Previously: Podcast 15.0A, 15.0B, 15.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. Interior OL. Defensive Interior. Edge. Linebacker.

Depth Chart

Corner	Yr.	Corner	Yr.	Nickelback	Yr.
Will Johnson	So.	Josh Wallace	Sr.*	Mike Sainristil	Sr.*
Keshaun Harris	Jr.*	Jaden McBurrows	So.*	Rod Moore	Jr.
Jyaire Hill	Fr.	Amorion Walker	Fr.*	Zeke Berry	Fr.*

Well, on the one hand you have two of the best defensive backs in America. On the other you have a great sea of uncertainty led by a UMass transfer. It'll be fine, in all probability, because Michigan has six or seven guys competing for one spot on the defense and the UMass transfer has almost literally as much experience as it is possible to have while still being allowed to play college football.

But, I mean, this is it. This is the Worry Spot. This is the most concerning thing about the entire 2023 Michigan Wolverines: who is going to play opposite the reincarnation of Charles Woodson.

CORNERBACK: MY NAME IS KIIIIIIIIID WOODSON

RATING: 4.

This preview series has now referenced two of Michigan's famous Musical Dirtbags and will undoubtedly work in some sort of juggalos reference before it ends. This is what you don't pay me for, folks.

[Fuller]

Anyway, WILL JOHNSON came in as a 6'2", five-star corner and those guys simply do not miss. The question was "when will he not miss" and the answer was right… about… now…

CB #2 to top

On the opening snap of The Game Michigan put him in press coverage with no safety help against Marvin Harrison Jr and he obliterated the first WR off the board in the 2024 draft. That was a statement of intent. (PFF, infuriatingly, did not count this as a target.) Ohio State targeted Johnson downfield exactly one more time (a comeback to Fleming that was complete for 15 yards) before it was 38-23 and Michigan started playing to bleed the clock.

[After THE JUMP: Hail, Hail to Sainristil]

I can stop this now, right? Ohio State was terrified of Will Johnson. Explanation over. Oh, fine:

He did that the next week, dousing Purdue's upset bid and holding Chuck Sizzle to two yards on the five targets where they went head to head. If you drop out the Quentin Johnston TD that PFF incorrectly attributes to Johnson—Colson blew the chip—TCU got 21 yards on five targets against Johnson.

Johnson graded out unreasonably well at PFF, who gave him a 91 grade in man coverage—the best of any P5 corner, no qualifiers. Seth had him for a number of freshman issues against Maryland and then a takeoff:

Opponent	Snaps	+	-	TOT	Notes
CSU	22	4	2	2	Tested twice, beaten once.
Hawaii	34	5	2	3	Gonna start eventually but still lots of freshman.
Uconn	15	2	0	2	Played some nickel again. Looks viable.
Maryland	21	0	6	-6	We probably should have covered switching and 4th & long.
Iowa	14	2	0.5	1.5	Did fine.
Indiana	22	3	0	3	Tested twice, unbeaten.
Penn State	29	2	1	1	One dig on him, delivered judgement.
MSU	19	3	1	2	Didn't try him, slammed down a WR screen.
Rutgers	42	7.5	4	3.5	Led team in snaps, didn't miss Gemon.
Nebraska	36	8.5	1	7.5	The kid can play!
Illinois	48	6	4	2	Made some underrated plays, why the soft coverage?
OSU	73	9	5	4	Arrived. Was M's best outside cornerback.
Purdue	60	10	4	6	Arrived, but now the fans can see it.
TCU	51	7.5	2	5.5	On the Marlin-Woodson track.
TOTAL	486	69.5	32.5	+37

To come through the OSU-Purdue-TCU gauntlet with a total of +15.5, as a cornerback, when teams were trying to avoid him is… well… it's Woodson stuff. Drop out the TCU 76-yarder again and Johnson gave up two plays of much consequence. He got beat for a 34-yard touchdown in his first game in college and missed a tackle against Rutgers.

He enters this season as Michigan's unquestioned #1 DB and is already being talked about as a lock top-ten pick by NFL draft types.

