[photo: Bryan Fuller.]

The Question:

What are you watching for in the Spring Game? What is there to learn?

The Responses:

David: Brian and Ace did a good job during the Podcast of pointing out some of the main things to watch for on Friday night. Here are some additional battles/guys that will grab my eyes:

No no the one on the right. [Fuller]

Not De'Veon Smith running backs. At this point, we know who Smith is and what he can do. After him, there is quite a race happening. Isaac has been hyped a little, but he was last year, as well. Kareem Walker is a big recruit, but as of a couple weeks ago, he was still with the Maize group. Also, I guess Joe Hewlett has gotten some nice run.
Bobby Henderson at fullback. He's the only returning true fullback. They've moved a couple other guys (Hill and Poggi) back there, but I'm curious to see if Henderson will fend them off and be able to earn PT just because he will be more familiar with the position.

Dymonte Thomas and Tyree Kinnel at safety. Thomas blew up towards the end of 2015 and earned his spot on the field. He's a crazy athlete and a little more practice time could turn him into a dynamic deep safety. Tyree Kinnel is a guy I still wish they would have red-shirted, but he is also a guy to keep an eye on for not only next season but for the future. There's not a whole lot behind these guys. *We've seen Delano Hill before and mostly know what we'll get from him.

The rest of the tight ends. Jake Butt is YAY! There are also some interesting guys after him. Bunting, Wheatley, Jocz, and Gentry are all different kinds of players and each can create his own matchup problem. Seeing Wheatley slip out, Jocz block (ha), and Bunting/Gentry use their size against smaller DBs will be some things to keep an eye on that could get them on the field in the Fall...and very much diversify Michigan's tight end arsenal.

[Hit THE JUMP to find out who the coaches' thought their #3 overall player was at this time last year. Hint: he didn't play.]

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Seth: I didn't get to do a gimmicky top five so TOP FIVE GO

5. Grant Newsome winning at pass pro. I expect the DL to be rampant in fall but right now they're still absent a few tackles. The Ford Field viewers said Michigan was practicing a 4-3 under look that had Winovich, a guy playing offense last year, in the lead at WDE. They also said Newsome was a bit shaky in pass protection versus that wide end. If Newsome's gonna start at LT I'd like to see him dominate that matchup.

4. Drake Harris. The receiver corps is a bit short on dudes until the other freshmen arrive so the one hale wideout who isn't Darboh or less than a year removed from prom ought to be on display. I hope he's teamed with O'Korn since the best versions of both of those guys would be a fun tandem (think Henson and Terrell).

Interesting thing from "Cheetah" personnel.

3. Don Brown's crazy blitzes. I don't think I'll be able to judge the linebackers until the tape, though I'm extremely interested in this rumor of McCray being great. But I've spent the last few weeks deeply immersed in Brown's playbooks and I feel, especially with the really weird stuff all left in the garage till fall, I can recognize a few of the things he's doing well enough to appreciate them. Some guys have the knack for blitzing and it's not related to any other skill; if we find one or two you can bet I'll spend chunks of the next few months studying the plays that feature them.

2. Safeties. One team will have Dymonte Thomas, and every snap of Thomas not doing something crazy or bad-lucky is highly important for convincing my brain to sleep at all this year. And one or both teams will have next year's heirs apparent, for now. Kinnel is one of them. The other? Is…? Umm… Omigod didn't we recruit ANYbody to…

Oh. Phew.

1. Quarterback. Here's Jim Harbaugh on the QB race between the more experienced guy vs. the high-upside Harbaugh recruit who'd been in the system a year:
"Both have really shined this spring. It's been very even."

That was referring of course to Tavita Pritchard and a redshirt freshman Andrew Luck. All through spring of 2009 the coaches played up the competition. Then Luck went 18/25 for 325 yards and 5 TDs in the Spring Game and that was all she wrote. HOT prediction: history repeats itself.

