Previously: Podcast 14.0A, 14.0B, 14.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. Offensive Tackle. Interior OL. Defensive Interior. Edge. 

INSIDE LINEBACKER: HAVE THE KIDS GONE TO SCHOOL?

RATING: 3

Depth Chart

NOT A VIPER	Yr.	MLB	Yr.	WLB	Yr.
Michael Barrett	Jr.**	Junior Colson	So.	Nikhai Hill-Green	So.*
Joey Velazquez	So.**	Kalel Mullings	So.*	Michael Barrett	Jr.**
		Jimmy Rolder	Fr.	Micah Pollard	Fr.

NOTE: this piece is dealing with the true ILBs, excluding all the EDGE-like players. Players like Jaylen Harrell were discussed in the EDGE preview and will not be talked about here. 

The 2021 Michigan defense had one primary weakness. The edge rushers gobbled up all-conference tackles for breakfast, the defensive tackles held their own against the run, the corners managed to fight blow for blow with Ohio State's receivers, and the safeties included an athletic marvel who was impossible to edge, a trusty centerfielder who rarely ever busted, and several ahead-of-the-curve youngsters getting better each week. But linebacker? That was the the giant glaring weak spot on the defense. 

Michigan's linebacker room last season was set up to fail in several ways. For one, they lost Cam McGrone a year too early, perhaps the greatest example of a player making a poor decision to leave school to early in recent Michigan memory. Rather than rehabbing his ACL in school and coming back to be the man in the middle of an excellent Michigan defense, McGrone bolted to be a 5th rounder who, after one season, was cut by the team who drafted him. Losing McGrone deprived the LB room of one surefire and (likely excellent) starter, but it also further decimated an already thin LB room. 

Secondly, the LB room was set up to fail by transitioning defensive schemes, moving into one with Mike Macdonald that placed extra pressure on them to clean up mistakes that popped up in the 5-2 defensive front. A ton was thrown on their plate, and the loss of McGrone meant that most of that was put on the plate of very young players. Josh Ross played the role of the old dog forced to learn new tricks after spending four years under Don Brown, while the kids were either true freshmen or second year players whose first year was the COVID season. In other words, a whole bunch of guys starting from square one. 

The result was mostly what you expected. Ross was given the hard stuff, for the most part, and did his best, but mental errors and his athletic limitations in coverage dragged down the baseline. The kids rotated in and out, flashing promise and high potential but only occasionally knowing what was going on. Teams like Penn State, Nebraska, and Georgia tortured them with Sixty Minutes of Linebacker Hell, and the pieces beyond those kids were even worse, with the exception of one former VIPER who re-emerged when they reincarnated the position in a minor role. 

Now Ross departs, the Not A Viper is still around but is probably not a true ILB, and the kids are our only hope. Have they gone to school? We'll soon find out. 

 

IS HE RUNNING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?

[Patrick Barron]

The athletic marvel of this positional group and arguably the biggest X-Factor on the Michigan defense is one JUNIOR COLSON [recruiting profile]. Colson's story is unique and memorable, a Haitian who endured the tragic earthquake and was placed up for adoption by his family with the hopes he could obtain a better life in America. That led him to the Colson family in Tennessee at age 9, a family that had ties to U of M and would help guide Junior to Ann Arbor. He didn't know about football until he got to America and was late at picking up the sport even after he got to the States.

[AFTER THE JUMP: No. Serious. Injuries. Please.]

What led Colson's profile as a recruit was always his athleticism. Sweet, sweet athleticism. Scouts argued about whether he was best suited for MIKE or VIPER or even an Uche-type back when Don Brown was still Michigan's defensive coordinator, but everyone knew that he could hack it athletically on a football field. Colson enrolled early last year, had a strong spring camp, and then would take advantage of the thinness at LB. Colson got to play in his first NCAA game, and very quickly became one of three ILBs seriously in rotation at the position. By the end of the season he was a starter, as Michigan preferred his athleticism against spread offenses like Maryland and Ohio State. 

