I haven't done a mailbag since January, so it was about time to take questions from all you fine people. I put a post up on the board late last week soliciting questions and then spent the weekend answering them. There were a lot of good ones and some of the responses got really long, so I decided to break this summer mailbag into two pieces, one today and one tomorrow, answering as many questions as I can.  

 

We’ve been spoiled with excellent and seasoned kicking and punting for a while now.  What can reasonably be considered “success” in kicking and punting this year? (-milk-n-steak) 

This was the first and most up-voted comment in the thread on the board, so people clearly have a clamoring for special teams talk. Jake Moody and Brad Robbins are out the door, making things very interesting on special teams this fall. As we stand right now, Tommy Doman is the likely punter and Louisville transfer James Turner is the likely kicker, though Adam Samaha could challenge Turner in fall camp. We all know that punting/kicking will very likely be worse this year, but how much worse should the reasonable goal be?. 

Part of the equation with this position is how much specialist play hinges on high leverage moments. Take for example Noah Ruggles, one of the nation's best kickers for several years in a row but who missed the kick that would've put Ohio State over Georgia and thus (likely) handed them a national title. Would anyone in Buckeye-land say that kicking was a "success" last year after that? You can say the same thing with Michigan's 2015 punting, which was very good in the macro view but because of [REDACTED], can you say it was a "success"? 

With all that in mind, I think "success" for kicking is near-perfect precision on FGs inside 40 and extra points. That's been Turner's speciality at Louisville and those are the sort of kicks you expect college kickers to make. PATs in particular have been so automatic for Michigan the last few years it's almost hard to remember Quinn Nordin and his knack for shanking them at the worst possible moments. If Turner (or Samaha) is 1) dead-on on those makeable kicks, 2) is somewhere around the national average on 40+, and 3) doesn't cost Michigan a game with a high leverage miss, that's a comprehensive success for me. 

As for punting, we already got a bit of a glimpse into a less robust punting game after Brad Robbins'(apparent) injury last season, when his play declined considerably late in the year. I wouldn't say he was an outright liability at that point, but it was becoming a worryspot. Thus, there's an obvious place to put the peg for "success" with Tommy Doman: he doesn't have to be as good as healthy Brad Robbins, but needs to be better than injured Brad Robbins. Doman doesn't have to be a Bryce Baringer rocket launcher, but if his punts have the hangtime to limit big returns and have enough distance to be worth it from a field position standpoint (+no high leverage shanks), that's "success" for me. In other words, kicking/punting success doesn't include being a top five specialist tandem again, but they need to be somewhat above average and *consistent* to qualify. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: How real is PSU? Recruiting???? 2024????]

 

[Bryan Fuller]

As the opponent scout guy at MGo do you think Drew Allar is going to be really good this year (All BIG 2nd team at least), and if so (hot take question here) is our game in Happy Valley more likely to determine the Division Champ than THE Game? (-MgofanNC)

I liked this question because Penn State has been getting a remarkable amount of hype from the national publications and projection systems, typically somewhere between 5th and 8th nationally in the pre-season rankings I've seen and with some analysts calling this Franklin's best team. As a person who watched a lot of PSU last season and wrote the preview on them for HTTV, I'm extremely confused where this is coming from. Not that Penn Sate is going to be a bad team, but I do struggle to see where the overwhelming praise and lofty titles are coming from given some of the attrition and uncertainty. Yes PSU went 11-2 last season but they lost some major pieces on defense and their four year QB is out the door, with turnover at receiver too. I like the Nittany Lions; I'm not sure I love them. 

Allar is the key to the puzzle for me and I think there are decently wide bands of uncertainty on him. When I was writing the PSU preview for HTTV I went and watched a bunch of games Allar appeared in last year and charted them, HenneChart style. What I saw was a pretty mixed bag. He's got a good arm, a big frame, and a Stafford/Mahomes-like range of arm angles, plus mobility and a 5* pedigree. Unfortunately, the accuracy is a major limiting factor. He wasn't terribly accurate in HS (59% completion as a senior), wasn't super accurate in the games I charted, and the spring game tape wasn't any better. My expectation as a result for his first year as a starter is a rollercoaster of moments, flashes of brilliance mixed with a couple rough games where he's not on the mark at all. 

What does that sound like? Sean Clifford. I think there's a decent chance Allar could be refined into something better than Clifford a couple years down the line, but right off the bat I don't think Allar is going to be accurate enough to kick PSU into a higher gear on his own. And considering that Franklin's best team to this point had Trace McSorley at his peak calling the shots, I don't expect (nor do I think it's reasonable to expect) Allar to be there yet, which is why I have a hard time following the PSU hype. Their RBs are awesome, yes, but the offensive line is still wobbly outside Olu Fashanu. The WRs will probably be fine, but they are a mostly new cast of characters. The defense loses some pieces but still has talent.

