Previously: The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. 

INTERIOR OL: YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY

LT	Yr.	LG	Yr.	C	Yr.	RG	Yr.	RT	Yr.
Karsen Barnhart	Sr.*	Trevor Keegan	Sr.*	Drake Nugent	Sr.*	Zak Zinter	Jr.*	Trente Jones	Sr.*
LaDarius Henderson	Sr.	Gio El-Hadi	So.*	Greg Crippen	So.*	Reece Atteberry	So.*	Myles Hinton	Jr.
Jeffrey Persi	So.*	Amir Herring	Fr.	Raheem Anderson	So.*	Connor Jones	Fr.*	Andrew Gentry	Fr.*

Michigan's offensive line is coming off back-to-back Joe "Sherrone" Moore awards. They get back six guys who started games last year and added two of the Pac-12's best OL, plus a former five-star with a season and change of starting experience. Cocky? Nah. Call it confid—

On Zinter's proposed formation with 10 offensive linemen and a running back

You know, I get ... every day the linemen are sending me plays and formations. I'm like, 'can you guys just worry about what you got to do?'

Ok, cocky.

I am rapturous about Sherrone Moore rolling into the building every morning only for Keegan and Zinter to confront him with their latest ludicrous offense against God and football. They are both wearing full pads and helmets. Keegan sports his trademark faceful of eyeblack. They show him a play where three offensive linemen pull in different directions and then the ball is lateraled to a fourth OL. Moore tries very hard to remember that these guys are his ticket to a head coaching job next year and says he'll take it under advisement. Zinter and Keegan high five, elated. Exit stage right, repeat every day of the summer.

In addition to those two guys, Michigan added a two year starter and All Pac-12 honorable mention center to go with two more guys who I'd be perfectly comfortable starting. And the top backup at guard looked like he'd start at a majority of Big Ten schools last year, when he was a redshirt freshman.

Sometimes I think back to that time Rich Rodriguez got the Michigan job and arrived to find out he had a total of seven scholarship OL, one of whom was immediately lost for the season. This section's title is a riff on old lady cigarette ads, and I assume Rodriguez smoked several packs of lady cigarettes upon beholding the roster. That's over! ALL OF THAT IS OVER.

Michigan's offensive line is now a zombie apocalypse. You can shoot as many guys in the head with a shotgun as you want but the pile is gonna lurch forward with you under it.

[After THE JUMP: there is a PFF intern who deserves a whoopin']

---------------------

GUARD: HOORAY FOR NIL

RATING: 5.

Seth gave this a 5 last year…

With a reasonable progression from Keegan it's not hard to see Michigan having the best pair of guards in the country.

…and was right, and Michigan returns literally everyone he mentioned in this section. I thought about giving this a 5.5, but then I'd have to give the running back spot a 12 and that way madness lies. So 5 it is. If you want to mentally file it as a 5.5, I ain't telling.

he can't hear you [Barron]

Anyway. Michigan returns both starting guards from the pain machine that was the 2022 line. First team All Big Ten returner ZAK ZINTER is the headliner. From the moment he hit Michigan's campus there was a buzz about him that virtually guarantees success. Interior OL do not get talked about in this way as true freshmen unless there's something special there:

Webb reports that "excitement is palpable" about Zinter long term. Brice Marich reports that he's been told he "will have an impact this year" and that there are many "raving reviews" about him. Lorenz has reports that Michigan "believes they have another potential 'total package.'"

And lo, it came to pass. Zinter is Dane Brugler's #1 draft-eligible IOL in this class:

What he does best: Alert and physical at the point of attack

Zinter checks a lot of boxes that NFL teams look for in a guard prospect. He moves well on his feet to mirror in small spaces or use his range as a puller. He prioritizes his technique and is clearly intelligent with the way he stays one step ahead and works in concert with his neighbor. And Zinter uses his long arms to deliver pop at contact, both in the run game and pass protection. …Zinter is on a different level than Olu Oluwatimi, Ryan Hayes and the blockers that came before him. He projects as a Day 2 prospect and has a chance to be the first interior blocker drafted in April.

He's PFF's #3 returning IOL in college football and was second in the P5 in their "wins above average" metric; he was Mel Kiper's #3 guard for the 2023 draft, if he'd entered. He drew mention in the Freaks article for a 33 vert and a 4.44 shuttle at 325.