How did it go? About as well as you'd expect when you hear that a non-football savant true freshman is trying to be a starting linebacker: 

Game	Plus	Minus	Tot	Notes
WMU	1.5	0	1.5	Bush-like speed, not given the hard stuff
Washington	6	9	-3	Awesome when pointed in the right direction. Got pulled.
NIU	3	0	3	Back to backup, effective when he rotates in
Rutgers	7.5	6	1.5	Starting to see it. Picked on in curl/flat coverage.
Wisconsin	1	2	-1	5-1-5 left him out for must runs, on the field for hard stuff
Nebraska	6.5	4	2.5	Not the target of LB Hell, not as heady as NHG, way more athletic
Northwestern	1.5	5	-3.5	Two of the breakdowns were teachable moments
MSU	7	1	6	Preferred him on the field to an extra DT. Shot some gaps as #2 LB
Indiana	7.5	9.5	-2	Oh the speed. Oh the mistakes. Oh the potential.
PSU	6	12	-6	PSU's gameplan was LB hell and the kid was put through it
Maryland	3	15.5	-12.5	His second crash-and-burn day with the training wheels off
OSU	2.5	9	-6.5	Plenty of time to make new memories
Iowa	7.5	11	-3.5	Still has no idea what he's doing half the time
Georgia	4	10	-6	No match for Cook, not ready to play this year

The chart shows how Colson's role changed as the year went along and the realities of his (in)ability to perform the role he grew into. As a role player who could rotate in and do easy stuff, Colson was decently effective. When asked to be a full-time starter (and especially when asked to do the hard stuff that linebackering in a Macdonald defense requires), he was grossly unfit for that role. And there's nothing wrong with that! True freshman LBs starting in huge games is not something you see every day and it was simultaneously a great sign for Colson's future but also a very bad sign for the 2021 Michigan Defense. 

In the process, we got to see plenty of good and lots and lots of bad. Let's start with the positives, because ideally, those clips will forecast more of 2022 than the negatives. The athleticism that defines his profile shows up in a multitude of ways. Michigan liked his ability to cover in space more than the other traditional ILBs that they used last season and clips like this are why: 

#25 lined up the slot right of the Nebraska logo

Colson is reading Adrian Martinez's eyes so well there, tracking the receiver that Martinez is staring down but not committing too hard at first in case the mobile Husker QB takes it on the run. Once he sees that Hutchinson has the running lane closed off, he uses his quickness to seal off any passing angle to the receiver. That play helped nail down the final stop for Michigan in a pivotal win over Nebraska. 

As a blitzer, the athleticism allows Colson to look like a Doom Squirrel shot out of a cannon if given a free lane to the QB, much like a certain former Michigan LB who broke MGoBlog linebacker charting records: 

Yes, that's his name: Devin Bush. Colson has that Bush blitzing ability in his backpocket, although we only saw flashes of it last season. Next is a clip of Colson using his rocket-launcher athleticism to bully a pass-protecting Iowa RB right back into the chest of the QB, forcing an errant throw: 

Colson as a run defender had his ups and downs, making plays if he knew what was going on and what gap to be in, but that was only occasional (more on that later). Here is one play he made when he figured out where to be: 

LB #25 lined up on the playside

Those were the flashes of the All-American LB package that could be in his future. What we saw last year for the most part were the many, many growing pains. Those happened to be the reason why Colson's name popped up in 2021 UFRs nine times out of ten. Teams who built their game plans around LB Hell were able to put Colson in the spin cycle with ease: 

The problem this game was Junior Colson. The last couple of games they’ve stopped swapping the MLB and WLB when the strength of the formation changes, which means they’re trusting the younger guys to take on the hard stuff that Ross had to do alone. Colson has allowed them to do that and have him play some slot safety because of his speed and agility, but he wasn’t always sure what he was looking at. This stretch run caught him on the wrong side of a guard, with a huge gap forming outside of that once Ojabo was tackled out of the way.

And in the early going Maryland had an easy time moving the ball by messing with Colson keying the running back’s direction.

