Previously: The Story. Podcast 12.4A, 12.4B, 12.4C.

Uh… this is going to be shorter than usual. For the first time since 2009, when Tate Forcier and Denard Robinson were true freshmen, Michigan has nobody on the roster with meaningful playing time under their belt. Previous transitions featured part-time starters (Devin Gardner, Denard Robinson) or transfers (Jake Rudock, John O'Korn, Shea Patterson) with multiple years of starting experience.

Michigan returns 11 collegiate passing attempts after Dylan McCaffrey bolted for the exit. We did not even have the benefit of spring practice, and a spring game, this year. Virtually everything that follows will be speculation based on insider talk.

SO LET'S TALK ABOUT INSIDER TALK

Even in the best situations attempting to sift grains of truth from the stream of offseason insider chatter is a dodgy business. We have a few heuristics developed over the years:

• It's good when they talk about you when they don't need you. A player who gets talked up at a spot that is already strong is probably legit. For one, they're being compared to good players. For two, if a guy who's third on the depth chart isn't popping out nobody's going to make a big deal about it.
• If you are the starter by default you will get talked up. This is the Johnny Sears rule. Michigan lost Leon Hall to the NFL after the 2006 season and had no one on campus to pair with Morgan Trent except Sears. Sears got talked up all offseason, started one game, and got replaced by true freshman Donovan Warren.
• Mistakes are ignored. You will hear about the heroic leaping one-handed grab. You'll hear about the long touchdown ripped off. You will not hear about drops and fumbles and folks wandering off in the middle of the play to get a snack. (Unless Mike Onwenu did it, for some reason.)
• A lot of it is horseshit. Much of it gets relayed by amateurs watching from sideline level. Other bits get related by program veterans with an axe to grind. Some of it is leaked by coaches for reasons other than "is true."

Talk about Joe Milton that happened after McCaffrey's exit fails the starter by default test. Milton is an Uncle Rico quarterback who can throw it over a mountain and also failed to complete half his passes as a high school senior, so there's a fair chance a lot of mistakes are being ignored. And this was the chatter about Dylan McCaffrey entering last season:

24/7 reported that insiders assert McCaffrey "would be a starting quarterback at 'a ton' of other programs"; Rivals called him a "lock for two-time captain" and asserted he has "the 'it' factor."

I'm not saying that Milton is doomed. I am saying that this is a situation where insider talk is close to useless. And it's all we've got.

[After THE JUMP: how fast can a man carve himself into David?]

MEANWHILE, THE QUESTION

For a few years this section started off detailing the unbroken line of Harbaugh quarterback successes. Some adjustments were made after junior Wilton Speight seemed to regress in the brief period before his offensive line got him kilt. These were mostly blaming the pass protection for the regression. Then Shea Patterson came in and was pretty good…

The highest-graded quarterback in the B1G this season was Shea Patterson, who narrowly edged out Dwayne Haskins in overall grade. Both were spectacular this season. pic.twitter.com/lWzdRpOUEh

— PFF College (@PFF_College) February 11, 2019

…leading to some major expectations…

So: expectations? Big ones. Patterson's PFF grade this year bumped up about four points from his abbreviated sophomore year. If he can replicate that he's in the 90 range. … He's probably going to set some records, and it's 50/50 whether he gets to shake Tua Tagovailoa or Trevor Lawrence's hand in New York this December.

…that utterly failed to materialize. Patterson went from a guy PFF (dubiously) graded better than NFL first-rounder Dwayne Haskins to the country's #42 QB. He ended up behind guys like ND's Ian Book, EMU's Mike Glass, and several other G5 QBs. His Senior Bowl performance was panned, he went undrafted, and barely got a UDFA look. Some people have complained that this space has been too hard on him but the things I've said pale in comparison to other analysts. Matt Miller seemed offended he was even invited to the Senior Bowl. Pro Football Focus's Josh Liskewitz arguing that Nico Collins would be well-advised to return:

"I think they’re going to finally get some quarterback play. … I think we’re going to see an improvement in accuracy [from what they had with Patterson] too, which is huge obviously. … They’ve just been so capped at what they can do."

Ouch.

