Hello, fan of an NFL team. MGoBlog excruciatingly scouts every Michigan play, and scores them to inform our coverage. Since mi atleta es su atleta now, here we share what we're sharing.

Quickly: Brainy, hard-working leader of the offensive line who made his mark in one season at Michigan as a mauling center who tossed blockers aside and centered the best OL in college football in spite of limited athleticism. 

Draft Projection: Oluwatimi right now seems to project towards the back-end of the draft overall. He's firmly a Day 3 prospect according to many draft boards, based largely on perceived low upside, connected to his less-than-ideal athleticism for an NFL center. Moreover, Oluwatimi is exclusively a center, with very little guard experience, so teams are likely ranking him lower on their boards than someone who seems more suited to fill in at multiple IOL positions. The lack of versatility hurts Oluwatimi in particular as someone who scouts do not project as a starter... if you're going to be a backup, it helps to be a backup with the ability to plug in multiple places.

NFL Comp: As I've done for my other write-ups, I'm offering up comps I saw while collecting material for the "what others are saying" section. For Oluwatimi those include Matt Paradis and Ted Karris. 

What's his story: Oluwatimi was born to Nigerian parents living in the DC metro area, playing HS football at multiple schools, eventually landing at powerhouse DeMatha Catholic. Despite playing with notable future stars at DeMatha including Chase Young, Oluwatimi was not seen as much of anything at the NCAA level, a meager two-star recruit. He wasn't on Michigan's radar, or anyone in the P5 for that matter, choosing to enroll at Air Force but after one season, decided that the military lifestyle wasn't his thing. He transferred back to the DMV area and finally had interest from a P5 school, Bronco Mendenhall's UVA Cavaliers, originally as a walk-on. 

Oluwatimi would end up being a multi-year starter with the Cavaliers, being incredibly decorated as a senior at UVA, All-America honors and a finalist for the Rimington Trophy for the nation's best center. With Mendenhall retiring after the 2021 season, Oluwatimi put his name in the transfer portal and Michigan zeroed in on him as a plug-and-play stopgap. The Wolverines were set to lose veteran center Andrew Vastardis to graduation and felt that the next wave of young centers on the depth chart were a bit green and not ideal to start yet. Oluwatimi, bringing one year of eligibility and a sterling track record, was the perfect player to add to the roster. It also made sense for Oluwatimi, as he was coming from a pass-heavy program in Virginia and wanted to go to a run-heavy team that could help him put a bunch of run-blocking clips on tape for the NFL Draft. He committed to Michigan just after Christmas 2021 and hype began building almost instantly. 

By spring practice 2022, there was buzz that Oluwatimi was already a leader and arguably the best offensive lineman on the OL, hefty praise considering the reigning Joe Moore line had three starters returning. The spring game was a tantalizing look at this and then once the season began, we learned that the offseason hype was not an ounce of hyperbole: Oluwatimi was actually that good. The combination of Oluwatimi and right guard Zak Zinter was the crux of Michigan's vaunted rushing offense, using those two maulers to combo a defensive tackle and open a hole so large that a Mack truck could drive through. Oluwatimi's grades at the center position were phenomenal on our end, harkening back to Michigan center Cesar Ruiz (2017-19), and fittingly Oluwatimi was crowned the Rimington Trophy winner in 2022, Michigan's third winner of the award. 

Positives: Incredibly smart center who has years of experience at the position, snaps the ball well, sets the line calls and reads the play well, and has shown off strong run and pass blocking ability at the NCAA level. 

Negatives: Lacks desired athleticism for an NFL center and may be limited in his positional versatility having played exclusively center in college. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: What others say, grading, video, conclusion]

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What others say: PFF graded Olu Oluwatimi as the 8th best center in the country this season but let's just say that this site and PFF are NOT on good terms when it comes to offensive line grading. We firmly believe that that site drastically undersold the prowess of Oluwatimi as well as the whole Michigan offensive line. The Athletic's Dane Brugler wrote about Oluwatimi in his draft guide ($) and gave him a 5th round grade. Here's a snippet: 

STRENGTHS: Outstanding processor and recall ... urgent out of his stance with adequate short-area quickness to cut off rush lanes ... has the makeup necessary to get every ounce of talent out of his body ... Michigan coaches say he was one of the best workers in the program

WEAKNESSES: Unimpressive build with smaller hands ... plays with lackluster power and doesn’t displace defenders at contact ... lack of lateral quickness will make it tougher for him to consistently execute reach blocks ...  doesn’t have functional playing experience at other positions in college and viewed as a “center only” by NFL scouts

Pro Football Network has their own scouting report of Oluwatimi up, with bullet pointed strengths and weaknesses and I'll share a few of them: 

Strengths

• Assignment-sound blocker who has great awareness of attack angles
• Utilizes great functional power, slabbing opponents with heavy hands and torque
• Active and alert as a help blocker, and can easily gather defenders stunting across-face

Areas for Improvement

• Non-elite athlete who lacks overwhelming explosiveness and recovery capacity
• With average length, raw power and displacement capacity aren’t quite elite
• Plays tall in space and as a help blocker, and isn’t always able to acquire leverage

Like Luke Schoonmaker, Oluwatimi's age (24) is also cited as a bit of a downside. In general, internet scouts seem to see Oluwatimi as a cerebral, high intangibles guy who can definitely play the position well at the NCAA level, but athletic limitations have constrained him to a mid-to-late-round grade type of player. 

