Weekend visit news
I posted last week about the visitors expected in Ann Arbor this week/weekend (LINK). Since then I have added a bunch of visitors who also made it to town, including a lot more Detroit-area kids.
Michigan is holding a camp today, and I would expect perhaps another couple offers to go out, especially to younger kids (2024).
There are also positive vibes coming out of the visits, including about DT Hayden Schwartz, surprise RB/WR visitor Dillon Bell, and USC transfer DT Jay Toia.
I believe Bell has a stud younger brother as well unless I’m thinking of someone else.
Yeah, Michigan recently offered his younger brother, cornerback Micah Bell (2023).
Micah Bell... there's just something about that feller's name that I don't trust. Ever since that job in Blackwater went South. I heard everywhere he goes there's pinkertons and vice versa...
My gut tells me that Micah may get his comeuppance. Maybe on a snowy mountain top somewhere? Just a hunch.
I wouldn't be opposed to Ronnie taking advantage of covid eligibility and staying in 2022. Seems like a great guy and is obviously a solid player.
Magnus, have you taken a look at the Alabama RB/WR recent transfer portal entree Keilan Robinson? I heard that Michigan is interested in him and I'm curious whether he is worth the pursuit. Michigan could probably use some depth at WR with Giles Jackson gone and the freshmen unlikely to see significant playing time. Additionally, if he has experience or upside as a returnman, then the pursuit is definitely worth it.
He has upside certainly. Worth the persuit. Nice shiftiness and some good wiggle. Not elite top end speed, but enough to separate and sinks his hips and gets out of breaks quickly. Not a glider or long strider. Sees the ball well, but sometimes uses his body instead of his hands. Could also add some strength. Should be pretty versatile and a good 2nd or 3rd WR option.
Good info. Cheers.
He has upside certainly. Worth the persuit. Nice shiftiness and some good wiggle. Not elite top end speed, but enough to separate and sinks his hips and gets out of breaks quickly. Not a glider or long strider. Sees the ball well, but sometimes uses his body instead of his hands. Could also add some strength. Should be pretty versatile and a good 2nd or 3rd WR option. A willing, but not great run blocker.
I think I get the idea.
He has upside certainly. Worth the persuit. Nice shiftiness and some good wiggle. Not elite top end speed, but enough to separate and sinks his hips and gets out of breaks quickly. Not a glider or long strider. Sees the ball well, but sometimes uses his body instead of his hands. Could also add some strength. Should be pretty versatile and a good 2nd or 3rd WR option. A willing, but not great run blocker.
Ok, I heard you the first time.
He has upside certainly. Worth the persuit. Nice shiftiness and some good wiggle. Not elite top end speed, but enough to separate and sinks his hips and gets out of breaks quickly. Not a glider or long strider. Sees the ball well, but sometimes uses his body instead of his hands. Could also add some strength. Should be pretty versatile and a good 2nd or 3rd WR option. A willing, but not great run blocker. Good 3rd down back potential.
I SAID I HEARD YOU!
Don't make me say it again.
I wonder if he has upside and is worth the pursuit?
What do you think about keilan Robinson?
I followed him when Michigan was recruiting him out of high school. I think he would be more of a replacement for Chris Evans, a guy who can run the ball or who can line up at WR. I would gladly take Robinson for his versatility. I wish Michigan would run more 20 or 21 personnel stuff with two backs in the game.
A Chris Evans lite? Yes please.
Cool. So we'll run him up the middle and never throw him a screen or quick passes to get him in space where he can use his skill set. Sounds great. Can't wait.
We'll turn that second round potential into a sixth round talent!
Yeah, I have lots of issues with the way Michigan used its personnel last year.
Blake Corum averaged fewer than 3 yards/carry, but somehow he got 26 carries while Zach Charbonnet averaged 6.5 yards/carry and only got 19 attempts.
Tight end Erick All averaged fewer than 7 yards/reception, but Michigan kept throwing to him. Meanwhile, they were struggling to get the ball to Giles Jackson, Charbonnet, Evans, etc.
Magnus, how good do you think a back Charbonnet was really? I can't help but shake the feeling that we lost a really good one. He was pretty productive in 2019 even on a bum knee, which he then got fixed.