Maryland feasted on him in that game, and Georgia had that scouting report downloaded on a trusty USB drive, matching him up on RB James Cook for two devastating routes. He got beat by a step or two on this one: 

And got totally lost on this one, leading to six points: 

Seth got very down on Colson after the Orange Bowl, and it's understandable. It was a very rough effort. But taking a step back to contextualize the situation is useful. Colson was a TRUE FRESHMAN playing LINEBACKER in a system that heaped a lot of responsibility on him. That Colson struggled mightily is not unusual or disappointing; it was the most likely (honestly inevitable) outcome. Maybe Devin Bush could've done better, but Bush's background was very different from Colson (son of a HS coach and ex-NFLer vs. Haitian orphan turned late bloomer) and even Bush did not start as a true freshman. Colson showed his potential by beating out other older options to get on the field as a true freshman, but also set himself up to look silly on snap after snap because he played his way into being a main contributor as a true freshman. That's what happened and it led to the famous quote "Junior Colson runs fast, sometimes in the right direction". Now it's year #2. 

All through fall camp, we've heard glowing review after glowing review of Colson. As I put it in Football Bits recently: 

Nearly every update from every insider comes with a "that Junior Colson guy is really good" line, and the term "All-American" is being thrown around in a rather cavalier manner. Phrases "beast", "seasoned veteran", and "outstanding" are not unusual in reports

In the eyes of the big national analysts, a massive jump is expected. College Football guru Phil Steele had Colson on his preseason 2nd Team All-B1G list and a number of other national publications did the same. After all, it makes sense. If you're projecting a guy to break out, you'd want to base it on A) a guy who was ahead of the curve last season and B) has mammoth potential. Colson, by virtue of playing heavy snaps as a Tr Fr at a position where that rarely happens and by being a former Top 100 recruit, has both of A and B covered. 

As analysts who watched and charted every Colson snap from last season, we have a better sense of how far Colson needs to come than some of the national guys who just see "elite recruit starting as a Tr Fr" and assume Colson will be a superstar imminently. But as mentioned earlier, doing so and not grading on a curve can also cause us to lose the forest for the trees. From a bird's eye view, trying to slice it as fair as possible and down the middle, I'd argue that a reasonable expectation for Sophomore Junior Colson is a much improved player who cuts down on many of the fixable mistakes but probably isn't quite an All-B1G player yet. Improvement to 2019 Cam McGrone-level seems very fair (after all, that was McGrone's second season in the program), which would leave us salivating about the next leap to 1st Team All-B1G and perhaps All-America discussion in 2023.

This preview piece does not go in depth in trying to pigeonhole NHG or Colson into being MIKE or WILL, nor trying to predict which will get the "hard stuff" that Josh Ross got last season. The depth chart predicts Colson in the middle, but that is merely a projection. Assignments will likely shift as the year goes along. 

 

HOPE YOU DIDN'T FORGET ABOUT ME

[Patrick Barron]

The man somewhat lost in the jumbled pile of Michigan's LB situation a year ago was NIKHAI HILL-GREEN [recruiting profile], a 2020 recruit who spent his first year in Ann Arbor during the COVID fake season playing only special teams and then had his first full offseason scrambled by the defensive coaching change. Hill-Green was given a new LBs coach (George Helow) and a new DC (Mike Macdonald), so to say that NHG had a year on Colson is mostly irrelevant; both were starting from the same place in early 2021. 

Hill-Green appeared to be a quick learner and his success at picking things up left him a starter out of spring 2021 and that didn't change heading into the start of the season. NHG consolidated a firm spot at the LB position, moving ahead of fellow classmates like Cornell Wheeler, who bailed for the portal. Hill-Green was ahead of Colson entering the season and he got his first career NCAA start in the Western Michigan game to begin the season. Seth graded him with a +5/-5 even day, but generally liked what he saw: 

PFF didn’t like Nikhai Hill-Green’s debut but you like him?

I do. NHG’s job wasn’t as difficult as Ross’s. Most of the time NHG was tasked with seeing how the double in front of him was going and then activating to ensure his impact was felt. His impact was felt. He was also Ross-esque as a blitzer.

He had one bad missed tackle on La’Darius Jefferson after flashing outside to maybe TFL, and he was the LB who got caught peeking at the play-action when WMU was able to bootleg down to the goal line on the first drive. Those were big negatives that resulted in an even +/- day. They’re also fixable things.

