Kemp is a redshirt junior because he played two games his freshman year and that Michigan had a plan for getting those years back with documented injuries. Kemp is talking like this is it for him, though:

“Just realizing that this is senior year,” Kemp said. “My biggest mindset change is: you don’t get these opportunities back. Today’s practice I won’t ever get back. I don’t get a camp next year. I don’t get – this day, I won’t have next year. Whatever day – camp 10, if it is – I don’t get a camp 10 next year."

So I guess he's a senior. If so that seems like the quintessential wasted redshirt year.]

BACKUPS

We're throwing these guys in one big pile because it's unclear exactly who is where and whether they'll stick at those spots. A dollar says that early in the season—and maybe late—it's more of a three man rotation where guys will bounce from spot to spot as needed.

looking good against Onwenu is a thing hopefully [Patrick Barron]

This is because redshirt sophomore DONOVAN JETER [recruiting profile] has gotten buckets of offseason hype and looks like a good bet to be a rotation piece. The other candidates to be rotation pieces are true freshmen and a converted fullback. Maybe one of those longshots comes through. Maybe not.

Jeter did feature in a few clips from last year, most of them good. Maryland put him on the ground with a double, but the other events were quality. He was able to control a PSU guard and come off him for a solo tackle late in that game:

#95 NT

And he split a double team against Nebraska:

#95 DT to bottom

This is the end of Jeter clips.

Jeter didn't feature much more because he was new to defensive tackle after arriving at Michigan as a very jumbo DE. He shot up from around 260 when he comitted to 310 last year, which was not all good weight. In a very All Weight Changes Are Good development, he's now slashed himself down to 290. Don Brown noticed this spring:

"…the guy that’s probably made the biggest jump in one year is Donovan Jeter. You know, just…big, strong, always looked like a pro defensive tackle to me but now head’s screwed on, body’s tight, understands the position and playing at a high level."

Jeter was spring hype magnet. Josh Uche mentioned Jeter first when asked about what he'd seen from the rest of the defensive line…

What have you seen from other defensive linemen this spring?

“Donovan Jeter is really special. I’ve known it. Me and him, we’ve gone through stuff. We’ll talk to each other, pick each other up and he’s just special, man. He’s picked it up so much this spring and I’m so proud of him."

…and then when asked about guys other than Jeter, Uche mentioned some other guys before doubling down:

"But Jeter, man, I’m telling you guys, keep an eye on him. Just keep an eye on Jeter.”

Jeter was also the first name out of the mouths of both Don Brown ("Start with this Donovan Jeter. Think we got ourselves a real inside guy.") and Jim Harbaugh ("Donovan Jeter would be the first name that I would throw out there … Tremendous winter program and strength. He’s really figuring it out. Playing explosive.") when asked the usual open-ended questions about guys popping out.

Your author was more circumspect after the spring game:

I focused on Donovan Jeter intermittently. He was able to survive against Ruiz/Bredeson/Onwenu. This is an accomplishment; several Big Ten DLs are going to get clonked by those guys this fall. Jeter was limited to holding up against the run and occupying blockers against the pass, though. He was more of a Mone space-eater type than a penetration threat. … Maybe he's able to push the pocket more against dudes under 350 pounds, but I don't see a bunch of TFLs in his future.

Apologies.

Jeter hype continued into the fall ("Consistently good, which has been really encouraging") from both coaches and insider types. Lorenz picked him out as a riser, as did one of our local insiders ("getting the praise he deserves for all the hard work he has put in").

I didn't see a whole lot of interior rush upside in the spring game, but that's a limited sample against some really good players. His recruiting profile does offer a significant amount of hope that he can be more than a space eater:

…a combination of size, strength, uncommonly great feet for such a big man, and an active, physical defensive end who can slide to a three-technique when the situation dictates. …He’s gone from a guy uncertain in his three-point stance with an average first step to a locked-and-loaded, quick-off-the-snap, get-up-the-field big end with a fast-running motor. He runs very well in the open field for such a big man. He has great not good feet in short space.

Michigan flipping Kemp to nose and Jeter to three-tech is circumstantial evidence in favor of that take, although that was in Dwumfour's absence.

The annual spring hero has a decidedly mixed record when it comes to translating talk to production. Last year it was Mike Dwumfour, which was kind of on point and kind of not. Continued support from his coaches is a positive. Jeter should at least be quality depth at a spot that needs it more badly than anywhere else. Can he rush the passer? Let's find out.

please overlook the name on the chestplate

Defensive tackle is an extremely hard spot at which to do anything as a freshman, but Michigan finds themselves in a spot where they may have to suck it up and field one. The silver lining is that they've got two good bets to hit, and early. CHRIS HINTON [recruiting profile] is the son of a long-term NFL offensive lineman who played in a high level of Georgia football and had a rare bounce back to five star status after losing it.

He lost his shiny star because he was being evaluated as a strongside end; he got it back because he showed up at his all-star game and ripped it up as a defensive tackle. From his recruiting profile:

…dominated during one-on-ones … unstoppable against any offensive lineman that wanted to test him. No one had a chance. …moved inside to play defensive tackle and simply was either more powerful or more athletic, winning almost every rep and making it clear he should be back in the five-star discussion. … special ability and a great frame. He’s been a complete nightmare for offensive linemen and not one of them has stopped him yet.