I don't know. Overall, when I look at PSU I mostly see the status quo. It's hard for me to see this as some peak of the Franklin era given what I've seen from Allar to this point. Maybe when he's an upperclassman, but until he shows me something I haven't seen yet, I don't think the Nittanys are in the same tier as Michigan and OSU in the East. But they're clearly the third best team in the conference. In other words, nothing ever changes with Franklin. 

 

Michigan will need Nazar and Casey to step up [Bill Rapai]

What is the hockey team's ceiling now that Fantilli is gone to Columbus? (-fritZ)

This is such a tough one because college hockey's postseason tournament is ridiculous. Realistically, if you get in and are not from the Atlantic Hockey conference, you have a >5% chance of winning it all. I expect Michigan to make the tournament next year so therefore, their ceiling is winning it all. But let's step away from that crazily-designed tournament for a second and talk about how the team shapes up within the conference and how it compares to last season. 

Michigan isn't losing an overwhelming volume of guys, but it's hard to replace your 1st line center and your #1 defenseman, especially when both were as good as Fantilli and Luke Hughes were. Michigan is going to miss Hughes' abilities in transition and the way he drives offense. I expect the drop-off won't be too terrible, because Seamus Casey and Ethan Edwards are capable in that regard, but they aren't quite Luke Hughes. If Naurato brings in Artyom Levshunov, that would help to smooth out my concerns further in that regard. The defensive depth and perhaps play in the defensive zone will probably be better with this upcoming team, I should note. 

The Fantilli loss is a much tougher question. There is no obvious replacement, other than a healthy Frank Nazar III stepping up and perhaps landing someone out of the portal (who, though?). It's a large void, there's no way around that, and for Michigan it will be about mitigating it and trying to recreate Fantilli in the aggregate. The combination of losing Fantilli and Hughes means the team will likely take a step back as a whole, but the second year of Naurato's systems + a more veteran roster and less reliance on freshmen could provide different benefits. I'd expect the team to be a bit stronger out of the gate and the amount of talented players on the roster is still very high for NCAA Hockey standards.

Goaltending is the major X-Factor and it's hard to figure that out until we see Barczewski play in the B1G. But if we assume average goaltending, I think Michigan is a top 10 team. Probably worse than last year, which was top five by the season's end, but they should be in the upper tier of the B1G with a chance to make noise in the NCAAs. Still good, just lower expectations than the "likely pre-season #1" status they'd have held if Fantilli came back. 

 

[Wolverine Digest]

A few weeks ago we were all giddy with our #1 overall class and finally seeing benefit from our recent on-field success. How do you feel things have played out since that time relative to expectations? How do you feel about the class overall and how it will finish up? Do you think this is a truly elite class or more of a "on the good side of what is typical? (-AC1997)

I wanted to include a recruiting question, because while I've been doing Hellos, I haven't talked about the class broadly since before this little stretch where Michigan has been losing quite a few recruiting battles. Since late June, Deyvid Palepale, Michael Uini, Bryce West, Jordan Shipp, and Justin Scott all picked teams besides Michigan, so it's worthwhile to check back in. My overarching take on this last period is that this 2024 recruiting class is providing us a clearer image of the state of Michigan Football recruiting in the NIL era than what we got last cycle, which was a cluttered mess on many fronts. 

This year with a more concrete coaching staff, no turnover among coordinators, less head coach flirting with NFL, and another year of on-field success to tout, we've been able to see that in this era of NIL, Michigan is plenty capable of reeling in the legit 4*s ranked 100-300 in the composite that they did in the pre-NIL days under Harbaugh. Notably, the players ranked in that range they signed from 2019-21 have comprised the meat of their B1G Championship teams the last two seasons. Those players are very important and Michigan needs to be able to land them to maintain this level of play on the field, so getting gobs of them in 2024 is a great sign. 

The #1 recruiting class ranking that the team held was a testament to how early Michigan was doing a lot of its recruiting. Michigan went on a tear in the spring that has continued into the summer, scooping up recruits far quicker than any other school. Even now, with 25 (or 26, depending on how you classify Ludwig) commitments, Michigan is waaaaay ahead of the pack. Only Georgia in the top 10 has the same number of commitments, the next closest being PSU at 22, followed by ND/Oregon at 20. Michigan this cycle is the student who does the project the day it's assigned, even though the due date is multiple weeks in the future. There are benefits to it, allowing the staff to target big fish over the final few months and get a head-start on 2025, but that earliness was why Michigan built up such a high ranking. 

