2022 spring practice

Tomorrow is Michigan Football's first formal spring game since 2017 and first open spring practice since 2019. COVID washed out 2020's event, and one was not held in 2021. 2019 was an open practice, but was not a game format, and 2018's was canceled due to weather. It's been awhile! The game will consist of four twelve minute quarters, the rosters for each team will be drafted by the players, and the "head coaches" will be Sherrone Moore and Steve Clinkscale. You can watch it at the Big House for free, or on BTN at noon tomorrow. 

On the heels of a successful season, Michigan Football is looking to keep the momentum going in 2022, but like any year, there is plenty of roster turnover. With roster turnover comes positional battles, and when you add in the occasional injuries that naturally happen during any series of practice, new players who have seldom seen the field get their images elevated and reasons to watch them during spring practice increase as well. With all that in mind, today I'm going to run through seven storylines to watch at tomorrow's spring game: 

1.) MAZI and the new DL 

No area of Michigan's team sees more personnel changes than on the defensive line, understandable when you boasted the two of the best edge rushers in the conference last season and the NFL tends to like very good edge rushers. Chris Hinton (somewhat surprisingly) followed Aidan Hutchinson and David Ojabo out the door, meaning that Michigan is looking to replace three starters on the defensive front. If you want to, you can also consider coaching as a personnel change here, since old DL coach Shaun Nua departed for USC, and Michigan brought in Mike Elston from ND as a replacement. 

The only piece of continuity in the whole DL room is one Mazi Smith. All through spring practice, the insider reports have been something like "MAZI! MAZI! MAZI! MAZI!", as no player on the defense has been showered with more praise than Smith. Mazi was not yet an All-B1G caliber player last season but he was a consistent starter who showed enough flashes to make you believe he will round into one in 2022. The coaches and insiders are convinced that Smith is growing into one right before their very eyes in spring practice, and the spring game is a small opportunity for us to take a gander with our own set of eyeballs and see how much of the hype lines up. 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Beyond Mazi, the next names to watch are those currently running with the ones in spring practice: Kris Jenkins at DT and Mike Morris and Taylor Upshaw at edge. All three of these guys played rotational roles last season, but now the spotlight will be on them. Morris and Upshaw in particular are different kinds of pass rushers than Ojabo and Hutchinson were, but they have potential and made some plays of note in 2021. Jenkins is an intriguing piece, with the versatility to play inside and outside and this is around the time when we assumed he would begin to challenge for a starting role. 

The twos are also worth watching at this position, because they will become the rotational pieces this fall. Julius Welschof has played here and there in the last two seasons and is now in his fifth year in the program. If there was ever a time for our mogul-skiing German son to hit the big time as a pass-rushing DT, it would be now. Young guys George Rooks and Rayshaun Benny have started to pick up some murmurs from the insiders and this will be our first substantial glimpse of them after both redshirted in 2021. Braiden McGregor is a plausible option to challenge Morris and Upshaw on the edge, and you can throw in Jaylen Harrell, who did play some real snaps in 2021, in that thought too. 

There are a lot of fresh faces here, many of whom have never seen starter or even rotational snaps in a regulation CFB game. This will not be a regulation game either, obviously, but it is an opportunity to give guys buried down the depth chart a little run. If anyone here is winning snaps with consistency against any of Michigan's starting OL, I would say that is a good sign. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Six more bullets]

Right, football. Spring practice has been going on all this time, and people less basketball/hockey addled than I have been tracking what's going on. We'll start with defense because I didn't even get to them last swing. Let's get caught up. Quick hitters:

• DL: Morris is everybody's dude. Weird names appearing.
• LB: Barrett back to being in the ILB mix. Mullings moonlighting at RB.
• CB/Nk: Will Johnson hype is a go! McBurroughs is hurt. Sainristil seems to be at nickel. Eamonn Dennis moved to offense.
• S: Rod Moore is hurt.
• First female grad assistant in program/P5 history.

[After THE JUMP: defensive derrings do]

Welcome back to the bits. For those who've been away, this is where we dissect the news coming out of practice. That news comes out through sanctioned sources and "unsanctioned" insiders, whom the program often feeds.

We're now two weeks into spring practice, and not a lot has gotten out. Insiders who used to dump their thoughts into message boards or emailed them to people who cover this stuff are not saying as much this year. The official channels are trickling out info, but anything from the program itself should be taken as a Plantagenet Family presser. In other words:

“The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.”

― Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs

The other rule is that we're not here to share information that's collected by the premium message boards. I'll nod at stuff and provide a link sometimes because things they reported get out. If you want premium info you should support the people who get that information.

As I said though, there isn't a lot out there at the moment. if your ear is at all near the ground you've probably heard about all of this. Isaiah Hole transcribed the Harbaugh presser that had the bulk of it. I can collect it in one place in case there's something you missed, but with few tea leaves to analyze we're most in the dark. Let's do the bits.

Short version:

• QB: JJ McCarthy has a shoulder injury that doesn't require surgery, but will cost him spring.
• RB & TE: No news.
• WR: Bell's healing, precautionarily limited. The true freshmen look nice. Traded Sainristil for Dennis.
• OL: Oluwatimi looks like an upgrade, Jones/Barnhart will fight for RT.

And there's video to parse:

Michigan football content we all needed right about now. #GoBlue pic.twitter.com/N6anrmUbER

— Michigan Football (@UMichFootball) March 1, 2022