He is that dude. There's more than just numbers and draft hype:

I love that both of these went between Olu and Zinter https://t.co/zksVJ9nEHN

— mgoblog (@mgoblog) November 27, 2022

Zinter was crucial on both of the long Edwards touchdowns that put twin stakes in the rancid Funyun that passes for a Buckeye heart in Columbus last November. The second clip there doesn't do Zinter's contribution justice: before he erased a blitzing linebacker he blasted OSU DT Taron Vincent out of the gap Edward zipped through:

Zinter is going to give that guy a shove to help Olu get around him.

Plunk.

And voila.

Zinter got it done, with plenty of time to come off and catch the WLB shooting into the B gap. Olu gets control of Vincent on the other side of him, and the LB behind them is dedicated to the gap between Hayes (#76) and Keegan (#77). Why? I don't know—they have a scrape exchange on so that LB shouldn't be so worried about a backside gap.

Vincent does fight across enough to get an arm on Edwards but he runs through it, and because OSU used up all of their safeties once again there's nowhere left to stand.

The sheer relocation! Look at picture two, and then picture three. Or look at it from field level:

And then Zinter calmly peeled off to wipe a blitzing linebacker, like he'd done all day. By the time the shouting was over and the grading done, Zinter checked in with a +12-0=+12 day against Ohio State. AGAINST OHIO STATE. Plus twelve! No minuses! Against Ohio State!

The heavy chip—I hesitate to call these "chips" because they're more like a whole damn boulder—followed by an agile linebacker elimination was Zinter's calling card. Here he's most of the oomph behind a nose tackle pancake and then he erases a linebacker:

RG #65

Here he takes a Penn State DT who's already halfway past Oluwatimi and blasts him all the way to the other side of the gap:

RG #65

A little more awareness from Edwards and that's a chunk. Zinter's ability to find linebackers at any depth and wipe them was impressive:

RG #65

This is a pull, not a chip and climb, but look at the whooping he put on 250-pound Jacoby Windmon:

RG #65

This man is hell on linebackers.

ZINTER'S OTHER SIGNATURE MOVE was "now you are in this other gap." Good OL are able to stalemate DL and prevent them from definitively filling a gap. Arm tackle attempts ensue. Great OL get these one on one battles and remove all ambiguity.

RG #65

Control, get a guy churning his feet, and then rip him out of the gap. Here Joel Klatt marvels at the amount of movement Michigan got on their double-team on power, but the double team is just Zinter blocking his dude:

RG #65

Here he actually gets rocked back a bit but still ejects his guy from the A gap:

RG #65

This one is a double team with an excellent chip from Barnhart but you literally cannot be more to one side of a guy, and then Zinter finishes it off by using the DT's momentum against him and casually tossing him to the ground:

RG #65

You get the idea.

Zinter wasn't flawless, of course, he is an OL. There were occasional incidents where he wouldn't pick up a stunt or he'd mis-ID a weird Rutgers blitz. It's telling that the latter clip is a safety blitz, though: it takes something really outside the box to get him. More frequent than minuses for mis-IDing plays were advanced pickups:

RG #65 pulling

Zinter is the best guard this site has ever charted, and expect more of the same in 2023. He should be an All-American.

Smokey, you are entering a world of pain [Barron]

Meanwhile on the left side of the line, TREVOR KEEGAN returns for a fifth year. Keegan isn't quite on Zinter's level—Brugler had him the #15 IOL prospect—but he's not too far off. The coaches put him on the All Big Ten first team next to Zinter, and since he was out of the lineup off and on a year ago with nagging injuries it's possible he has another gear left in him. Our charting:

Opponent	+	-	TOT	Prot -	Notes
CSU	7.5	5	2.5	-2	Two pass pro minuses. Got a –2 on a stretch where he was T not G.
Hawaii	4.5	1	3.5	0	More consistent when asked to play just G.
UConn	0.5	1	-0.5	0	Went out early.
Maryland					DNP
Iowa	9.5	7	2.5	0	Up and down.
Indiana	9	1	8	-3	3 pass pro minuses, otherwise very good.
Penn State	13	8.5	4.5	-3	Same deal as last week.
MSU	12.5	7.5	5	0	Tough matchup against a lot of Slade, did well.
Rutgers	10	5	5	-2	Doubles, doubles, doubles.
Nebraska					DNP
Illinois					DNP
OSU	5	2.5	2.5	-1	Burly interior.
TCU	7	7.5	-0.5	-3	Beat up on the nose, offset by three big whiffs.
TOTAL	78.5	46	+32.5	-14	injury must be factored in

Not quite at our 2:1 ratio but not too far from it; he also missed (most of) three of the easiest games on the schedule: UConn, Maryland, and Nebraska were all OL whompings. He averaged approximately one pass pro minus per game, which is more than passable. And that number was a significant step forward from his sophomore year, when he was +11.5.