This happened playing behind a line with five NFL draftees (pending Mayfield), throwing to Nico Collins and Donovan Peoples-Jones. The oblique injury he suffered in the opener could no longer be cited as a reason for his performance by the time the bowl game rolled around:

[Patterson] threw zero passes longer than 15 yards that a receiver could touch, let alone catch. … even at his meh-est, Patterson was always a guy you could rely on to throw an arcing deep ball that gave his receivers a chance. This was in fact his greatest strength.

In this game his deeper throws were weirdly flat and always off. Early, Nico Collins beat a Josh Jobe jam badly enough that on a ball that hit him in stride Jobe was either going to make a shoestring tackle or give up a touchdown; Patterson zinged a rope that the king of catching radius couldn't get a finger on. And that was pretty much his day until he threw it right to Jobe right after Eubanks had turned his route up at the sideline, wide open.

This was a massive regression with an exclamation point delivered after a month off to recuperate. It is all my fault since I am the dumbass that posted this picture as a metaphor for Patterson's 2018 in last year's preview:

WHAT HAPPENS TO ELSA NEXT, BRIAN
DID YOU EVEN WATCH THIS MOVIE

Anyway. All of this is to say that Jim Harbaugh, Quarterback Whisperer, is no longer an impregnable fact. This season won't be make or break since it's going to be weird as hell, but I'm sure we'd all feel a lot better if a Michigan quarterback noticeably improved over the course of a year like Rudock did in Harbaugh's first year.

QUARTERBACK: I DUNNO

QUARTERBACK	Yr
Joe Milton	So.*
Cade McNamara	Fr.*
Dan Villari	Fr.

RATING: 2? 6? Call it 2.5.

cumong superhero origin story [Patrick Barron]

So… JOE MILTON [recruiting profile]. If you've got six minutes, here's every snap he's taken at Michigan:

We know nothing about the horse. We can take maybe a couple things from the above.

One: he's at least a functional runner. This is not a small thing since he had ~0 rushing yards as a junior in high school and ~250 as a senior. The Full Navarre was in the realm of possibility. That weaving Wisconsin run alone puts Milton in a different class. He's shown good escapability in the pocket and enough wiggle in the open field to expect he'll be able to break some arm tackles.

FWIW, Milton claimed a 4.62 40 on a Coach Hayes podcast. (You may remember Coach Hayes operating as Xavier Worthy's hype man.) If that's true that's new. He was clocking in at 4.8 as a recruit. Either way, if Milton can make the reads he can handle 6-8 carries a game and keep the defense honest. That would massively improve Michigan's offense.

Two: good lord he had a long way to go. The 2019 snaps include an interception directly at the chest of a Wisconsin defender, a five yard route turfed, and a lot of hesitancy in the pocket. Even the completions tended to be dodgy, like this crossing route that's zinged 100 miles per hour outside DPJ's frame:

Milton's touchdown to Giles Jackson is good enough against Rutgers backups but it's a corner route not in the corner:

Jackson slows up for it, doing a full 360, and against better competition that may be a PBU. Milton's UFR chart for 2019:

	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Game	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	PFF
2019		4(2)	1			2		1	1	1	1*		43%	-

This is is functionally zero sample size, but it's all we've got other than talk.

LET'S TALK ABOUT THE TALK THEN

It is largely rapturous. Encouragingly, some of it came before McCaffrey exited. As of late August Webb was hearing that Milton "is playing on another level" and that multiple sources indicated he was leading the QB battle, looked "special," and had downloaded the offense to the point where his freelancing was purposeful:

A scenario described to me had a play being covered and calling for him to hit his check-down, but because he knew which way a backer was going to open up he drilled the ball into a tight window right behind the backer to get more out of the play. That’s the kind of thing he apparently is doing he is doing routinely.

McCaffrey was still competing at this point and Milton had seemingly passed him.

Much of the rest of it came after McCaffrey rumors started up and has to be taken with something of a jaundiced eye. Themes in approximate order of believability:

The cannon. Gattis says Milton's arm strength is "tremendous" and that he's thrown three balls that ended up 70 yards downfield: "I've told the receivers don't stop running." Sainristil:

"As I'm tracking the ball, I'm like, this has to be the highest ball I've ever seen thrown in a while. The ball was in the air hanging and I was asking myself when it was going to drop and where it was going to drop. Head down, just kept running."