From there, NHG mowed his way through Washington and NIU before encountering trouble against Rutgers. It was in that game that Hill-Green really rode the LB rollercoaster. He made two great plays on 3rd and 4th down stands, but also found himself on the hook for an ugly touchdown after buying too hard on play-action. He then had minimal work against Wisconsin and was not targeted heavily by Nebraska's shenanigans. Slowly NHG's workload began to decrease.

After a very poor game against Indiana, which coincided with the beginning of when Michigan's schedule started to skew heavily towards spread offenses, Hill-Green was no longer a true starter and was instead more of a rotational piece. By the time The Game arrived, HIll-Green was battling Mike Barrett for fourth in "ILB" snaps. This occurred despite UFR continually grading NHG better than Colson. Chart: 

Game	Plus	Minus	Tot	Notes
WMU	5	5	0	Not afraid to stick his nose in. Some fixable offenses
Washington	6.5	0	6.5	No negatives? No waaaaaaaay.
NIU	11	0	11	Hell of a game, but context: didn't have to cover at all.
Rutgers	12.5	11.5	1	TD was a -3. Made big plays after Ross was out
Wisconsin	3.5	5	-1.5	5-1-5 left him out for must runs, on the field for hard stuff
Nebraska	6.5	4	2.5	Not the target of LB Hell
Northwestern	2	2.5	-0.5	The boring LB
MSU	2.5	0	2.5	Preferred him on the field to an extra DT
Indiana	1	7	-6	Bad game, routinely wasn't finding his gap on pulls
PSU	3	0	3	The heady one, got more PT later in the game
Maryland	3.5	0	3.5	Going to be better than Ross. Battle w Colson not finished
OSU	0	0	0	DNC
Iowa	5	2	3	Should be starting over the other two, not by that much
Georgia	5	2.5	2.5	Mistakes are loud, still Michigan's ILB

You can see across that journey how Seth slowly got radicalized into pounding the table for NHG as his playing time decreased and we were exposed to more and more of Colson struggling. The charting tells a clear picture: Hill-Green was a better linebacker than Junior Colson last season but Colson was athletically a better fit to face Penn State, Ohio State, and Georgia. Michigan couldn't take the veteran Ross off the field terribly often, so if one was out there in those matchups, the coaching staff leaned Colson. 

What the charting tended to reveal is that if the goal was to cut down on frequent, preventable miscues, Hill-Green was the better player than Colson. If the goal was to avoid backbreaking busts, Colson may still have been preferable (though not by a large margin). Seth diagnosed it like this after the Georgia game (emphasis mine): 

As for their third middle linebacker, I will now more confidently assert that Hill-Green is marginally their best ILB. His ceiling is not Colson’s or even Adjusted Colson’s. NHG also tends to have more devastating busts. This one I put on him:

This comes from NHG’s tendency to make a quick decision on a gap and fling his body into it. That instinct serves him more than it doesn’t. It’s not a great fit for a front that already has five guys on the line to start because any screwup (or uncalled hold) is going to burst a guy into the secondary and beyond from this setup. I didn’t even clip the good moments from Hill-Green in this one to compensate. But when he appears in the charting usually it’s a positive. 

The positives for Hill-Green were there throughout the season. This thunder TFL against Northern Illinois had a lot of Josh Ross energy and was probably NHG's best clip from the season: 

On this one he holds down the backside and then shoots across to clean up a mistake from Ross: 

LB #41 lined up on right side of the defense

Hill-Green as a RS Fr legitimately outplayed a fifth-year senior in his third NCAA start. The potential was there. The problem was that the threat of a pass often threw a wrench into Hill-Green's game. Colson was a plainly better fit to cover than NHG on an athleticism basis, but Hill-Green had issues in coverage beyond that. As noted in the chart, NHG's terrific performance against NIU came in a game where he didn't have to cover at all. Other games were not that tidy. The aforementioned TD allowed against Rutgers showed what can happen when the threat of the pass is in play: 

This led to the decline of NHG's role but mentally, on the ground in particular, Hill-Green was ahead of Colson last season. He was most ready to read and react and was a pretty good tackler: 

NHG was the least mistake-prone of himself, Ross, and Colson, with the important caveat that Ross' job was more difficult. For a second year player who was essentially a first year player due to COVID and the installation of a new scheme, Hill-Green was coming along nicely. He needs to take another sizable step forward to be able to an every-down starter, let alone an All-B1G-caliber one, but progression towards the former seems like a very reasonable expectation. The latter, like with Colson, may yet be a year out. 

