Michigan's most irreplaceable player is apparently De'Veon Smith
http://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/the-16-most-irreplaceabl…
Ben Kercheval (who?) over at CBS Sports posted a piece yessterday about the 16 most irreplaceable players in college football right now. #16 (which, why he didn't just go with 15 is beyond me) on the list is Michigan's De'Veon Smith. Granted, the stated premise of the article is not to list the best players, but the foundational players for a team that would most greatly affect their team should they for some reason not be able to play next season. Still, I found Smith to be a profound choice.
Yes, he's our best back. The coaching staff showed their hand a bit on Smith during the spring game, looping him in with other surefire starters and stars. Still, I feel like we're deep enough with experienced RBs to be able to fill the gap should Smith not be available. Between Isaac and Johnson, I feel confident we'd be okay at that position and our offense, though it'd look a little different maybe, wouldn't suffer much.
As far as who IS our most irreplaceable player, the name that comes to mind for me is Jourdan Lewis. Our depth at CB is not comparable to our depth at RB, and Smith is no Lewis in regards to greatness. Losing Lewis would certainly be a huge blow that would radically affect our defense. We might have to slide Peppers over into coverage (though I would imagine Stribling would take the edge and Peppers would lean closer to the inside), which would have an adverse effect on our LB depth as well. Aside from Peppers just not being as good in coverage as he is in roaming the field destroying people and blowing up screens, taking him out of the nickel role he played last year or the LB role Brown plans to use him in this year would shift our entire defense and leave us even more thin at our thinest spot.
For those reasons, I think you could make an argument for Peppers as well. But I think it'd be worse having to move him away from the middle of the field and more off to the side in coverage in addition to losing the best cover corner in the game. I'd rather have half the field locked down with Lewis and be thin at LB than have half the field locked down to a lesser extent with a player who is still growing in his coverage abilities and STILL be thin at LB.
So, who do you think is our most irreplaceable player? Did he get it right with Smith? Is it Lewis or Peppers? Or someone else?
FWIW, the top five from the article is 5. J.T. Barrett, 4. Leonard Fournette, 3. Deshaun Watson, 2. Baker Mayfield and 1. Christian McCaffrey, which I think is a pretty accurate top five. Also, I like the fact that we're the first team on this list. Shows that we have stars but also have depth and aren't reliant on one player too much.
A young lad named Peppers certainly does.
Write poorly researched list -> include a name player from each of CFB's top programs -> collect clicks -> Profit.
Who seems to want to kill every mutha trying to tackle him.
Agree that it's Lewis by a mile, but there is definitely an argument for Smith as he is the quintessential "Harbaugh" back and seems to get consistent yards, a gift the others do not yet seem to share.
I like Deveon a lot as a back, but there's no legitimate argument that he's the most irreplaceable player on our team. Right behind him are Ty Isaac and Drake Johnson who should both be plenty servicable. Losing Jourdan Lewis, Mason Cole, or Jabrill Peppers would be much, much bigger blows. I'd include Chris Wormley and Ryan Glasgow in there too if our D line weren't so deep.
... reminds me of this clip.
Perhaps inartfully stated but it just means I'm willing to listen to the reasoning without laughing the person making the argument out of the room.
That whole crew at TNT is awesome, and they play so well off eachother. I love when Shaq make fun of Chuck being fat, with absolutely no sense of self awareness that he is just as obese....or perhaps thats part of the interplay.
They really seem to have fun together, and it's great when they take shots at Reggie Miller from afar...as Miller takes himself much more seriously and gets upset when they make fun of his ears, etc.
It's like a bunch of big kids watching games, joking around, and for the most part calling it like they see it. Puts ESPN to shame.
I would love to see them do some college football GameDay.
The most irreplaceable player is probably someone like Mason Cole. There's not much depth on the OL, and even less experienced depth. And given Cole's versatility he can fill in at other spots on the line. If Cole went down, that would be a big blow that we'd be hard pressed to recover from.
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Yeah, other than Lewis, Mason Cole was defintely the first name that popped into my mind. Our best player will probably be Butt or one of the Dlineman, but those units are so deep, it wouldn't kill our season like Lewis or Cole would.
For a single position or unit, I'll agree. Lewis may be the best player on the team, but Stribling and Clark are legit Mich/B10 CB starters. Peppers is a little unknown in the new defense but the argument could be made for him, especially if considering overall impact on the team.
Losing any one of them would be a big deal because there is no proven depth.
Smith is the only back who makes his own yards. Hopefully the OL is better, but if it isn't there can be a strong argument for Smith over most other starters.
Lewis is great, but we have 3 starting-caliber CBs plus Peppers. We'd be alright. Losing Thomas or Hill would be tougher IMO.
Losing Gedeon would probably mean true freshman playing major snaps.
Losing Chesson would rob the offense of it's biggest playmaker and only deep threat.
Losing Butt would bring in unproven players and force the offense to alter it's play-calling.
But Cole would be #1 on my list too.
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I'm going to go with...Erik Magnuson...huh? If the criteria is replacability and not talent, it's about what the biggest dropoff would be to the backup, right?