Michigan CB Will Johnson will be a top 10 pick in 2 years. Excellent in soft press coverage, where he is able to mirror and match. He showed great patience in off man coverage and is superb tackler in the open field. His game is very similar to Patrick Surtain II. pic.twitter.com/Xdr54qIiYE

— Kendell Hollowell (@KHollowell_) April 7, 2023

I mean, what else is there to say? I don't have more clips to embed that are relevant, because yeah he also did the thing he did to Marvin Harrison Jr to some Indiana receivers, but do you need to see them? Dude is an All American right now. Let's move on to the Position Of Concern, which is considerably more variable in its outcome.

will play in front of slightly bigger crowds this fall [University of Massachusetts]

The other starter is… well… uh. Amorion Walker was being regarded as one in the spring, per Harbaugh, and then he ate it against Peyton O'Leary and spent much of fall camp injured. There are six or seven contenders with no clear leader, but JOSH WALLACE [hello post], the transfer Don Brown sent along because Brown doesn't need him to whip up on New Mexico State 41-30 in week zero can I get a hell yeah, provides the position a relatively high floor so let's go with him. Also Jesse Minter "hinted" that he was ahead, with other insiders characterizing the battle like so, per Alex's football bits:

Insiders have described Wallace as the "most consistent" corner in the competition ($) and being favored to start the season opener ($).

Leader in the clubhouse. Someone's got to catch him in consistency if they're going to use their (hypothetical) athletic advantage.

You hear "UMass transfer" and your immediate thought is "can this guy run at all?" I would submit that maybe that doesn't matter as much opposite Will Johnson. If Wallace is excellent in zone and underneath Michigan can run the Keon Coleman gameplan, give Wallace help over the top, and dare the opposition to try Johnson deep. Then you hear "Don Brown transfer" and your immediate thought is "can this guy play zone at all?" We don't have a ton of data on this yet but 1) dude has nearly 2200 snaps in college, he's run plenty of everything and 2) Iowa (and VT and Oklahoma) offered him. Minter:

He's a pro. Number one, he's a pro. You can tell he's played a lot of football. He's played against really good competition. Everybody is like, oh, he's coming from UMass.  … Every year they're playing two, three, four sort of way up there money-type games for them. He's played against good competition.

Alex's scouting of Wallace has several plays against Kenny Pickett's Pitt team, so, yeah, he's played some dudes.

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

Also, Minter would later add that "he's played in four different defensive systems in his career." He knows some things. Speaking of Alex's scouting, the upshot:

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.

PFF graded him reasonably well, with coverage grades of 70, 67, and 71 the last three years. He was slightly worse as a run defender but not outlandishly so, and the last couple years he's picked up 15 PBUs on 83 targets. In 2022 he forced ten incompletions on 50 targets, a 25% rate that was in a multi-way tie for 20th nationally. Grading on guys near the top of the forced incompletions list can vary considerably but it is generally not a place for the incompetent.

Wallace's major issue was that when opponents did complete a pass on him it was often a big one. Opponents averaged 17.3 yards per catch against him, and his yards per target of 9.5 is… not good. This may have something to do with Don Brown trying to run a Don Brown defense at UMass.

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

Wallace did a smart thing upon arrival, and that was to remora himself to Mike Sainristil:

When Wallace committed to the Wolverines, and Sainristil shot him another message: “Be by my side all summer. I promise I’ll lead you in the right direction,” Sainristil told him.

“I already planned on it,” Wallace responded.

Since Wallace has been on-campus, the two have been near-inseparable. “Like a brother,” each has said about the other.

“He’s a great cover guy,” Sainristil said. “He’s not a guy that's scared to come down and hit somebody. He's physical when needed. And he's a guy that takes coaching. He doesn't take anything personal. And he's just guy who is looking to do the right things, looking to help however.”

He was a two-time captain at UMass and now he gets to play around other competent football players; it's likely that his PFF grades take a leap as he's asked to do a subset of football things that fit his strengths since the rest of the defense can cover for his weaknesses, a proposition not possible at UMass.

Wallace should start the opener and beyond; I would expect a ton of cornerbacks to get snaps early in the season. Wallace is a reasonable favorite to keep the job. You kind of want Wallace to get passed, but mostly because he projects as a veteran who doesn't make a lot of mistakes. Anyone zooming by him midseason is probably going to be the deal.