We had heard rumors a few weeks back that Hill-Green had tweaked something during a scrimmage and this was confirmed by Jim Harbaugh during his appearance on Jansen's pod over the weekend, saying:

And Nikhai Hill-Green — we’ll see, we’ll see. He had a soft tissue thing that he’s working through, whether it’s Game 1 that he plays or Game 2

Smart money deems that the comment above is referring to a hamstring issue. Nothing serious has been noted and frankly, it's fine if NHG needs to sit out a couple weeks. September is littered with bodybag games and Michigan should take as long as they need to get him to 100%. Once healthy, it's very fair to expect that Hill-Green should be a fine player in year #2 of the Ravens defense. But they probably need him healthy against real teams because....

 

BACKUPS: YOU MIGHT WANT TO CLOSE YOUR EYES

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

It seems like the first backup here is going to be KALEL MULLINGS [recruiting profile], mentioned in the RB preview for his forays on the offensive side of the ball but recent reporting has shifted the spotlight back towards defense for Mullings. The reason is undoubtedly depth at this position, which is very thin due to attrition resulting from both the scheme change and several recruits turning into whiffs. 

Mullings was a fellow recruit of NHG's in the 2020 class, an athlete with tons of raw upside but without much direction. The goal was to teach him how to play LB and maybe in a few years, you have something on your hands. Like NHG, Mullings was put in a tough spot from the coaching change, doubly so as a guy trying to really learn the position. Mullings actually got a few snaps on defense during the COVID season, appearing against Rutgers and being clipped by this site for falling over when he had a free rush at the QB: 

LB #26 lined up above the LT

In 2021 Mullings was seldom seen on defense but did show up against Rutgers yet again after a malaise befell Josh Ross mid-game. It was not a pleasant sight, as Mullings was very clearly not ready for primetime, as Seth summarized in the UFR: 

Also Kalel Mullings is not there yet. It’s too late now to grab clips but there were a bunch of late-game Power Read runs when all he had to do was stay in his lane to keep the mesh thinking, but took two steps towards the edge Pacheco was threatening and that was enough for Vedral to pull and come up the gut.

We do have one clip, where Mullings is slow to react and then gets caught on a tackle, forcing Hill-Green to clean it up: 

LB #20 lined up to the weakside

That was the only game of 2021 where we got a major look at Mullings and one was enough. Not ready yet. The spring game provided the next opportunity and there's a reason all the buzz was about Mullings' looks on the offensive side of the ball. Nothing much from him at LB made it seem like he has improved a radical amount from last season. He still was too late to react to plays developing in front of him: 

LB #20 lined up on the left side of the hash

The early camp hype around Mullings was centered on his potential at RB, but then drifted back towards LB, perhaps coinciding with NHG's "soft tissue" injury. Michigan needs bodies at ILB and Mullings is a body. Unfortunately, it's hard to say he's more than that based on the available information right now. I am less morose about Mullings' long-term potential as a LB than others at this site because he was so raw in HS, and because the COVID year makes him closer to year #2 than year #3, but the general trajectory here is not great and there very well may be another place on this football team where his talents are better suited. In a world where Michigan has more guys at LB, maybe Mullings is a full-time mooseback by now. That is not the world we live in. 

Mullings is extremely athletic, with good size for a LB. Some tools are there, but in terms of actually being able to execute the mental component of being a linebacker, right now Mullings would seem pretty close to 2021 Colson. That is not a good thing. At least he may get a few games against pushover opponents to cut his teeth. 