Milton's arm strength is not in dispute. One of the subplots of the season is Will Joe Milton Throw The Ball Through A Cow? A follow up: Did Joe Milton Throw The Ball Through A Cow By Accident Or Was That The Best Way To Convert That Third And Long?

The work rate. For Milton to be in this position, or anywhere close to it, after being clearly behind McCaffrey last year is evidence enough that he has the fabled Pahokee work rate. In addition to the circumstantial evidence, there are many details about his offseason preparations. Ronnie Bell:

“With Joe specifically, me and him got back to Ann Arbor a lot sooner than everybody else. I think me and him both have been here since April. So me and him got a lot of work in together in that time period, because it was literally just me and him in Ann Arbor. Nobody else was here!"

And since he's trying for the Gardner-Gallon mindmeld, might as well spend a bunch of time with one half of that duo. Devin Gardner:

"He has left no stone unturned in pursuit of what he wants. … He has done all the necessary things and I feel like he has put himself in a perfect position to get everything that he wants out of life. …

"Ronnie Bell came out a bunch of times while we were working as well. And I had that conversation with both those guys. Like, 'man, me and Gallon weren't as talented as you two guys, but we left no stone unturned. We worked every single day. There's never a time where we didn't know where he's gonna be. I can throw it to him with my eyes closed. And that's why we were so successful."

Rivals:

has made huge strides … working all the time to improve his craft … Milton isn't off bowling (for example) in his down time. He's picking up a ball and throwing with one of his receivers, some of them who live within a minute of him.

I thought it was golfing, but whatever.

Throwing it straight. This part of Milton's game has drawn as much praise as the above from the coaches. Here too you expect some of it has to be true simply by virtue of Milton's spot on the depth chart. Gattis:

… there’s no fingers getting jammed. … His accuracy has been exceptional. That was one of the things that we talked about as far as taking RPM’s off throws. Knowing when to give a catchable ball. Accuracy as far as ball placement was never an issue, sometimes the issues have been in the past is whether or not those receivers could catch it that fast.

Now… this starts to get into talk for talk's sake. It does not take a large number of throws to determine that Milton's accuracy was a problem. Here Gattis is saying ball placement was "never an issue" when even last year there was a notable difference between Milton and his competitors when they threw against air in warmups.

I expect Milton to be better than he was last year. Just getting his accuracy to okay would be a major achievement.

Not throwing it at the wrong guys. Interceptions come in varying degrees of wrong. On one end of the scale is the Charles Woodson interception against Michigan State. Milton's are towards the other end. In the limited time Milton's been on the field so far he's thrown three interceptions that were directly in the chest of a defender. Two are in the above video; the third was in spring:

Mike Barrett with a nice INT! #GoBlue x @mikebarrett_MB1 pic.twitter.com/7vPKP6S1uL

— Michigan Football (@UMichFootball) April 13, 2019

This is a very high rate of tossing it into the chest of a defender. And now Milton's the starting quarterback with a ton on his plate:

He’s done a great job. All of our quarterbacks, the way we teach them conceptually, not just about the offense, but about what they’re seeing. Leverage of the defender to give small indicators of coverage. Whether it’s a boundary safety or a field corner, we have a lot of things we do offensively in the pass game whether it’s based on coverage reads or advancement reads. We’ve got a number of different ways we call things.

He's got zone read, he's got RPOs, he's sussing out coverages based on presnap leverage, he's even involved with calling the protections. If he can do that consistently he's going to be great; that seems like a longshot in 2020.

We have some idea what the downside might look like thanks to Sam Webb. He inserted a couple of cautious notes in his generally positive Milton takes, noting a "tendency to predetermine some of his throws" and that Michigan coaches "feel the need to corral [Milton's] freelancing to a point." The ability to "know what he can get away with" is pretty easy to project as Milton finding out what he can't get away with at a few critical moments.