NICKEL: ALL HAIL THE GLORIOUS ONE

RATING: 5

Usually a 5 is reserved for an All-American caliber player, or one of the best situations in the country, that sort of thing. And you may be thinking "Mike Sainristil is pretty good but he's not an All-American" and to that I say GOSH DARN IT YOU DANG DIDDLY DOOFUS MIKEY SAINRISTIL GETS A 5 AND YOU'RE GOING TO LIKE IT. HERE'S THE PICTURE

[BARRON!{!{!{!!{]

WAIT NO NOT THAT ONE GIMME A SECOND I WAS YELLING NO OFFENSE BRAD ROBBINS WHO JUST BOOTED OSU ALUM DRUE CRISMAN INTO THE ETHER

yesss that's the stuff [Barron]

Ahem. Last year MIKE SAINRISTIL was a position switch starter, which we abhor around these parts. Our annual Heuristics And Stupid Prediction post looks at all the position switches and how close any of those players are to the field. Some of these are fine because they're minor (Devin Funchess moving to WR, that sort of thing), but flipping a guy from offense to defense, or vice versa, and then sticking them into the starting lineup is almost always a cry for help.

But last year was the year where we were just chillin', man, just totally relaxed about all of our rules of thumb being flagrantly violated. QB battle going into the season? No problem. Freshman DT? Sure, may I have another. A transfer center trying to learn a whole new playbook in an offseason? Don't mind if I do. Even the Sainristil flip was met with a relative shrug:

WR Mike Sanristil to nickel. Sainristil is now the third corner and starting nickel, so this is 50% of a position switch starter. Michigan has a good backup plan if it doesn't work out, and Sainristil was named a captain. The latter implies he's at least hacking it there. Concern level is extant, but low.

The defensive 5Q5A even asserted he'd be draftable. One win over Ohio State really mellows a guy out.

And, I mean, like the Corum prediction this somehow this turned out to be pessimistic. Sainristil's UFR grading:

Opponent	Snaps	+	-	TOT	Notes
CSU	41	6.5	3.5	3	One drag route on him. Not quite Daxhillian but tough to edge.
Hawaii	31	3.5	0	3.5	You can try his edge but it's not going to work out for you.
Uconn	26	5	1	4	Fades do not scare me.
Maryland	64	14.5	7.5	7	Daxhillian edge work, Nondaxhillian blitz work.
Iowa	35	4	4	-	One big bad thing against lots of little good things.
Indiana	78	10	0.5	9.5	I think it's time to update the chart now.
Penn State	41	7.5	0.5	7	Dominant.
MSU	47	7	3	4	Played outside some, blamed him for the one breakdown.
Rutgers	40	7	4	3	Overall good play, one or two bad ones.
Nebraska	30	5.5	3	2.5	Not his best day, but he's no fool either.
Illinois	45	5	3	2	Calmly erased Isaiah Williams most of the day.
OSU	71	17	3.5	13.5	This is a MONSTER score for a DB.
Purdue	72	7.5	0	7.5	>>>Dax. Shoulda been 1stTm All-B10. Shield time.
TCU	66	5	3.5	1.5	Had to do more hybrid stuff, isn't big.
TOTAL	687	105	37	+68

That is nuts. UFR grading favors DL on a raw numbers basis because when a back seven player comes into focus often it's because they screwed up; Sainristil did not put up a negative game score all year and graded out like Zak Zinter in a system inherently biased against him. PFF was not quite as enraptured, but it wasn't far off. They adored his run defense (89) and thought his coverage was solidly upper-echelon (78); he was their #6 Big Ten corner behind the Big 4 first rounders (Devon Witherspoon, Kalen King, Cooper DeJean, and Johnson) and Rutgers uptransfer Christian Braswell, who jumped from Temple and parlayed his play into a sixth-round slot.

SAINRISTIL'S COVERAGE WAS EXCELLENT. The windows he provided were narrow, and Michigan trusted him enough to single him up on fourth down against guys like Parker Washington, who just went in the sixth round:

My contention isn't that you should never throw a fade with good leverage on 4th and 6. It's that you shouldn't throw it when Mike Sainristil is covering the guy because Sainristil is a Dude. Look where he's got to fit this:

Sainristil's got a knee ahead of Parker Washington, whose only play at that point is to slow up to increase separation then make a dive for it. The reason Washington's hands are too late isn't because the receiver mistimed it, it's because that right arm was still coming up behind Sainristil's helmet when it needed to be under the football. Joel Klatt is on my side too:

Even when things did get completed against him they were usually the kind of events where UFR folks issue a +1 and gamely try to defend themselves from "but it was complete" takes. A near replica of the above slot fade was complete against Ohio State because CJ Stroud and Marvin Harrison, but on replay it's clear Sainristil actually tipped the ball:

Or this against the second-best passing offense in the Big Ten:

Yeah, Emeka Egbuka was able to get away from him in The Game for a TD, but 1) Junior Colson needs to chip him here and 2) look how close he makes that even without the chip:

He was one accurate Stroud pass away from an 86 yard pick six:

The Ohio State Buckeyes had the second pick in the draft playing QB and two first round wide receivers, one of whom was always in the slot because Julian Fleming only plays outside, and Sainristil got got—in the sense that OSU did not have to do something incredible to move the ball—exactly one time.

I'll take it. Because.

This entire section is clips against Penn State, Maryland, and OSU. What more do you want? Five. RATING: 5. Five.

SAINRISTIL WAS UNREASONABLY GOOD AT JABRILL PEPPERS STUFF. Would you like to edge Jabrill Peppers? No? Well, trying to edge Sainristil is basically the same. This had to be the most unlikely development of last season. The converted wide receiver actually improved Michigan's edge run defense significantly, per PFF's estimation, and at least held the line in UFR. Seth had a season-long bit about this:

Speaking of fools, did they try to edge Dax Hill?

They tried to edge Mike Sainristil.

Same thing.

Pretty much.

#0 nickel on the top hash

Maryland runs the same #SpeedinSpace offense that Gattis installed at Michigan and part of making life hell on linebackers is to make them responsible for a ton of horizontal space. Colson did a nice job on this one but it's nice to have a Sainristil who can induce a quick WR screen then take away everything from the top of the numbers.

Even if he had to fall down and get ridden like a horsey, the buck screen stopped here.

This is why Michigan really does not want to flip him outside. Yeah, he could probably hack it, but would his replacement in the slot be able to match that? Not likely.

This, too, extended into the OSU game. He was in man coverage over the slot when OSU tried to hit the edge on a crucial third and three, but you can't run off Mike Sainristil:

Utterly reliable, insanely adaptable, Mike Sainristil is a Michigan legend.

It's weird to assert this about a guy who flipped positions a year ago, but Sainristil seems at or near his ceiling? It's hard to imagine him improving on his run defense and somehow his coverage felt like he'd been playing it since his arrival on campus. PFF's grading is harsher than ours, I guess, and the guy was a wide receiver in 2021 so I guess I should assert that he's got upside left?

FWIW, Sainristil did pop up in the "I can't put sixteen Michigan players on the Freaks list" aside for a 40-inch vert and a 2.26 plyo stairs, uh, jumpy thing, so the athletic ability to improve—somehow—is there. Sainristil should be All Big Ten and play like an All-American; he'll get knocked for being too small and go in the late rounds of the NFL draft, whereupon he will have a 50-year career with stops at all 32 teams.

BACKUPS

If CB2 is murky you'd better believe CB3+ is murky as well. Usually these posts proceed in rough depth chart order but we've got absolutely no idea here. Prospects are presented in no order.

Walker is a wait and see [Barron]

That said, it did seem like the program really wanted AMORION WALKER [recruiting profile] to pull the Sainristil this offseason, and no wonder. From Bruce Feldman's Freaks article:

…he’s made an eye-catching transformation since arriving at Michigan at 156 pounds. Now, he’s 6-3 1/4, 180 pounds and has crazy athleticism. This offseason he blazed through the 3-cone drill in a stunning 6.10 seconds.

“It’s the fastest time I have ever seen and likely the fastest I will ever see,” strength coach Ben Herbert says. That time is almost a full half-second faster than the fastest time recorded at the combine last spring (Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s 6.57). It would also blow away the combine record of 6.42 set 12 years ago by Oregon’s Jeff Maehl.

Walker’s 3.89 shuttle would’ve been tops at the combine as well. … And there’s more: Walker vertical-jumped 42 1/2 inches. He did 11-4 in the broad jump and he clocked a 4.34 40, and he did it out of a two-point stance.