[247Sports]

The other primary backup is the man who will be mentioned at the top of the next section (Not A Viper), so before we get to him, let's do a quick interlude to the true freshmen, the guys who you really don't want to see on the field in meaningful moments in 2022.... but probably will want to see on the field in 2023-2026. JIMMY ROLDER [recruiting profile] was the first of many recruiting wins to finish out the 2022 class that Michigan's astonishing 2021 season netted them. In mid-November, with Michigan 9-1 and close to locking themselves in on a date with destiny against Ohio State, Rolder chose the Wolverines over the Buckeyes and Wisconsin Badgers, among other B1G contenders. 

Rolder is a Chicago-area kid who was a strong baseball player in HS, which contributed to him flying under the radar for a long amount of time. He didn't go to camps due to baseball, wasn't on varsity for his sophomore football season, and his junior season was delayed until the spring because of COVID, so it wasn't until his senior season was underway that word of this guy got out. He shot up the rankings, regional powers sauntered in and Michigan got their jaws around the kid. Your author wrote up Rolder's Hello and was a big fan. He's an old-fashioned, smash-mouth linebacker who would be perfect at Iowa or Wisconsin, but he has the athleticism to hack it against modern spread offenses. He's not Colson athletic, but he can run.

Rolder is going to be a good player down the line, possibly a very good one, but with how messed up his HS trajectory was, not to mention the fact he's a true freshman at linebacker, if Michigan has to use him in a serious manner in 2022, that's a bad sign. Not the least of which because Rolder did not enroll early, unlike Colson last year. The chance that Rolder has remotely a clue what to do in a B1G game six weeks into being on a college campus is close to nil unless his brain is a supercomputer programmed for linebacking. I'd like to see him in garbage time this year, provided the redshirt is preserved. I don't want to see him beyond that. 

[247Sports]

The same could probably be said for fellow true freshman MICAH POLLARD [recruiting profile], who is starting to get even more buzz than Rolder despite also not being an early enrollee and not being a projected ILB out of HS. Pollard exited HS billed as an EDGE/OLB hybrid who got comparisons to the likes of Jaylen Harrell and Josh Uche. Seth described him in the recruiting profile as an "edge who can linebacker, not a linebacker with an edge". Thus it was rather surprising to hear Pollard's name be mentioned at the ILB position, something Harbaugh confirmed in comments on Jansen's podcast. It's hard to view that as anything other than the result of Michigan having a lot of guys at EDGE and not many guys at ILB in 2022. 

Pollard was considered a sleeper target who Helow picked out from his home territory of Jacksonville. Not many expected to hear his name in fall camp and we mostly didn't, until about a week ago. Then all of the sudden Pollard popped up in several insider stories last week, something I wrote about in Football Bits: 

Pollard was not heard from until the start of this week and then he popped up in reports from both Henschke ($) and Balas ($) within 24 hours of each other, which suggests it's perhaps something to note. Both said that he has made surprising strides and had a good performance at the weekend scrimmage. However, both mentioned him with terms like "depth" and "deeper than we thought" attached, which feels important- probably not going to see him much in meaningful minutes this year, but probably good news for down the road.  

After I wrote that, Sam Webb ($) joined the train to make it 3/3 in terms of subscription insiders to name-drop Pollard. Is this real, or is this an attempt to puff up Pollard and reward him for hard-work related to the positional change? Tough to say. But the same rule applies for Rolder. If we see Pollard out there for meaningful snaps, it's likely a bad sign. 

Mr. Hood [Patrick Barron]

JAYDON HOOD [recruiting profile] has managed to get less mention than either Rolder or Spurlock, which seems pretty bad when he's got an extra year on them. Hood was a 4* to several outlets in the 2021 class who came in as a Don Brown special for a defense that no longer employed Don Brown, an undersized sideline to sideline LB who could blitz with tenacity. There were some questions on his scouting report, both on the field and off. He transferred twice in HS, and struggled to pick up the defense at his last stop, and coverage/block-shedding questions were prevalent at the time. Since coming to Ann Arbor it has been crickets. He was not mentioned by Jim Harbaugh on Jansen's podcast, a bad sign given that nearly everyone else on the roster was. Now with Rolder/Pollard nipping at Hood's heels from behind, it might be getting late early. 