EXPECTATIONS ARE IMPOSSIBLE

I don't know and neither does anyone else. Milton has the widest range of possible outcomes of any Michigan player since I've been doing this. On the one hand, he's a 6'5" guy with an arm that doubles as a satellite launch mechanism. He's mobile enough to be a dual-threat. He is getting the requisite talk about those attributes:

Joe has got a special talent. He’s a quarterback that’s blessed with a tremendous skillset. Obviously, an arm and accuracy. He has every throw in the bag plus the extra club that you don’t necessarily need to carry all the time. … Every day out there he makes some type of ‘Wow’ play. Those wow plays are not just wow plays in college football, they’d be wow plays on Sundays.

On the other hand, he's two years removed from completing less than half his passes as a high school senior and his brief cameos in college have shown a guy who was a long way away from being a good P5 starter.

He could lead the conference in interceptions and it wouldn't be much of a surprise. He could be Harbaugh's best quarterback at Michigan and it wouldn't be much of a surprise. The good news about this much uncertainty is that Milton's going to have a goofy, low-stakes season to confirm or disconfirm he is the man.

BUELLER?

our only photos of McNamara are in a yellow jersey [Bryan Fuller]

McCaffrey's departure leaves just one plausibly viable backup. This would be bad without a global pandemic threatening to sideline any player who gets COVID for at least three weeks. Since that is happening, Michigan's quarterback depth is a critical issue that could easily submarine the season.

The plausibly viable backup is redshirt freshman CADE MCNAMARA [recruiting profile]. McNamara has some pedigree. He's a four star who was once committed to Notre Dame, and Jim Harbaugh relayed a Big, If True fact about him after he signed:

"One little side story is Josh [Gattis] had told me that Cade McNamara was their No. 1 quarterback on their board at Alabama … You like to hear that."

This space compared him to Patterson in his recruiting profile but deep down McNamara is the spiritual successor to Tate Forcier. Someone literally used the word moxie to describe him. From his profile:

• Allen Trieu, 247: "… accurate, has good placement and touch and can throw into windows. … best asset may be his ability to throw from odd angles and on the move without needing to have his feet set. … good ability to elude pressure and extend plays. … quick release and necessary velocity"
• Adam Gorney, Rivals: " …moxie …competitive edge …not going to wow you with mind-boggling athleticism or arm strength but he's not going to make mistakes. … heady, skilled quarterback"

He's a weird arm angles guy with a lot of polish. The main downside was a pretty big one: consistent accuracy. That popped up in the only glimpse we've had at him since his arrival, last year's spring game:

…more likely than any QB other than Patterson to look between the hashes … accuracy was shaky, with a few balls well behind his man. … did pass the first test, which is to look like a plausible Big Ten quarterback.

McNamara brought a boatload of experience—over 1300 high school throws and a Forcier level of all-QB-all-the-time prep—to campus and should be reasonably ready to step in should the need arise.

He's also started generating talk. It is the sort of talk that feels like an attempt to calm nerves after a transfer but it is talk nonetheless. Gattis:

…he is able to anticipate throws and play on time. … It took him about four or five days [to settle in this fall]. About day five, I saw him make a throw in practice and when we hit it, he kind of nodded his head three times like he was playing a song in his head. Ever since then, he’s been on fire.

Sam Webb also relayed that McNamara has improved significantly as practices went along and that he was "the second-best performer in a couple recent practices." This was before McCaffrey left the team, but after rumors had started percolating out.

Bell noted that he's been working with McNamara, saying they've "thrown in a random field" this offseason and that both he and Milton are "never stopping." (This is probably a literal field but I like to think that they tore through a particle physics symposium or three.) He also seems to be working nonstop.

McNamara's range of outcomes this year is almost as wide as Milton's. (He is unlikely to throw the a ball through a cow.) If—probably when—he's pressed into duty he'll show some promise when things go off schedule, and he'll let things get off schedule way too much.

The third and last scholarship quarterback on the roster is true freshman DAN VILLARI [recruiting profile], who was headed to Fordham before some D-1 schools started taking notice of the guy setting Long Island on fire. Villari has some upside for a last-second pickup ranked in what used to be two-star territory. Meaningful snaps this year would inevitably be disastrous.