Those can be wild, absurd lies and Amorion Walker would still be one of the freakiest CB prospects to ever roll through Ann Arbor. They're probably somewhat near the truth as last year Will Johnson—WILL JOHNSON—said Walker is the "freakiest athlete" he's been around. Harbaugh publicized some Freaks-worthy numbers even last year, citing a 6.25 three-cone and a 43-inch jump. Here is another boggling athletic thing:

“Amorion Walker hit like 20 miles an hour when we were only doing a 10-yard, 5-yard rep,” Johnson told The Michigan Insider on “Behind the Uniform.”

“Everyone’s looking at the board, like ‘How is that even possible?’ So we went in and double checked to see if his GPS was bugged. Nah, he’s just that fast. He’s just fast.”

The problem is that Walker has yet to put together any sort of evidence that he can translate that into production. His freshman year was mostly spent at receiver, where his occasional clips consisted of getting way over the top of Hawaii on a ball Davis Warren left short and a contested fade where Walker didn't bring the ball in, or attempt to high-point it:

Michigan did run him out at corner against Hawaii briefly, whereupon he picked up a holding penalty that Seth didn't think much of but I mean… it was a lot of jersey.

Then Harbaugh started talking about him as a "starter" in spring, and then Peyton O'Leary cooked him repeatedly. Walker then missed much of fall camp with an injury. These two events virtually remove any possibility that Walker is a factor this season. The addition of Wallace kind of seems like a response to Walker not being ready yet; Michigan had struck out on some portal targets in the winter and looked set to go into the season with what they had, and then Walker didn't quite come through.

All of this is fine as far as Walker's long-term potential goes. Minter:

Amorion, while he has a tremendous skillset, very unique for a corner, when you're in the NFL and you're looking at players. Wow, this would be ideal to have a guy this big, this long, this fast, this quick. That's a very rare combination. … It's going to be, for him, about playing in front of 110,000 people, handling that moment, handling the mental side of play, after play, after play. The ability to respond, the ability come back from good things, the ability to come back from bad things.

The guy arrived as a receiver who weighed 150. He changed positions and added 30 pounds. If he was at all plausible this year it was time to strike up the NFL Hall of Fame talk. As it is he's just an incredibly promising prospect who should be regarded like a tight end you're trying to develop into a tackle: ask again in year three.

if Harris gets playing time he'll have beaten a bunch of guys out [Barron]

At the other end of the hype-versus-experience spectrum is KESHAUN HARRIS, a walk-on who's showed well in the last two spring games.

4th down
Blue trailing by 1.
Keshaun Harris, a 5th year walk on from Lansing , makes a great break on the ball to preserve the victory for the Maize.


Steaks for the Maize pic.twitter.com/jpOUct8LLQ

— Due# (@JDue51) April 2, 2023

"Walk on" and "cornerback" usually go together like James Franklin and clock management, but back in high school Harris won three different state titles as a hurdler. I'm sayin' there's a chance. Because whenever Harris gets on the field Seth or I say something like "huh, Keshaun Harris." He got some run against UConn and performed:

Finally, garbage time yielded three good plays by Keshaun Harris. If the name rings a bell, he's the walk-on converted from the track team who got some hype last spring that we took for cornerback news. With the benefit of post-2021 hindsight it may be that Harris can play a bit.

CB to bottom

Or maybe I'm just reading too much into the dumbest preseason since the days when Michigan was so desperate for opponents they would schedule Grand Rapids high schoolers.

Roman Wilson would not scoff at this take. During his Behind The Uniform long-form interview with Sam Webb, Roman Wilson brought up Harris first when asked an open-ended question about who might line up opposite Johnson this fall:

WILSON: Keshaun Harris—that's one of the other fast guys on the team.
WEBB: So… pause. Because that's who Donovan put out there—Keshaun Harris as the fastest guy. … He may have said you were up there … But he mentioned Keshaun Harris by name. …
WILSON: Just as a DB, seeing how he played last year—no knock on Keshaun but it it's just like "oh he's going to grab me, he's going to hold on to me," but now he's out there and I'm like, "yeah, that's some good technique." He's out there strapping some people. … There's no reason for him to not rely on his speed, how fast he is. That's his trademark.

It doesn't sound like the team would be particularly distressed if Harris emerged. It's a bit of a longshot but he's the guy who's been around the longest and has shown the most at Michigan.