Finally, there's one more true freshman in DEUCE SPURLOCK [recruiting profile]. He has gotten next to no buzz other than quotes like "Michigan likes their 2022 class at linebacker" and it's not hard to see why. Even compared to Rolder and Pollard, neither of whom are exactly Mason Graham ready-to-play college freshmen at a tough position, Spurlock is a project who will need time. He was a S/WR until 2021 when a growth spurt hit and he picked up 20 lbs. of muscle. That physical development moved him to LB, where he remained a very well-kept secret throughout the cycle who Michigan (and some recruiting guys who saw him play) felt was ranked far, far too low. Spurlock oozes athleticism and is a very good starter kit for the grow-a-linebacker project. There is no good reason he should see the field outside of garbage time this season. 

 

NOT A VIPER: WE'RE VIPERS BUT WE'RE NOT ALLOWED TO BE CALLED THAT 

[Patrick Barron]

When Michigan did away with the Viper position after Don Brown was dismissed, a number of guys recruited to play that position set off for new pastures. Farewell, Apache Mohan. But MICHAEL BARRETT [recruiting profile] was too firmly rooted in the program to bail and too important to a thin LB position (and to special teams) to be told to get lost. Barrett stuck around for 2021 even on a defense that didn't really have a proper role for him and was slowly rewarded for that decision as the year went along. 

Barrett was a 3* athlete out of Georgia in the infamously weak-on-paper 2018 recruiting class. He was being recruited to be Georgia Tech's QB back when the Jackets were still running the triple-option (RIP), which tells you a lot about the sort of football player that he was. Brian's recruiting profile was not sure where on the Michigan football team Barrett would fit, with Thicc Curtis Samuel being mentioned as a comp., but the possibility that Barrett could be a Viper was floated at the time. 

Barrett was seldom used in 2018 as they figured out how to use him, but by 2019 it was clear that he was going to be a Viper. He only played on defense twice that season (both in garbage time), but he emerged as a special teams ace that season. Barrett possibly saved a win for Michigan by showing off his throwing prowess in executing a fake punt pass to Dax Hill against Army in week two. Later in the year he pulled off another fake punt by taking the snap as the upback and plunging up the middle. 

After the graduation of Khaleke Hudson following the 2019 season, Barrett was promoted as the starting Viper and made his presence known very quickly in his first NCAA start: 

Barrett was named the defensive and special teams player of the week after that game, the latter because of a long kick return he had, taking the ball on a bounce and hoofing it a long way. That game showed off many of the positive aspects that Barrett has to offer, including the ThunderSack above. It also showcased some of the size-related weaknesses, as he got plowed by a Manball TE who had a size advantage: 

LB #23 lined up above the RT

As the (doomed) season rolled along, Barrett got dinged with a few coverage -2 events against Indiana, but otherwise was not showing up a ton in UFR grading because the whole defense was a mess. He was a part, but there was only so much we could learn in a season where so much chaos was happening, and so little of it was good. 

The 2020-21 defensive scheme change left Barrett in an odd spot, eliminating the Viper role he had been groomed for several years for and forcing him to try and learn ILB. That wasn't going to work and for five weeks (with help from an injury as well), he was seldom seeing the field on defense. His only notable appearance during this time was on special teams, again pulling off a fake punt on an upback direct snap against Washington. 

Barrett started to rotate in at WLB against Nebraska, but still didn't register enough for a UFR grade. He finally charted against Northwestern, but received a 0/-4.5 that showcased why he hadn't been in the rotation. Back to the bench he went against MSU and then finally the eruption happened against Indiana with 45 snaps(!!). Barrett was given the job of covering slot receivers who Indiana mostly ignored. He did okay, but still looked like a tweener: 

How was Barrett compared to Dax?

So so, to be honest. This role is a much better fit for him than WLB because he’s just too small to make an impact when he throws his body places. However he’s also not really a defensive back, as we saw when he had perfect coverage on Peyton Hendershot and gave it up as the ball arrived.

It’s probably been something that’s lapsed as he’s been more of an underneath than man to man cover guy. If they’re going to continue to use him in this role, he’ll have to get back up to speed on the safety aspects of the job. It was also just a one-off.