For what it's worth, the way PFF graded Keegan is straight up disrespectful. He's their #62 run blocker—not in the nation. In the Big Ten. He is behind six different Michigan State OL. Hell, he's behind six different Iowa OL. Iowa was ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVENTH in yards per carry last year. FOH.

Like Zinter, Keegan's foremost trait is intelligence. It is extremely hard to get the drop on him. He doesn't chase guys when the opposition runs stunts and blitzes; if you leave his zone he's going to find the guy coming to it and deal with it. Here the PSU DT hops outside of him so he finds the linebacker:

LG #77

Here the DE comes to him, hoping to catch Keegan releasing to nobody on the second level; Keegan sees the linebacker move outside and stops to cut off the DE:

LG #77

Same here except Keegan finds two different linebackers; unfortunately for Michigan OSU is plus one in the box and Michigan didn't read anyone:

LG #77

Blocking multiple members of the OSU back seven after the Buckeyes tried to throw some tricky stuff his way is something of a tradition. I charted vanishingly few mental errors, and even the ones that did show up were things like Keegan clearly having the wrong playcall, not incidents where he let an unexpected guy through clean.  The unexpected guy does not get through clean:

LG #77

I charted a bunch of offensive lines where the expected guy got through clean. Having two guards who pick up everything was amazing, and having them both return? Hell yeah.

Then he is big and large and powerful. Michigan's duo-heavy gameplan last year worked because both doubles flung opposition DTs downfield. Here he combines with Hayes to eject Jacob Slade, a redshirt senior and fringe draft prospect:

LG #77

Same dude, same deal except now he combines with Oluwatimi:

LG #77

When asked to single-block guys he frequently got that yard or two of movement that's the difference between success and second and eight:

LG #77

Leaning so heavily into duo requires you to have mashers all over the interior OL and Keegan was certainly that.

Keegan isn't the fleetest of foot, so occasionally you'd get events where he'd fire out on a linebacker and lunge at the guy to get there:

LG #77

(Nice to have Corum around to make that iffy block irrelevant.) Keegan played a lot of tackle in the opener but looked uncomfortable doing it; here he doesn't have the lateral agility to redirect when this OLB/DE type shoots inside of him:

LT #77

Later that guy would turn the corner on him and force a field goal:

LT #77

There's a reason Keegan came to Michigan as a highly touted tackle and was more or less immediately stuffed inside. Seth caught this last year when Michigan had some better DTs to go up against:

[Keegan] doesn't make many big mistakes—none of his four –2s were mental—but did generate a lot of –1s and –0.5s in my charting by getting out-athleted, particularly against Nebraska's athletic DT tandem. Wisconsin/Georgia linebackers were too fleet to pick off, as was the odd safety he encountered.

These last two sections are likely to remain the case this year. After dropping 20 pounds a year ago, Keegan decided he liked himself burlier:

On his offseason weight gain to 320 pounds:

Last year, I was around 300, 305. Felt really good on my feet. It was just a little more difficult against a bigger 3-tech or a bigger 2i to eat a bull rush. I just thought: gain some muscle, gain a little more weight, but still be quick on my feet.

Might as well lean into the strength.

Keegan is a captain and a three-year starter who's already performed at the level you'd expect a senior to. I'm not sure where he has to go from here. He's always going to be a little less mobile than is ideal for the NFL, and it's essentially impossible for him to get better at his assignments. Maybe some more consistent oomph on single blocks, a little better technique in pass pro, an increment here and there. In all likelihood he'll be more or less the same guy he was a year ago, which is a very good thing unless you are PFF.

BACKUPS: TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN

[Fuller]

Michigan is… yep, exceptionally deep here. GIOVANNI EL-HADI [recruiting profile] is a former four-star recruit who got three starts a year ago and saw significant action in two other games thanks to Keegan's nagging injuries. For the most part, he didn't look out of place. This is an exceptionally good thing when you are a redshirt freshman flanked by two future NFL draft picks.

