tristan bounds

Previously: The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. Interior OL.

TACKLE: I HOPE YOU DIDN'T EXPECT TO GET SOME OF THAT BACON BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY OFFENSIVE TACKLES IN THIS ROOM THAT THEY'RE PROBABLY GOING TO EAT ALL OF THE BACON AND WHY ARE YOU HAULING BACON AROUND LIKE THIS ANYWAY IF YOU ASK ME THAT'S PRETTY WEIRD BEHAVIOR

RATING: 4

[Bolded player rules: not necessarily returning starter, but someone we've seen enough of that I'm no longer talking about their recruiting profile (much, anyway). Extant contributor.]

Well… it's going to be a little weird. Harbaugh liked his quarterback competition from last year so much he's going to replicate it wherever he can:

“There’s four starting tackles that we have and it'll go through camp. I envision starting two tackles one game — the first game — and two tackles the second game."

Those four guys are Karsen Barnhart and LaDarius Henderson on the left with Trente Jones and Myles Hinton on the right. Compounding the lack of clarity is that guys are perfectly capable of flipping sides—Barnhart played right tackle last year plenty—and this is really just a pile of tackles that Michigan will select two from. Our chart above has to say something, so we're going with the current depth chart, but this space believes that Henderson will move into the starting lineup after a few games, leaving Barnhart and Jones fighting over the right tackle spot. Hinton is a longer-term play. Probably.

In any case, Michigan has five different tackles with college starts and four different guys with extensive experience. Nobody is an established, elite college tackle but short of having one of those this is about the best possible scenario to find yourself in.

Previously: Podcast 14.0A, 14.0B, 14.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End.

[Bolded player rules: not necessarily returning starter, but someone we've seen enough of that I'm no longer talking about their recruiting profile (much, anyway). Extant contributor.]

Tim Drevno put out fantastic, mauling offensive lines at Stanford. The guys they recruited were 3-stars, but they were smart, and didn't have to start until they were redshirt sophomores or juniors, by which time they'd been sufficiently drilled to run Drevno's complicated list of calls and checks. At Michigan he fruitlessly chased after recruits who didn't want his immediate playing time and started a season with Nolan Ulizio at right tackle. The "Drevno Effect" never happened. He's now at UCLA.

Greg Frey, the Rodriguez assistant who recruited tight ends and grew them into Mike Schofield and Taylor Lewan, was brought back for a year. He recruited some more build-a-bears for a year then left for his alma mater. Today he's at Duke.

Ed Warinner seemed like a guy who knew what he was about. Between the first game of 2018 and the 2018 Big Ten season Warinner turned Jon Runyan Jr. from a turnstile into one of the most underrated guards in the NFL. Last year Michigan broomed Ed for a guy born the year Ed coached his first OL at Army. Warinner is now the run game coordinator at FAU.

Sherrone Moore played tackle at Oklahoma in the mid-aughts, and coached tight ends at every stop until Michigan raised him to OL coach. His first line, made of parts acquired by Drevno, Frey, and Warinner, won the Joe Moore Award.

In all that time, with all those coaches, somehow Michigan figured out how to amalgamate all of their philosophies into a stable run of tackles. Runyan graduated and instead of the fanbase collectively chewing their fingers off, a redshirt sophomore Ryan Hayes stepped in. Andrew Stueber graduated to the NFL this offseason and his backup, a 4th year guy, won the job early in spring. Behind him is a classmate who started some in 2020 and 2021. Behind that guy is a 3rd year guy, and a 2nd year guy, and a freshman who's getting talked up even though he's not needed for years. Except for Hayes they're all Warinner recruits, though most are Frey types, and they run Drevno's tackle-pulling gap system. This spring Hayes intimated that Moore was increasing the complexity of their protection calls, since the guys playing have been around long enough to handle more on their plates. Imagine that.