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Adam:

1. ​The quarterbacks, of course. It would be nice to have a starter in the same way that it's nice to have coffee in the morning: could theoretically survive without, but life's a lot better if that's not the case. Speight and O'Korn both checked it down often on Saturday, and though O'Korn's deep ball looked better it'll be nice to see extended game action instead of the sporadic 11-on-11 we saw. I expect the battle for the starting spot to last until fall and I think O'Korn's athleticism eventually pushes him over the top, but it will be nice to see how far we may be from a starter being declared.
O'Korn mentioned during his media availability that he's working on being even more responsible with the ball; where he might have thrown into coverage and let the receiver make a play in practice last season he's now looking for other options. I think he's still searching for equilibrium between gunslinger and the world's dullest robot, Toss to Flat 2000. Enter Speight and Morris; we've seen enough of those two that tangible improvement should be easy to spot if it's on display Friday night.

This photo [by Fuller] is a lock for HTTV.

2. Running backs not named De'Veon. It was really difficult to judge the RBs in Saturday's open practice, and only part of that was because of the bad viewing angle I had. Parallel lines of people turned into cylindrical masses and Drake Johnson would occasionally shoot through a gap or Joe Hewlett would come screaming around the outside. Ty Isaac has gotten a fair amount of praise this spring, and seeing how he looks compared to Johnson and Kareem Walker (who spent most of Saturday devoured by the defensive line in a second-team O-line vs. second-team D-line mismatch) may go a long way toward figuring out how carries are likely to be distributed this fall.

3. Linebackers. I thought Devin Bush Jr. looked really good in the open practice; he scrape exchanged, took on blocks and rocked guys back, and tore into gaps. Harbaugh said that was his best practice of the spring, so I'm looking to see whether last Saturday was the high point of his spring or whether it looks like his level of play has risen after a month of practices. Watching how Gedeon and McCray fare in the one-on-one matchups they draw should give us the information we need to decide whether to spend the summer shuddering through the heat or...I don't know, sweating through the heat is the technical opposite but doesn't get the point across at all so this is a bad comparison and just know if they do well everything's fine.

4. ​The Winovich/Jones experiment. Greg Mattison and Don Brown have both praised Winovich this spring, and though it sounds like he's got some technique work to do he's an End now. We saw the importance of having two guys (or, in 2016 terms, hopefully a Dude and a Guy) at each position last fall and Don Brown reiterated that again in his presser this week. While I'll be watching Winovich, I'll really be focused on Reuben Jones. If Jones looks like a viable option at End then the line likely stays as it appeared Saturday: Taco and (when he gets here) Rashan Gary at Anchor, Wormley and Hurst at Tackle, Mone and Glasgow at Nose, and Winovich and Jones at End. If it looks like Jones isn't ready, perhaps Taco moves to End to rotate with Winovich, which would push Wormley back out to Anchor (née SDE). It's so much more fun to figure out where your Sowers of Havoc fit best than to figure out if you have one at all.

5. ​Jabrill Peppers​. Despite the nominal position switch there really isn't much information likely to be gleaned that can be extrapolated to fall, but he's Jabrill Peppers. I'll tell myself to watch Stribling and Clark and out of nowhere I'll be watching #5 sniff out a screen like my dog sniffs out chicken nuggets. (All hail me, World's Best Dog Owner.) He's just a Dude, man.

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Alex: I guess I'll go in a kind of a different on this one: I wonder how competitive it will be. Last year's only touchdown was a pass from Shane Morris to Jaron Dukes over Dennis Norfleet - the defense dominated all day and the game was pretty boring. Harbaugh's obviously a fanatical competitor, so I wonder how the matchup between Don Brown and Jedd Fisch will go down. I wonder how the two of them composed their rosters for the game -- and, as a potentially key weak point, who got saddled with the most backup linemen. How were the best players on the team divvied up? Who seems to prioritize what? I wonder if there will be more goofy trick plays: Harbaugh brought in Moeller and Carr last year to draw some up. The transcontinental was a fun throwback from the new head coach.

Underestimate the power of BEARD at your own peril. [Upchurch]

Now, I get that all of this is sort of grasping at straws, because it's an exhibition. I get that. But honestly, at this point, we know what to look for - Michigan has a lot of returning starters who are seemingly locked in to their starting spot, two inexperienced and potentially shaky position groups (linebackers and, yes, quarterback (but HARBAUGH, so maybe not)), and a lot back in general. It will be interesting to see how Brown's defense is structured, how new players fit in, etc., but they probably will keep things pretty vanilla.