It's hard to display an OL's ability in a clip. The four most important things about being an OL are consistency, IDing your block, consistency, and consistency. But I've been doing this a minute and guys with El-Hadi's processing ability early in their careers leap out as good prospects down the road. I am always looking for guys who can take a mid-play curveball and deal with it, as El-Hadi does here on a pull:

LG #58

That defensive end is crashing inside; El-Hadi's able to find that and redirect to the point where he doesn't just harass the DE but eliminates him. This is football 301 stuff and was not exactly consistent, as detailed after Maryland:

I didn't even mind some of those –2s. El-Hadi's was the way it usually happens for him. It's when he gets something unusual. He's not just brain-farting; like McCarthy he's a young player who hasn't seen everything in a live-fire situation yet. Here Maryland gets an RPS+ for jumping Michigan's quasi-goal line package with a corner blitz. El-Hadi isn't expecting a CB in the backfield and runs by him:

 

LG #58

Maryland is exchanging here, but El-Hadi wants to get to that linebacker and Anthony is laser focused on the CB. This can work if they swap…

…and I bet you a dollar that this shows up in a game down the line and they make this swap on a corner blitz. It might not go amazingly since you're asking a WR to block a linebacker, but it won't be a TFL.

But it is notable that El-Hadi's issues here were on curveballs. There was a near-total lack of basic errors, and later in the season he was making the tougher reads with more consistency. We've come a long way from the time when a senior Kyle Kalis was letting guys through scot-free for no apparent reason. After the Nebraska paving I suggested El-Hadi was probably starting for most teams in the conference:

El-Hadi is a B+ Big Ten guard, probably. Maybe he gets exposed against better competition but mentally he's there and he really does not feel much different than Keegan, and this is his fourth game with a lot of playing time.

This may have been optimistic given how damp and flat the Cornhuskers were after that game, but it's genuinely possible that he's starting for every Big Ten team not named Ohio State in 2023.

Physically, El-Hadi seemed more or less on par with Keegan for most of his tenure on the field.

RG #58

At least, until he got a serious final exam against Illinois. There he was somewhat exposed as Not Trevor Keegan:

This was a bridge too far for Michigan's backup OL. El-Hadi and Barnhart both had dubious days. Here they both get whacked on a one yard run:

Michigan LG #58

El-Hadi's streak of not screwing things up came to an abrupt end on the first drive, when he fired out on a rusher who happened to be stunting and exposed McCarthy to an unblocked rusher:

Michigan LG #58

He struggled to execute in the much more difficult environment Illinois presents you with, repeatedly making presnap assumptions that turned out to be bad and not adjusting post-snap.

Two caveats, though. One is that the guy dump-trucking El-Hadi in the first clip is Jer'Zhan Newton, who's a lock to go in the first round of the upcoming NFL draft. The second is that El-Hadi scraped above zero in our grading of that game, in part because even against the Illini he had his moments:

LG #58

That's against Calvin Avery, a fifth year senior who checked in at 345 at the NFL combine.

Scraping above zero is not what we want from our OL, who generally need to have a 2:1 ratio of negatives to positives for Michigan to have a good day on the ground. Neither is it abject failure, and that's a great base to go on. If El-Hadi was stepping into the starting lineup this year I'd be projecting him to be solid-to-good with plenty of upside. As a backup? Sheesh.

Atteberry looks like bear. Plays like bear? [Fuller]

There's no one who's seen meaningful playing time beyond El-Hadi. REECE ATTEBERRY [recruiting profile] appears to have separated himself from chasers; he gets mention with second-stringers like El-Hadi and Persi pretty consistently. He only got in for three games, so I don't have anything not from his profile, but Seth charted him a bit in 2021 (+3 –3 = +0 but 14/15 in pass pro) and found one of them recognition things we like so much around here:

Atteberry is yet another guy who played center in high school (albeit for just his junior year), which is a trend I love for Michigan's OL. He got pushed out to guard because Michigan has centers coming out their ears, but it's pretty likely that the recognition above is no accident and that it's a big part of his game. He'll be in the proverbial mix to start next year.

He's also been spotted practicing on defense, which is a thing Harbaugh will occasionally do with guys just in case. A brief aside is provided in the DTs post. It could happen.

The depth chart rounds out with… ye gods, a ton of guys. DOMINICK GUIDICE [recruiting profile], who was a long-shot recruit (#1766 on the composite) initially slated for the defensive line; he flipped a year into his career. He's been beset by injury and still hasn't generated much press conference or insider talk so this year looks like scout team stuff and hoping for a breakthrough next year. Ditto redshirt freshman CONNOR JONES [recruiting profile].

True freshmen AMIR HERRING [recruiting profile] and NATHAN EFOBI [recruiting profile] are nowhere near the two deep, as God intended but Michigan has rarely achieved in the last 20 years. Herring enrolled early and impressed:

“Amir did really well in the spring,” said Zinter.