Too much time in street clothes and Walker yoinks your number [Barron]

The case for JA'DEN MCBURROWS [recruiting profile] is that he hasn't been able to show much because he's had a series of injuries. He seems to be Clinkscale's guy judging from last year's chatter:

Clinkscale confirms Ja’Den McBurrows is not back to 100% yet, but says he’s “like Junior Clink” out there in the meantime. Said he saw McBurrows’ physicality and quickness last year, and now his game understanding is improving.

Said he’s hopeful for a return this season.

— Zach Shaw (@_ZachShaw) August 11, 2022

McBurrows has returned to the field, playing in the spring game and drawing approving nods from Sam Webb…

Ja’Den McBurrows was the CB who resonated with me the most … [his] stick for a TFL wasn’t a surprise to anyone who saw him in high school. What was evident back then and now is that McBurrows will rise and fall on the depth chart based on his attention to detail in coverage. His sticky defense on a fade ball to freshman Semaj Morgan in the endzone didn’t show up on the stat sheet, but it will definitely do so when he sits down with his coaches in film study.

…but fall talk has been minimal. Clinkscale mentioned him in a group with Harris and Myles Pollard behind Walker and Wallace early in fall camp, and Sainristil was asked about him at Big Ten media days:

He easily could play nickel; he could play corner. He's working hard every day. He's looking good in the weight room. He just has to continue doing the necessary things — the small things. I think McBurrows can easily be a guy starting in the corner spot.

Like Walker, this McBurrows feels like he's a year away. His time on the practice field has been minimal to the point where he seems like a freshman.

Past McBurrows it's actual freshmen of various varieties. KODY JONES [recruiting profile] and MYLES POLLARD [recruiting profile] redshirted last year. Pollard fielded some encouraging chatter from Josh Henschke at Rivals recently and his recruiting profile is one of those that belies his ranking. These takes about a 6'2" kid are worth exploring:

Sam Webb called Pollard "extremely fluid" and suggested he could sink his hips and explode in and out of cuts or breaks like a "cat-quick" 5-10 guy. TTB also unqualified it with a "despite his height" when crediting Pollard with quick feet, smooth backpedal, and the ability to flip his hips. Pollard's trainer put "very good feet and hips" after size when listing Myles's strengths, then mentioned they're working on his lower body strength, quickness and speed.

Pollard's main drawback was his speed, which is kind of a problem at CB but maybe one you can live with in a world where Will Johnson is locking down the boundary without help.

Hill (#20) is your Most Will Johnson-ish guy back here [Barron]

True freshmen JYAIRE HILL [recruiting profile], CAM CALHOUN [recruiting profile], and DJ WALLER [recruiting profile] probably aren't going to pull the Woodson/Johnson. If any of them do it'll probably be Hill, who was the subject of a heated recruiting battle between Michigan and then-Illinois-DC Ryan Walters. (Waller did get a shout-out from Steve Lorenz as a guy he'd been told not to forget about, but that seems like one for down the road.) Minter suggested Hill could be ready now-ish:

“I think Jyaire Hill is going to be a guy,” defensive coordinator Jesse Minter said earlier this spring. “I don't know if I'll put him on Will [Johnson’s] track, but I think he's going to be capable of of helping us this year — just a really, really good, competitive mindset that it takes to be successful at that position.”

Seth's recruiting profile has a laundry list of things he did in the spring that also suggest that he could be a guy sooner rather than later:

One program insider told me they'd take Jyaire Hill over 5-star Nyckoles Harbor "with no hesitation." His recruitment was a two-year battle between Michigan and Illinois, who had him on campus nine times. This got so intense that showing any concern whatsoever when Hill left Michigan out of his top-five going into Signing Day was a tell that someone wasn't paying attention.

I kept watching as #20 dominated a route by Blue #82 (Fredrick Moore). As he set a hard edge versus a guard to beat well-designed QB counter. Broke on a hitch. A tackle through traffic I don't think I saw Channing Stribling make his entire career. On a day nobody could get Alex Orji to go down, some cornerback who by all rights should have still been back in Kankakee beat a block and made it happen. This hit. Marcus Pollard was celebrating his interception when this happened, and had to remove the buffs.

The best case for CB2 this year and next is probably Hill emerging midseason. If he beats out a highly experienced, pretty decent transfer sky's the limit.