[247Sports]

It was never going to last, because they had few top 50 guys in the class, and when those players started to commit to the usual suspects, Michigan was going to fall some and that's what has happened. They've been excellent at finishing 2nd for players in that range, but need to find a way to win a couple of those battles. It's been disappointing to watch the Wolverines be the bridesmaid over and over again but I can't say it's contrary to my expectations. In fact, I largely expected exactly this. I am no NIL expert but it does seem like there's some missing element here that is needed to get Michigan over the top with some of these kids, be it a more friendly package of $$ up front, an expanded recruiting department, or one more ace recruiter on staff. 

My feeling on the class overall is that it will likely end up in that 5-10 range that the 2019 class was in and that's fine with me considering that the 2019 group produced Dax, Mazi, Hinton, Cornelius Johnson, Keegan, Barnhart/Trente, Ojabo, Morris, DJ Turner, Erick All, Charbonnet, and Sainristil. I love the haul at OL, EDGE, RB, QB in this class and while the DB group does need some work the rest of the way, it's hard not to like this group of players. Does that qualify as an elite class? I don't know, probably not in a national context, but we've been able to see that given this coaching staff's superior scouting and player development ability, they can get top three national production out of a class ranked in the 5-10 range. I would love to be able to get a couple 5*s to make this class incredible, and the staff should focus on making that possible moving forward, but as it stands now, there's still plenty of reason to be happy. 

 

[Bryan Fuller]

This year Michigan is in position to get to the super bowl. Next year, however, we are setup for quite a step down with how much quality attrition we will have at important positions. Barring picking up a huge piece or 2 from the transfer market, what can we expect next year as a win total?  (I think 7/8).

It's never too early to start thinking about the future, so let's look at it. Very likely (or guaranteed) gone after this season on offense are Blake Corum, Donovan Edwards, Cornelius Johnson, La'Darius Henderson, Trevor Keegan, and Zak Zinter. JJ McCarthy leaving would be a matter of whether he can play himself into the first round this year (most Michigan fans would unfortunately like that to be the case for the sake of on-field team success). Roman Wilson would have a fifth year available, while Trente Jones, Karsen Barnhart, and Drake Nugent all technically have sixth years available due to redshirting in 2019 + the 2020 COVID-shirt. They could come back, but it could also be a Gemon Green "I'm ready to move on" sort of thing, which is understandable when you've been in school that long. There's a very real scenario where the only returning starters on offense next year could be Colston Loveland at TE and Tyler Morris at WR. 

On defense it's a decent bit prettier. Kris Jenkins will definitely be out the door, along with Josh Wallace, Mike Sainristil, and Michael Barrett. Makari Paige will have eligibility remaining but could move on, while Rod Moore has already been hinting at the possibility that he's off to the NFL after the season. However, beyond that group, a lot more is up in the air. None of Braiden McGregor, Josaiah Stewart, and Jaylen Harrell have to leave, while Junior Colson is in that range where he could play himself into the NFL, but it depends on the season. Unlike the offense there are several potential impact pieces that can't leave, Mason Graham and Will Johnson most notably, but I have a hunch Derrick Moore and Ernest Hausmann may be in that category by the end of the season. 

So looking at the 2024 team, the defense definitely seems ahead of the offense. Even if Colston leaves, a front seven of Benny/Graham/Grant at DT, Moore/McGregor(?)/someone else at EDGE, and Hausmann/Rolder at LB is a nice start before you add in Will Johnson at corner with a more experienced Jyaire Hill or Amorion Walker opposite him. Your safety/nickel losses can be filled by the likes of Keon Sabb, Zeke Berry, and others. I think that defense should still be very good.

[Patrick Barron]

The offense on the other hand will be interesting. Skill position talent should still be fine, they're well stocked at RB in particular. QB is the huge question, same with OL. We know Michigan has elite depth at OL this season, but fast forward to 2024 and the guys you're comfortable with being "depth" now will suddenly all be starting. I don't think it's going to be a throwback to a Hoke OL or anything, but there will probably be growing pains, again absent big transfers. I expect that if JJ leaves, Michigan will target a transfer QB to come in and provide a high floor alongside Jadyn Davis. 

The schedule is a fascinating one, likely wins at home against Fresno, Arkansas State, Maryland, and MSU, and then Rutgers on the road. @Illinois and vs. Minnesota are likely wins but not 100% until we know what both teams' rosters look like. Then there's the class of teams who might be good or might not be, vs. Texas, vs. UCLA, vs. Wisconsin, followed by the two tough road games @USC/@OSU.