I think Charbonnet was pretty good, not great. He was definitely held back by the knee issue in 2019, and the blocking wasn't great in 2020, largely due to injuries up front. I think Charbonnet was as a sophomore pretty much what Karan Higdon was as a junior/senior. He had good vision and burst, but he didn't have true breakaway speed. Where I think Charbonnet really could have improved was by becoming more of a physical, punishing runner and finishing runs.
I agree with that... seemed like a finesse runner and didn't really relish punishing defenders like some of our backs of old, or Haskins. Maybe that was the knee scare, but Charbonnet definitely had the size for that. Pretty big-bodied and strong kid it seemed.
I agree with that... seemed like a finesse runner and didn't really relish punishing defenders like some of our backs of old, or Haskins. Maybe that was the knee scare, but Charbonnet definitely had the size for that. Pretty big-bodied and strong kid it seemed.
I think Evans was a star and we didn't use him at all his final year.
I definitely agree with that RB take. The TE/WR take is a little harder to sort out since it is possible that the other guys weren't open or the QBs didn't have time to wait for them to come open down field. I said possible....I do think your point is still valid because it could just as likely have been scheme related.
There were some plays designed for All. I recently got into a bit of a discussion with the staff at my school about this same general concept.
You need to spend your time as coaches designing plays to get the ball to your best athletes. This is one thing that Alabama does very well. In 2020 Devonta Smith had 117 catches, and the next guy (John Metchie) had 55. In 2017 Calvin Ridley caught 63 passes and the next guy (Bo Scarbrough) caught 17. Amari Cooper caught 124 balls in 2014, and the next guy (DeAndrew White) caught 40.
When you're scheming up/practicing ways to get Erick All the ball, what you're NOT doing is scheming up/practicing ways to get Giles Jackson the ball. Or Mike Sainristil. Or Chris Evans. Or whoever your best athlete is.
Michigan doesn't have a Devonta Smith, but there's no good reason that Giles Jackson gets 15 receptions while Erick All gets 12 (and dropped a bunch of others). Tarik Black and Nick Eubanks caught 25 passes each in 2019, and Nico Collins only caught 37. Michigan just doesn't do a good job of building its offense around its top athlete(s).
Seems the most successful college coaches do this in the modern era. Saban, Dabo, Meyer. All game plan to put the ball in their best players' hands.
I can't help but feel like Harbaugh frequently overthinks things that he shouldn't have to at the college level OR falls too much in love with the guy who "works hard."
"... OR falls in love with the guy who "works hard" too much."
This was a longtime Schembechler tendency and his spiritual descendants display the same tendency. Joe Bolden is an oft-cited example.
I also think part of Harbaugh still believes he can figure out a way to make "running power" work well enough to beat OSU.
I'm not so sure that's going away though. I'm pretty sure when Gattis was at Alabama they spread things around a lot more instead of concentrating and getting the ball to their best player as much as possible. Although they did well with him there. But it helps when there's more talent obviously.
Charbonnet’s YPC was exaggerated by the one run against Minnesota. Otherwise, he really struggled. Excising that gift from the Gophers from his stats, he averaged 3 YPC.
I wasn’t a fan of Corum getting so many carries, but that seemed to be done with an eye to the future.
This doesn't make sense.
Okay, let's take away Corum's longest run (15 yards) too.
Corum averaged 2.48 yards/carry without his longest run. Charbonnet averaged 3.0 yards/carry without his longest run.
That's still 0.52 yards more per carry when you put the ball in Charbonnet's hands, and it ignores the fact that Charbonnet busted off an explosive run on fewer attempts than Corum had.
Let’s hold on for a sec. “Charbonnet averaged 6.5 yards per carry and only got 19 carries.” While technically true, let’s take a closer look. He had a 70 yard run against Minnesota where they blew an assignment and nobody was ever within 5 yards of ZC. Any one of our backs would have taken that to the house, including Bench Mason. There was THAT much room out there. So for the rest of the season, he had 18 carries for 54 yards. Just 3 yards per carry. He also had a long of 14 against Wisconsin. Averaged 3.5 on his other two carries. He struggled just as much as Blake did on the ground.