“It's great to see a freshman like Amir come in and do what he did in the spring. He still had a few (missed assignments) here and there, but he'll be a great offensive lineman one day.”

In the olden days that meant that guy was one injury from starting. These days it means he's… something like eight injuries away from the field. Please do not say "I'm saying there's a chance" in response to this.

CENTER: FINALLY, A MICHIGANDER NAMED NUGENT YOU CAN ADMIRE

RATING: 4.5

[Stanford University]

Checked something off the ol' bucket list (a term which was popularized by the 2007 movie Bucket List and did not exist prior to the film's release) this year:

David Shaw just resigned, someone see if there's a Stanford lineman their Harbaugh guys can stand https://t.co/Ht1qjkFKlf

— mgoblog (@mgoblog) November 27, 2022

I done dang spoke something into being. Michigan duly checked to see if Stanford had anybody worth poaching, and the Cardinal just so happened to have the Pac-12's best center with eligibility left, per PFF. One phone call to DRAKE NUGENT [recruiting profile] later ("It's Jim Har-," said Harbaugh; "I'm in," said Nugent) and Michigan picked off the portal's best center for the second consecutive year.

Nugent isn't quite Olu Oluwatimi. The NFL doesn't seem to have much interest because Nugent is 6'1" and doesn't have freaky long arms to make up for it, and he wasn't a Rimington finalist last year. He's a step or two below that. That said, he's coming off two years of solid-to-very-good PFF grades and when Seth scouted him he didn't see a whole lot of issues arising from Nugent's size:

He has such a strong base of power; once he gets under you you're a goner. ... They loved to run behind him in short situations (or when trying to avoid one) because he moves guys on the downblock, and knows when and how it's time to release.

But the best part of Nugent is his legs never stop moving. Driver who keeps those legs churning and churning until he overpowers you.

This doesn't stop when the game ends, it appears. McCarthy:

We were both out in the spring and we did conditioning during practice and stuff. We're wearing heart rate monitors and stuff. This dude was always in the red no matter what. I don't know what it was: he's got a fifth year that just kicks in.

… When everyone's hurting, he’s got that extra gear where it gets going. I don't know exactly where it comes from. But he's definitely got it in him.

Harbaugh dude. This is an constant theme in offseason chatter about Nugent. He is not right in the head. There is something wrong with him. He is a Football Guy. And apparently he is brutally strong:

“There's one guy that can block (Kenneth Grant) right now, and that's Drake (Nugent),” the source said. “He is just so strong and big.”

In addition to being an ever-churning bulldog person, Nugent checks the various "is Stanford OL" boxes that are even more critical at center, the spot that's usually making the line calls. And his pass protection is more or less on par with what we've come to expect the last few years:

		All Pass Sets				True Pass Sets
Player	Yrs	PA	Pres	Prot%		PA	Pres	Prot%
Patrick Kugler	2017	371	17	95%		156	7	96%
Cesar Ruiz	2018-'19	837	19	98%		310	10	97%
Andrew Vastardis	2020-'21	560	24	96%		250	16	94%
Olu Oluwatimi	2022	389	9	98%		162	7	96%
Drake Nugent	2021-'22	928	23	98%		254	6	98%

There is likely to be some backsliding—Nugent's probably not winning the Rimington—and that'll happen in two ways. One is that Nugent will get shocked back more often; Seth caught him getting blasted and recovering against some solid players, but the "and recovering" is not something that happens every time. If Michigan wants to continue running a bunch of duo it's likely that Nugent's doubles will be less emphatic than Olu's. (Will that matter if he's pairing up with improved versions of Zinter and Keegan? Maybe not.)

Way number two is that Oluwatimi was close to flawless mentally, at least insofar as we can tell from outside the program. Busted line calls were close to nonexistent and he effortlessly dissected how the opponents were trying to trick him. It is unlikely that Nugent will have the offense down quite as cold as Oluwatimi did, but he shouldn't be too far off. The fact that he's coming from a David Shaw Stanford program that inherited a fully Harbaugh-ized offensive approach means there's likely to be a ton of things he already knows and doesn't have to learn. But there's "is very good" and there is "is Oluwatimi." I'm expecting very good.

Others are more optimistic. Athlon projects him as a second-team All American. And Kris Jenkins pointed to the two transfers when asked for guys who are going to break out:

“I could go down the list, but I want to give you all a guy that I think has been under the radar a little bit. I’ll give you two on offense: I definitely think Drake Nugent and AJ Barner are definitely going to be a great combination,” Jenkins said. “The second they got here, they’ve been nothing but hard workers and dedicated to their craft and leaders, leading by example."