Looking at this schedule, it definitely helps Michigan to have those question mark games at home... your toughest road game besides USC/OSU is Illinois, which is pretty doable. Looking at all the evidence way too far out, I think ~9 wins is a decent guess? Five must-wins, two likely wins, three 66% win games all at home, and two games where you're probably an underdog? A high degree of variability with so many unknown factors, but it will probably be a rebuilding year of sorts. Though year one of the 12-team playoff is a great time to have your re-tooling year, where 9-3 against a tough schedule may be enough for the #12 ranking. 

 

[ECU Athletics]

We open with East Carolina, a team that went 8-5 last year, including a 1 point loss to NC State. They seem like a notch above a cupcake opponent. How much should we fear the Pirates in our opener? (-Brandon Swatson)

I don't think there's any major cause for concern with ECU, but yeah, they are a real team. If you're in a competitive game with them, it's not a good sign, but this matchup also isn't as ridiculously lopsided as UNLV or Bowling Green (or any of the 2022 non-con games) figure to be. I won't go too deep into any preview of ECU, because you can read Seth's preview of them in HTTV instead, but they are dealing with heavy roster turnover after last season, which was supposed to be a pinnacle of the program. Going 8-5 was a bit of a disappointment for the Pirates and now 2023 figures to be a bit of a reloading year after attrition through graduation and the portal. 

They have a talented team for a Gof5 squad, a legit 4* QB with multiple years in the program taking over as the starter being one of the main developments to follow. ECU returns some starters along the OL, but did take a couple big hits through the portal and are turning to new names at the skill positions, while the defense is in for a rebuild as well. Bill Connelly has ECU at 89th in his SP+ preseason projections, which is middle of the road for Gof5 and that feels right. ECU should be able to make it to a bowl game, but this isn't the all-in sort of season they had last year. In some ways it feels like the 2019 opener against MTSU, which was also a mid-major coming off an 8-win season but was needing to do a bit of retooling. ECU is decent enough to make it interesting if Michigan puts together a disgraceful showing, but the point spread in the 30s feels apt considering Michigan is a top three(ish) team in college football and is at home. I wouldn't be dreading a repeat of The Horror. 

 

What, if any, value is there to subscribing to B1G+?  Are there full games available for rewatch? (-s1105616)

This was a bit of an unusual question, but I will answer it as someone who has BTN+ through work. For the most part, the main reason to subscribe to BTN+ is if you are interested in watching non-revenue sports, be it everything from hockey to rowing. If you are not interested in non-revs, I don't think there's a lot of value in subscribing. There are full-game replays of football available through the the B1G in 60 versions of games and also the BTN Classic Games, but it's not necessarily a comprehensive catalogue. Also, you can see a lot of those on YouTube for free anyway if you look hard enough. There's not enough that BTN+ offers to people who are only football/men's basketball fans to make it worth it to me. But of course if you love non-revenues, it's damn near essential, streaming most games live and with full-length replays of dozens of games that you won't be able to find anywhere else. So for me it just comes down to what sports you're interested in. 

 

[David Wilcomes]

Who are 3 guys on offense and 3 guys on defense who you think will make a big jump in playing time and production? (-nmumike)

Going to limit the answer here to players who were on the roster last year, just to make it fair (so no transfer portal players). With that in mind, on offense it's a bit difficult considering so much of that side of the ball is either returning starters or transfers, but I'll list Tyler Morris, Matthew Hibner, and Peyton O'Leary, all pretty easy answers. Morris is obvious as a presumed starter in the slot, while the other two are reality of the depth chart answers. There will be snaps for a third tight end throughout the season and Hibner, as a fourth-year player, should be ready to seize them. Likewise at WR there will be snaps for an outside WR beyond Cornelius Johnson and Roman Wilson. Darrius Clemons would be the other logical answer, but we've heard more about O'Leary, so I went with him. 

Defensively it's a bit more wide open but my first answer is Derrick Moore. Seems a tad obvious, but a very talented player who showed flashes as a true freshman and now should benefit from the sizable bump you get in your second season on the defensive line. After Moore, I fully expect Kenneth Grant to take a step forward for similar reasons, entering into the rotation at DT and may play more than some are anticipating. To round it out, the third obvious answer is Ja'Den McBurrows, since he's seldom gotten on the field to this point and now could very well be in line for a real role (Amorion Walker is the other answer here). This question was a bit easy, since the 2023 Michigan team has so few moving pieces and little uncertainty, but those are the answers I'm going with. Doing this question next summer for the 2024 team will be much more intriguing.