willie allen

Former Louisiana Tech and LSU offensive tackle Willie Allen, a grad transfer who just finished spring practice, has entered the transfer portal again, according to multiple reports:

Well that was a quick stay --- Michigan OL Willie Allen is in the transfer portal. He was a grad transfer to Michigan from Louisiana Tech and just went through spring ball

— angelique (@chengelis) April 23, 2021

Given the timing and what (scant) reports we've seen from spring football, my assumption is Allen didn't believe he was leading for a starting job—the former four-star has NFL aspirations that won't be realized by riding bench in his final season of eligibility.

Michigan should still be in good shape at OT. Ryan Hayes is a returning starter with NFL upside, Karsen Barnhart and Trente Jones are emerging talents, and Andrew Stueber has starting experience at tackle if the best five puts him there instead of guard. Allen's transfer is hopefully a sign that the young tackles are breaking through.

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Hey, how about some football this morning? I wrote this and we never got around to publishing it.

You probably didn’t even notice when Michigan picked up a grad transfer offensive tackle right before their 2020 football season actually began. But pick up an OT they did, and lost Jalen Mayfield to the NFL they did, and played guards at tackle this year when Mayfield and Ryan Hayes spent most of the season unavailable they did, so talk about Michigan’s very large, very old new tackle we must. Have to Yoda talk past the introduction to the oldest Michigan enrollee since the middle Wistert brother, we do not.

GURU RANKINGS

This was the third time Allen’s been recruited. The following rankings were coming out of high school in 2016, when Allen chose LSU over Alabama and Georgia.

I showed those because high school ratings are often a mark of innate athleticism, size, or ability. In Allen’s case it was size—not a lot of legit 6’7.5”/310 kids running around New Orleans—and there was a huge disparity.

Thus far the skeptics won out. Allen left LSU and went to Tyler Junior College (Tyler, TX) after LSU blocked an attempted transfer to TCU. He emerged a year later ranked as a low 3-star transfer, the #74 junior college prospect and the #13 OT, and chose Louisiana Tech. Allen started there a couple of years but opted out of 2020 and grad transferred to Michigan last fall, retaining his final year of eligibility thanks to the COVID year.

[More on why it’s a good fit after THE JUMP]

This one came out of nowhere:

#GoBlue 〽️ pic.twitter.com/Uze1d5j0nl

— Willie Allen (@willie_allen77) October 16, 2020

Allen missed the first two games of this season due to COVID complications and decided to grad transfer. He's a former LSU commit who was a top 200 player as a recruit and emerged into a potential NFL prospect after transferring to Lousiana Tech. He is also a sheer mountain of a man at 6'6", 343.

Allen is planning to enroll this spring; he has one year of eligibility left. Jalen Mayfield's departure for the NFL seems like a foregone conclusion so Allen would have a spot to slot into if he can beat out Karsen Barnhart and others.

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