It turned out that this was not a one-off. PSU used three TEs more than expected, which gave Barrett a role, and he managed to collect a sack: 

LB #23 lined up outside the LT on the LoS

Barrett's role was quickly growing during mid-November, but that didn't mean his use on special teams had evaporated. He was the guy throwing the ball when Michigan pulled off a version of the Music City Miracle Play on a pooch kick against Maryland that AJ Henning ran back for a TD. 

Michigan began to prefer Barrett as opposed to an EDGE in their 5-2 look, and against Ohio State, Barrett was preferable to Ross in coverage on passing downs. Here he is in space against Garrett Wilson, making a nice firm tackle on one of the country's most slippery players: 

LB #23 lined up over the center/LG before dropping into coverage

By the time the B1G Championship Game rolled around, Barrett had carved out a role in the defense. He showed he could play the edge on zone stretch against Iowa, and then showcased how his acceleration could prove to be an upgrade from anything Jaylen Harrell or the EDGE guys offer in space by disrupting Iowa's bootleg: 

Discussion of Barrett as a 4-3 OLB being preferable to Harrell as an EDGE in a 5-2 look continued after analysis of the Orange Bowl tape and that leads to the present. 

What Barrett is is a Viper who we are not allowed to call a Viper anymore. He is not really an ILB, lacking the size to thunk guys when he throws his weight around, but the package of speed and acceleration means he can cover some guys and can blitz in ways that do occasionally remind you of Khaleke. His skillset has use on this defense but it is best as a 4-3 OLB matched up on TEs or blitzing the QB, not trying to plug gaps in the run game as a MIKE, or even really as a WLB. The way they were using Barrett at the end of the last season makes a lot of sense and can be a real asset, especially on a team that is going to try and disguise pressures more and will need to blitz more often to get home to the QB.

Barrett is the "starter" at this "position" that doesn't really exist, and it won't give him starter snaps, but it will give him a real role in the defense. If he is needed, Barrett can slide over and play some true ILB because he is a body and we don't not have many of those in this preview. But like so many names in this piece, if you see Mike Barrett suiting up as the MIKE in a meaningful game, that is likely a sign that things have gone awry. 

The last name to mention in this piece is our two-sport Superman, JOEY VELAZQUEZ [recruiting profile], memorable for being a Columbus kid who went to Michigan, for playing varsity baseball in addition to varsity football in the year 2022, and for his jacked upper body: 

Shoulders! Biceps! [his twitter]

Velazquez is a rare breed in the modern day and age but Michigan has actively courted multi-sport guys under Harbaugh. For the record, he is a decent NCAA baseball player. Not a guy with pro ambitions, but he had a nice junior season in the spring for the baseball team, emerging as a power-hitting outfielder with a respectable .277/.370/.660/1.030 quadruple slash (though high swing-and-miss as well), cracking 5 HR in 32 games and collecting multiple RBI in the Louisville Regional. 

But enough with that, back to football. Velazquez the football player was a 3* recruit who was known as a hard-hitter in HS and a tailor-made Viper with positive intangibles. He appeared in one game on special teams in 2019 and did not see the field in 2020. Last year he spent time with the scout team, got onto special teams in eight contests (recovering a fumble against Wisconsin), and played on defense against both NIU and Maryland in garbage time. He did not appear in a clip or in the text of a UFR and PFF only had him down for 11 snaps on defense last season. There's next to nothing we can say about Velazquez, the football player right now in the way of actual evidence. 

His profile is that of a Viper, 6'0", 225 lbs. who hits hard but had questions in coverage even in HS. Brian opined that his success at Michigan would hinge on whether he could cover TEs adequately. Velazquez exited HS filled out and with decent speed, a ready plug-and-play player. The fact that he hasn't plugged or played all that much in three seasons is not a great sign. Yes, his natural position got eliminated but there has been very little buzz about him even in this fall camp (he was ominously one of the few players not mentioned by Harbaugh the other day). I suppose that if Barrett is hurt and they want to use a pseudo-Viper, we could see Velazquez in that position, and he is technically a body at ILB, but it does not appear that we will see a ton of Velazquez this fall. If we do outside of garbage time, good luck predicting what that will look like.