I'm going to assume Kugler would be fine at center (which may not be the case, and if not, then you're right that the answer is Cole), so we might be able to reasonably weather a Cole loss.
But I'm looking at a mwolverine depth chart, and it may be outdated, but it's listing Nolan Ulizio as the RT backup. If JBB wouldn't be able to slide into RT, I would argue that even losing the average Erik Magnuson would be the loss that would cause the biggest dropoff. Nolan Ulizio? Yikes. Would we move Kugler into the lineup, kick Cole out to LT and move Newsome to RT? Even if that happens we still have Kugler at C which is all that would happen if we lost Cole, and we'd have two tackles playing not ideal positions (but yes, one could reasonably argue that Magnuson at RT isn't ideal, but them's the arguments). So losing just Magnuson could put three o linemen in less than ideal spots, whereas losing any of the others at least just represents a downgrade at a singular position, and equivelent loss of depth.
Lewis is so good, he's still up there, but would the dropoff to Stribs be massive, given the improvement he's supposedly made?
Peppers is certainly in the dicussion as well, and depending on his usage, he could easily be the answer here.
I have always thought Magnuson was very solid, especially in pass pro. IIRC, when Rudock got crushed by Joey Bosa last year, Cole had moved over to Mags' RT spot for some reason, and that's where Bosa came from, maybe taking advantage of the situational change. But on this board, Cole is considered elite and everyone else is mediocre or worse. All I'm saying is, Mags (3rd team all-B1G) holds up his position very reliably and will be missed when he moves on.
Yeah Deveon is great, but no. I would also go with JD, maybe Cole or Dymonte (safety depth might actually be worse than CB after Long and Hill get on campus). JT Barrett should probably be #1 on the list. McCaffery is incredible and should have won the Heisman last year, but he's not essential to Stanford's system. With JT's skillset, and more importantly his experience, if they lost him on top of all the players they lost to the draft they would be fugged.
We all saw what happened with Glasgow went down last year...
I'll second either Lewis or Cole.
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You're right... the defensive line is totally not important.
Last year we didn't have Rashan Gary to plug in.
for a while." Didn't they get promptly blasted by Indiana to the tune of like 865 yards rushing the game after Glasgow went out?
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not sure about that. Durkin did share blame, but I saw lots of d-line guys getting beat on single blocks in that game
I would argue this especially since Mone is back and we have Gary coming in.
who we actually lost last season. I don't think that would have been true if we hadn't already lost Mone for the year and Godin for a while. Rudock would have been an even bigger loss. Cole too. RJS would also have been a big loss once Ojemudia went down.
I'd be most afraid of losing Cole. Not only is their a real gap between him and the next guy up, but I don't want to think about him being the second OL out.
I don't agree with that at all. If Jake Rudock had been injured for any significant amount of time, we would have been screwed. Speight and the other QBs were not ready to take over the reins of last year's team.
I said Rudock would have been a bgger loss.
he interpreted you as saying that the Glasgow loss would have been bigger than a hypothetical Rudock loss. I don't think he quite understood that you said Glasgow was the biggest loss that actually took place.
Yep. I didn't quite catch that the first time around. My bad, Mr. Miggle.
the last time in your life that "my bad mr. miggie," will cross your lips. Or maybe not....
Everyone forgets about Godin, he'd be a quality starter on most B1G teams. Rememer he started ahead of Wormley for a game or two at the beginning of the year. That says something about how the coaches view him.
Glasgow's loss was worsened because Godin went down shortly thereafter, and though he came back, he was clearly hindered by injury.
that he's one of the best players, but his irreplaceabilty last year was partially due to the loss of Mone. With Mone back, the theory / hope is that the depth is good enough to lose one of them and still be ok, which seemed to be the case last year until they were both lost.
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He allows us to remove either our backup center or backup left tackle from the field. For a new QB to have either a trusted LT or C is huge.
For Lewis, it is possible Stribling/Clark can hold on long enough for us to get into the meat of our schedule and maybe Long will be ready to go by then.
I get the DeVeon argument though. Until Isaac holds onto the ball in games and Drake can keep healthy (and block), we need DeVeon.
My list:
1. Cole
2. Peppers
3. Lewis
4. DeVeon
5. Glasgow (I know we have DL out the butt, but after Indiana/OSU last year, I want Glasgow more than I want pretty much everyone else on this list
6. Jake Butt (TEs galore but none of his caliber, yet)
It's kind of like choosing between your kids.
An argument can easily be made for everyone on your list. Each brings more to the table than mesurables including experience, confidence, attitude, etc.
I've always appreciated DeVeon's neversaydie running style over the speedsters. I think Harbaugh values his ability to motivate the team, and guarantee a minimum # of yards every carry even if big gains are rare.
I'm just thrilled we are able to have this conversation and that theyre all back this fall!
He continues to run like this and I'll put him at the top of the list.
He also left a bunch of yards on the field by frequently missing holes.
Despite that, he is a tough nosed runner.
This reminds me - not complaining mind you - but are we going to get a Florida UFR? If there's one UFR I'd love to see it's that game.