Oh, and seeing the freshmen is always interesting.

And most importantly, the spring game is completely contextual. The quarterbacks will be going up against a fearsome defensive line corps and pretty good secondaries - and they might not have much time to throw. I'm assuming Michigan will be a better defensive team than offensive team again this year, and that will probably make the spring game another slog. But then again, if O'Korn plays extremely well, I'll become unreasonably excited because spring. Only 5 months until real football...

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Brian: I'm backing off from my podcast assertion that QB was the most important thing to see tomorrow, because I just remembered Jim Harbaugh's quarterback track record. It's gonna be fine, guys. (It's still gonna be O'Korn, too.) I've got a few categories of item.

FEELINGSBALL

So: I hear from Sam Webb that four of the starting offensive linemen ended up on the same team, which happens to be O'Korn's. I want that team to ​move the ball on the ground.​ They'll be going up against some set of defensive linemen that is likely to be at least good and may kick ass, and being able to spring some long runs would be an excellent follow-up to the ground game's performance in the bowl. It would also be a major improvement from last year's spring game, which featured more or less the same personnel. They don't have to dominate--probably can't and at that point I might get worried about the D. I just want to see some creases get hit with authority, for things to feel relatively even.

Do it TW2! Pose! Pose! Pose! Pose! [Fuller]

FWIW, things did feel relatively even at the Ford Field practice, but the increased structure of the spring game should provide an opportunity to confirm or disconfirm that potentially shaky impression.

GUYS AND DUDES​

In personnel-specific business, ​Bryan Mone​ will obviously be a focus. Harbaugh just told Sam Webb that they ranked all their players 1 to 125 before the season last year and Mone was #3(!!!). This invites all sorts of questions--was Glasgow #2?--but mostly I just want to see if Mone can have a spring game like Hurst did last year. (Except, you know, as a nose tackle.) Plugging him into the center of this DL will give Michigan ridiculous depth, knock on wood.

I'll also be highly interested in ​Mike McCray​, who's emerged as the leader in the race to start next to Ben Gedeon. McCray thumped a couple dudes in that Ford Field practice but caught some other blocks; I'll be looking for more data that can calm my linebacker worries.

Ty Wheatley Jr​ will of course be of interest for the same reason: he looked great a week ago and more data in that regard would be most welcome.

SCHEME BUSINESS​

I imagine we're going to see a ton of tight ends and the usual on offense. Don Brown's brand-spanking new defense will be of interest. It looks like they're going to go with lighter LB/DE types at weakside end and leave Charlton at SDE; Jabrill Peppers is now 70% linebacker. What does that look like? How does Brown compensate for the fact that Peppers taking on an OL block goes one way? How much blitzing do they actually do? How much extra pressure do the safeties absorb?

That blitzing thing, by the way, will be easier than usual to evaluate since everyone's live. Yeah buddy.

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Ace: I think we might literally be out of players to discuss.

Seth: /giphy Wyatt Shallman wallaby

Seth: Nice one giphy.

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Ace: Never mind, I take it back. There’s one major position battle that hasn’t been mentioned here that we brought up on the podcast. Channing Stribling has apparently surpassed Jeremy Clark to grab the starting corner job across from Jourdan Lewis, which is both surprising and an encouraging sign of depth since Clark was a quality starter last year.

Stribling is getting talked up quite a bit by the coaches, but some of his old issues were still apparent in the open practice. He’s generally been solid in his Michigan career with occasional lapses that result in big plays—the lapses have kept him from playing a bigger role. This is a lapse.

[Eric Upchurch]

Clark didn’t get beaten that badly more than once or twice last season unless you want to include Mitch Leidner’s accidental creation of the back-shoulder corner route. I’ll be very curious to see how Stribling and Clark compare tomorrow night; Clark seemed poised for a big year, so if Stribling has really surpassed him, that should be a good sign.