CAREER CHARTING BY GAME

The following numbers are based on the 2020-22 charting in Upon Further Review. For runs, one point is roughly equivalent to an action that affected the play by 5 yards, i.e. zero points are awarded for simply filling an assignment. In pass protection offensive linemen only get negative points for allowing successful rushes: –1 if their breakdown gave the QB a chance to escape it (or if fault was shared), –2 if it didn't, and the rare –3 goes out when he offered no resistance. Protection% is dropback snaps minus total pass pro negatives over opportunities.

2022 Opponent	Pos	Run+	Run-	Total	Pass Pro	Notes
Colorado St.	C	9.5	0.5	+9	--	Ok, transition made
Hawaii	C	7	1	+6	--	Block of the year candidate on the end around.
UConn	C	6.5	1	+5.5	-1	Moving people on doubles.
Maryland	C	7.5	2.5	+5	--	Somewhat de-emphasized until late when it was mashin' time.
Iowa	C	7.5	1.5	+6	-2	DTs didn't make tackle attempts, mostly.
Indiana	C	7.5	3.5	+4	--	One pretty bad whiff.
Penn State	C	16.5	1.5	+14.5	--	Aaargh have three more years of eligibility
Michigan State	C	11	4.5	+6.5	-1	Couple of false starts, when blocking A+.
Rutgers	C	13	4	+9	--	Couple of humdingers.
Nebraska	C	11.5		+11.5	-2	No negs! Rimington this man.
Illinois	C	3.5	5	-1.5	-1	Not a whole lot of opportunities for positives as most runs couldn't get to the point where I'd judge his block, and then he got decked a couple times.
Ohio State	C	6	2	+4	-1	Kind of a nonfactor until he was crucial on two TDs.

We were massive fans! His game against Penn State in particular was an all-timer against a very good opponent. 

Video of All Varieties: How about a Block of the Year candidate?: 

Sell a downblock, then chuck that guy past you, then cut off another linebacker. And when you've clearly won against your second block of the play, throw your hands up to make sure there's no holding call.

A rather routine Olu play from the non-con: 

Here's Olu out in space to provide a cutback lane for Corum: 

Workin' on a double with Trevor Keegan: 

Throttling a DT: 

How about putting a DT on his ass instead?: 

Pass blocking tape from UVA is also needed. Here he is handling a stunt: 

The rare Olu negative just to have a bit of fair representation: 

But of course we have to end with the block that broke a million buckeye hearts: 

Summary and Projection: Now look, I'm not an NFL Draft expert, I watch and scout college football based on how they will do in college football games, not how they will translate to the NFL. That is also the case for our site and our grading. What I can say from that perspective is that Oluwatimi graded as well as any center this site has seen in recent times, right up there with Cesar Ruiz, who was a 1st round pick. The disparity in draft slots will primarily be due to age (Oluwatimi has been in college a long time, Ruiz was three and done) and athletic upside (Oluwatimi did not test well, Ruiz was an animal athletically), but in terms of their play on the college football field, it was damn close. Oluwatimi was that good, the lynchpin in the middle of the Michigan offensive line this season. 

I can't speak highly enough about how smart Oluwatimi is as a player. He transferred from Virginia to Michigan, almost night and day in terms of the sort of offense they were running and made the transition seamlessly. By the time he got to campus we were hearing stuff like "he's a grown ass MAN" and when the team took the field in the fall, you never would have believed that this guy was new to the program. There were no transition costs, he worked next to Zinter and Keegan in perfect harmony, it was like he'd been doing it for years. The intangibles check out, hard working, a leader, and a coach's favorite. 

All of this is a way of saying that wherever he goes in the NFL, be it being drafted this weekend or signed as a UDFA, I wouldn't bet against him. Based on what the draft scouts are saying, there are things he lacks and that may end up doing him in. Perhaps it's even likely. But if I was betting on one late round/UDFA type center to make it big in the NFL, I'd pick the guy who no one wanted out of HS and found his way through three different programs to emerge as the country's best collegiate center on the best OL in America. He outworked and out-thought so many other competitors to get this far. The dude rocked. It's most likely that he sticks around in the league as a backup IOL and a rotational center for a few years and then finds employment elsewhere in the world, but as he leaves us now, it wouldn't shock me if he outworked and out-thought the field one more time at the next level.