This preview projects Nugent is third-team All Big Ten. If he starts. Which he probably will, but, I mean…

BACKUPS

hey uh you know uh I was gonna be your center for two straight years [Fuller]

Redshirt sophomore GREG CRIPPEN [recruiting profile] was being groomed to start this year before David Shaw's retirement dropped Nugent in their lap, and from all accounts inside the program this would have gone just fine. In fact it seems like he was being groomed to start last year before Olu Oluwatimi got dropped in Michigan's lap. He has been sniped by high-academic schools undergoing coaching changes twice in a row. If Mike Elko gets axed from Duke this year and the Blue Devils just happen to have the best center in the country, Greg Crippen is going Full Psyduck.

Because, like, it kind of seems like he's the guy if Michigan stops getting a steady flow of refugee Rimington candidates. Crippen got in six games as a freshman, which is not something you would do unless getting your guy ready was more important than a potential fifth year. Once Olu arrived and locked down the job, Michigan got Crippen his redshirt. He only appeared in the Colorado State game.

As a result we have no on-field updates beyond what Seth collected for last year's preview:

The sum of his charting was +4.5 against Washington and NIU, whence he caught a blitz Graham Glasgow-style:

Crippen also got a Ruiz-style block on two defenders in his first collegiate game.

That's a little bit to go on, and then there is a steady drumbeat from inside the program that suggests Michigan will not be bringing in a transfer center in 2024. Last year Harbaugh said an injury to Oluwatimi would see Crippen enter instead of a reshuffling to bring El-Hadi onto the field. And while this preview has seen fit to anoint Nugent the starter, pretty much everything from inside the program makes it sound like the center battle was nip and tuck. McCarthy:

J.J. McCarthy on the offensive line compared to the last two years:

It’s very hard to compare the last two years because they were so great. But all I'm seeing when I look at that front five — it's front five with the two tackles and then you got Crip and Nugent going after it. … Both of them [Nugent and Greg Crippen] are gonna play, so it's just gonna be a matter of time to see who makes that distance away from each other.

Harbaugh:

“I think you have two starting centers,” Harbaugh said. “You have Drake and you have Crippen. Crippen and Drake. Both are, we think, starting caliber. We even think they’re both All-Big Ten caliber, possibly even All-American caliber.

Crippen spent his last two years of high school as IMG's center, which is the best possible circumstance for a C recruit. (See: Ruiz, Cesar.) You are actually playing the position, the schedule is a bunch of teams with dudes at DT, you're expected to run a modern college offense. I 73% believe that Crippen gave Nugent a battle for the starting job, and when he steps into the starting lineup next year I expect the transition to be Barry-Alvarez-era Wisconsin in its seamlessness.

Either that or Crippen's head explodes when Michigan brings in Mason Cole, somehow. One or the other.

more like Psydon't [Barron]

One side effect of Crippen seeking a redshirt was a fair bit of run for classmate RAHEEM ANDERSON [recruiting profile], who was the #15 IOL prospect in his class and flashed some good things during his time on the field. Mmm, flapjacks:

C #62

Also this is some excellent recognition and oomph on a redirect:

C #62

Anderson also impressed in the spring game, drawing notice from Steve Lorenz, Sam Webb, and Zach Shaw. He's also caught the eye of veterans on the line, who were talking about Anderson like he was neck-and-neck with Crippen when sasked about up-and-comers:

“Greg Crippen and Raheem Anderson,” said Barnhart. “Both of them were battling in the spring to play center and it was great to see both of them take another step in their games and help this offensive line room grow.”

Anderson was the first guy mentioned by Keegan and Zinter when asked the same question, per Webb. And he did a real smart thing last year when Oluwatimi came in:

"Like I said, I was with Olu. We were studying film and I really picked his brain. Even though he was new last year, he was able to pick up the playbook like ‘that’ just with his football knowledge. So, I feel like my knowledge of the game is a big (improvement)."

Anderson, like Crippen, is one of those rare, treasured finds: a center who played center in high school. He was a four year starter at Cass Tech. That, plus two years of seasoning, plus being under Olu Freakin' Oluwatimi's wing… there's a different timeline where Anderson is getting set to start this year and this preview is expecting him to be pretty good. Instead he's set to be the best third-string center in America. I would not be surprised if Anderson gives Atteberry a run for the starting RG spot next year. Atteberry's recent move to DT could be related to Anderson's existence.