Previously: Last year’s summary. The 2021 profiles: P Tommy Doman Jr. S Rod Moore. CB Ja’Den McBurrows. LB Jaydon Hood. LB Junior Colson. LB Tyler McLaurin. DE Kechaun Bennett. DE TJ Guy. DE/DT Dominick Giudice. DT George Rooks. DT Rayshaun Benny. NG Ikechukwu Iwunnah. C Greg Crippen. C/G Raheem Anderson. T Giovanni El-Hadi. T Tristan Bounds. TE Louis Hansen. WR Cristian Dixon. WR Xavier Worthy. WR Andrel Anthony Jr. RB Tavierre Dunlap. RB Donovan Edwards. QB JJ McCarthy.

I guess I’ll keep this now-three-year-old tradition alive as well, since I have stray remaining thoughts after this exercise. Now that I’ve watched all the tape, read every take, and scraped the internet for information in a year that had less of it than ever, I’ve got a few takeaways about the class.

It is another B+ class

I may just be more of a homer than Brian—which comes from inexperience at this—but I rated this class slightly higher than Brian put the 2020 class, despite 247 ranking them on average about 100 spots lower. Mathlete converts our “General Excitement Level” ratings into a 10-point scale that you can effectively halve to get a 5* scale we’re used to. Here are the two classes against each other, and the MGoBlog take versus the industry (247 Composite also converted to 5* scale).

I think in a few cases this was mostly the program itself relying on their evaluations more than they have in the past. They had huge Signing Day victories in December (Donovan Edwards and to a lesser degree keeping Hood & McBurrows) and February (the three DTs). I don’t think losing Xavier Worthy changed things; picking up Daylen Baldwin makes that sort of a Josh Christopher-for-Chaundee Brown situation. Grading by position group:

• QB: A+. Got the cornerstone
• RB: A+. Got their Dude of the Year plus a really underrated proto-Haskins.
• WR: B-. I really like Anthony. Was an A- with Worthy in it. Could go up to a B+ if you include Baldwin.
• TE: B. Love Hansen, wanted at least one more.
• OL: B+. Were handed an excellent situation and came in under the expectation, but El-Hadi is the surest thing, Bounds is the highest of upsides, and two real centers is nothing to sneer at.
• DT: B. Reverse of OL: Situation was dire when they needed a big haul, Nua & friends rescued the class late. Benny the only impact guy.
• DE: B-. Trusted Don Brown.
• LB: A-. Love Colson, like McLaurin more than I thought I would, Hood fits the doom squirrel mode.
• S: C. Moore is pretty good considering they didn’t have a coach, last year had three 4*s. Wanted more.
• CB: D. Nothing against McBurrows. Needed a lot more.
• SP: A. Can Tommy redshirt in Australia?

The end of 2019 and terrible 2020 season were big hurdles to overcome, and keeping this class together while the fans fell into the BPONE took a lot of doing. That alone was one of the greatest upset victories yet for a Harbaugh tenure that hasn’t had many of them. I mean, Harbaugh went through Early Signing Day without a contract! Starting with Gio El-Hadi and J.J. McCarthy and then adding Junior Colson is a big part of the reason there was a class to worry about losing last winter. Only one of these guys did I conclude was a flier, which is not how we felt this class would turn out at the end.

The big miss is at cornerback. While I like the guy they got a lot more than the scouting services did, they needed two more guys who could come in and compete immediately. This was circumstances—they were fighting uphill for most of their top prospects even before you factored in the ease with which opponents could sell instability. Michigan also addressed some of the issues they could affect. Mike Zordich wasn’t able to close on guys like Tyreek Chappell, Ceyair Wright, Prophet Brown, Ishmael Ibrahim, and Omarion Cooper, and was replaced with Mo Linguist and then Steve Clinkscale when it was already too late. They lost Cass Tech’s Kalen King (and his LB brother) to Penn State because Tim Banks has very strong relationships [with the bagmen] in Detroit that Harbaugh angered. Banks is still going to hurt us in Knoxville, but Michigan emphatically mended Detroit connections, and then hired Bellamy, Hart and Clinkscale.

That happened in time to rescue Rayshaun Benny from a life in East Lansing. It will make a big difference in the future.

[After THE JUMP: Superlatives, those who got away.]