He fielded the very rare "minimal" variance because he's already college size and has all the peripherals.

Hinton's background makes him more likely than most to be able to chip in early. Lorenz asserts that there's "ZERO doubt" the staff believes he's "capable of making an impact of some kind this fall." Harbaugh reinforced that in a press conference:

"Good young guy that’s playing extremely well — freshman Chris Hinton has asserted himself. Probably right in the two-deep right now. Probably backing up."

And Shaun Nua filled in some details:

"Chris Hinton – big, athletic and can run. … With that size and strength, he can push that pocket. And then, when he decides to go to the edge, he has the good hips to get to the edge. Good feet … very mature kid … He’s always in the room learning. On the board, watching film. He’s probably ahead in that part – the mental part.”

If Hinton is ahead mentally despite the fact his competition has been on campus longer there's probably not much any of them can do to leapfrog him onto the two deep. Hinton should get a healthy dose of rotation snaps, likely at three tech since that'll shield him from double teams a little. He should be an A-level freshman; at DT that means he's a C-level player.

There is some upside because Hinton has powerful old man game.

If any freshman defensive tackle can make an immediate impact it's one who has a mortgage and an ongoing feud with a neighbor who leaves cat food outside. It attracts skunks. Someone's going to get sprayed some day. Chris Hinton doesn't have time for tomato bath foolishness. And the mailman is looking at Chris Hinton's mail. Not inside. Just, you know, at. Like he means to do something about it.

Smith (#58) probably needs a training wheels year [Patrick Barron]

Fellow freshman MAZI SMITH [recruiting profile] was further away from his ceiling as a high schooler but also thunked his competition at an all-star game…

"leverage monster. If he got under you, he was going to be a problem even for the most physically gifted offensive linemen. … Consistency is probably his next step. Conditioning and technique will also be important, but he’s one of those guys on any given play can just wreck the whole plan."

…and then he enrolled early. He generated some positive noises but surprisingly few given the situation at DT. Reading between the lines it seems likely that Smith came in with some work to do. Nua:

“Mazi has done a great job of reforming his body since he got here …he’s dropped some weight and he moves a lot better."

That is reinforced by the recruiting takes. Smith was dinged for motivation/motor issues. He is not the kind of player who has a coach quote about how he never takes plays off and runs down 5'8" guys 30 yards downfield; several analysts expressed frustration that Smith seemed to turn it off and on based on the level of opposition. These issues usually go away once the competition level flattens and college coaches get in your ear about whether you want to get paid a crap ton of money or not.

They do point to a guy who may get off to a slow start. It was telling in spring when Don Brown fielded a Smith question right off the bat. He immediately pivoted to Kemp and Jeter before offering a "next year" eval for Smith:

"Mazi’s coming along. It’s a learning process. He should have been going to the prom this spring and being at home and he’s here playing major college football, and has shown flashed … one of the strongest guys in the program—[but] we just need him to translate that strength, that physical prowess on a down-to-down basis consistently and that’s hard to do when you’re just walking in the door."

When he gets there it should be explosive. Jeter on Smith:

“Want to talk about a monster? First day, upper body, I’m one of the strongest benchers on the team and he’s making the weight I’m doing look light and I’m sitting there like Maybe I need to reevaluate myself. He’s coming in just moving weight and I’m sitting there like, ‘Man..’ He’s so far ahead of the curve he doesn’t know it yet, so every day I’m in his ear like ‘Yo, when you’re ready to dominate, you’ll dominate.’"

This space bets that's next year. Smith is going to burn his redshirt in preparation for a breakout 2020. It may not look pretty all the time as Smith adjusts to college; a dollar says he does something Willie-Henry-ish that gets the people going.

on the other hand having this guy chasing you seems terrifying [Bryan Fuller]

The final guy who Michigan is talking about is Ol' Murderface BEN MASON himself. A season ago Mason was a well-loved, seemingly-underutilized, mohawked short-yardage running back and thunderous lead blocker. Josh Gattis caused Mason to flip sides of the ball, and since then he's been playing defensive tackle and TALKING LIKE THIS. Nua:

"Yes, he is still screaming. He changes the whole mindset of the room. He is an aggressive mindset guy. He is intense every time. Conversations are intense, practices are intense, drills are intense. There is no slowing down with Ben Mason."

There were a couple of positive notes on him; Harbaugh said he was "in that rotation, that starting type of rotation" at three-tech this spring. That was without Dwumfour and Hinton, though. And Don Brown said he was "vastly improved obviously" and that they "feel good about him."

This space is circumspect. Mason's best efforts only got him to 270 pounds, per the fall roster, and it's hard to see an undersized guy playing DT for the first time making a positive impact. Mason's best bet is to be a useful passing-down interior rusher, but on a team with three quality DEs, Mike Dwumfour, and Josh Uche how much room do you have for Mason?

Finally, Michigan bumped PHIL PAEA [recruiting profile] back to defense after trying him at OL last year. Multiple position switches are not a good sign, and Paea hasn't even drawn a mention this fall. Writing is on the wall.