So let’s be fair an look at things in context, ZC wasn’t “averaging” 6.5 ypc. He had a big run that skewed his average by 3.5 yards per carry. You can’t really say he was more effective than Corum. If your argument is that he’s a better back and should have gotten more touches, that’s a conversation that can be had. But let’s not just blindly throw numbers out to back up our opinions without context. And then we’re arguing over which back averaging 3 yards per carry should get more touches ??♂️
Debunked above.
You can't take away one guy's biggest play and leave the other guy's biggest play in there. Take away Corum's longest run, too, and Charbonnet is still better by .52 yards per carry.
"If you take away the good things Player A did, then he's the same player as Player B" is not a logical argument.
UMBig11, please take note that this is a much better way to provide criticism. You can criticize without being a complete jerk.
Magnus, thank you for providing your insight.
DING DING DING DING DING!!!
I fully agree re: umbig11. In fact, I DARE him to follow the style and grace that Magnus regularly shows while debating others. The butthurt-version of umbig11 is extremely tiring, to say the least.
Hopefully UMBig11 pisses off Ace, so he gets banned.
I agree about Corum needing more carries last year but Charbonnet averaged 6.5 ypc because he had one 1 70-yard TD run to start the year against a Minnesota defense that didn't even touch him. The fact he finished that game with 5 yards on the rest of his carries and barely 3ypc for the rest of the year felt more representative of his performance and capability last year. I don't know what happened to him but even against Alabama he looked better than he did all off last year. Though I'll admit to being a Haskins stan at this point who feels like this team starts to figure out its ground game these past 2 years when they settled on him getting at least a plurality of carries.
I do agree that their focus on All made little sense - I assume he looked much better in practice and just dropped a ton of balls during the games. And on paper he looks like a matchup issue for defenses. I would add that with McNamara at the helm both Eubanks and All caught half of their season passes (11 of 22) and their 1 TD. Not saying that's on Milton because he threw some good balls but they did seem like they started to make some headway toward the end of the year.
If you take away Giles Jackson's 1 kickoff return for a touchdown last season, he had 0 kickoff returns for touchdowns last season.
I'm simply pointing out that saying "6.5 ypc" misstates this actual performance on the field because it's goosed by one 70-yard TD run on his first run of the year; his second-longest of the year was 14 yards. Haskins averaged 6.1 ypc on the season on 60+ carries and also had runs of 66, 59, 25, and 24.
I think Jackson is probably the best returner UM has had under Harbaugh unless you want to consider Peppers due to his ability to limit yards after the kick by fielding punts on the fly and in traffic. But as a receiver I was underwhelmed by Jackson and felt there were guys on the roster who duplicated his abilities and were bigger/faster/younger. He's obviously still a good player and I think he'll be successful at UW as a returner, but he also didn't feel like he was an essential cog to the offense.
As for the TE stats, the 1 TD thing is more a quirk. But the fact that All + Eubanks caught 10 of their 22 total receptions out of the 60-ish McNamara passes to end the year showed a potential area for growth offensively coming into next year that wasn't apparent earlier in the season. That's not a dig at Milton but just a positive for McNamara and All.
Average yards per carry requires every run to be included. You're arbitrarily removing his best run because it's his best run. That makes no sense, unless you remove every other player's best run, too.
Bronx, I always had the expectation that Charbonnet would be the workhorse of our backfield. It seems to me that many of the better backs get better with more carries. After the AL bowl game, where he looked very good, I fully expected that he would be the go-to back the following year. In that game he had 13 carries for 84 yards against a pretty stout defense. He also wasn't easy to bring down and fought for more yardage each carry.
If we are really a run oriented offense, we need to pick "a guy" and give him 18-25 carries a game instead of splitting them up between 3 or 4 backs. It makes no sense to me.
Michigan has suffered with this for years: use the best player's skills sets and schemes to put them in position to win.
All to often it feels like they go with “next man up” mentality in critical situations- let’s throw fades to Bell instead of Collins in the end zone, multiple multiple multiple times is a good example
He’s going to Texas with Sark.
Thanks for posting this. I'll take all the good Jay Toia news you've got.
It's exciting to see that Toia made the trip and seems positive. I don't expect any DT to step in and suddenly flip the defense but he'd be a nice pickup.
Magnus, how should we feel if Toia comes? Is he an exception to “freshmen DTs suck”?
Any idea if there will be commitments this week?