Unverified Voracity Is Bound By Law To Embed This Photo
this bullet mentions Charles Matthews and Nick Ward [Marc-Gregor Campredon]
Implications of exclusion. Charles Matthews was not invited to the NBA draft combine, and MLive's Kyle Austin has some data on what that means:
In the two NBA drafts since 2016, when college players were first allowed to return to school after declaring, 254 college players have declared early. Of them, the majority (157) didn't receive a combine invite.
Most prospects in that situation opt to return to school -- a total of 130 players have withdrawn from the draft in the last two years. But 47 of those players have opted stayed in the draft despite no combine invitation. None of those 47 players were drafted.
Many of the 47 who stayed in had reasons: they were going to be ineligible or were never going to be NBA players anyway and wanted to get on with overseas careers. (CC: Nick Ward?) A few have worked their way into the league after going undrafted, but it's a rough way to attempt to break in.
Another year of John Beilein Development™ is a better path to the league for Matthews, who clearly has NBA upside if he can just learn to shoot some.
WOULD BE NICE. Standard offseason new position coach articles do come with a little more oomph when the coach in question has the track record of Ed Warinner. Angelique Chengelis got a hell of a quote from Stephen Spanellis:
“It’s really amazing,” lineman Stephen Spanellis said during the team’s trip to Paris this past week. “Coach Warinner’s philosophy, he tells us that he doesn’t to start calculus before everybody can pass Algebra 1. I felt like before we would go straight to rocket science and try to cover everything possible in every meeting. And some guys can’t keep up and it doesn’t have value for a guy to sit in a meeting and they have no idea what’s going on fundamentally with normal plays like inside zone or power.
“So why not slow it down and learn all the basics before you progress? What makes it hard is our defense is so complex, that they break a lot of rules and you have to advance a little bit. But fundamentally, slowing it down a little bit has a lot of value especially for the younger guys who are still learning the offense. For example, James Hudson coming over from defense, it takes a long time to learn the offense in general. Why leave a guy like that at a disadvantage by making it too complicated?”
"No idea what's going on with normal plays" is unfortunately the story of every Michigan line since 2011, and the most depressing thing about last year was that disease following Michigan through a third head coach, and the one who should have been least susceptible to such a thing. But at least the ax fell.
It will not be another off year for Michigan in the NFL draft. The league's official site put out a list of 150 guys to watch for next year's draft, and Michigan players are liberally sprinkled throughout:
- #3 Rashan Gary: "A big man with linebacker-like movement skills"
- #10(!) Devin Bush: "the new prototype for linebacker in college and the NFL -- not necessarily big, but fast and aggressive."
- #25 Shea Patterson: "shows off great escapability on the run and an ability to move the ball through the air."
- #47 Chase Winovich: "can rush from a two- or three-point stance. He can also be effective bringing pressure from the interior."
- #65 Karan Higdon: "clearly superior to Ohio State's Mike Weber."
- #76 Khaleke Hudson
- #112 Lavert Hill
David Long's continued absence from these lists is baffling.
Per Zach Shaw, Michigan has the fourth-most players on the list, behind Clemson, Alabama, and OSU. A couple of OSU's are a little… uh… speculative. JK Dobbins, who isn't eligible for the upcoming draft, is there. So is Dwayne Haskins, who hasn't started a game yet.
On Mo Hurst in the NFL. Hurst dropped to the fifth round because of his heart issue, and the Raiders picking him prompted a bunch of criticism from everyone's favorite, the Anonymous NFL Insider. A former NFL team doctor reps his bros in response:
I actually think it is not only unfair and inaccurate but also irresponsible for a scout to characterize the drafting as "irresponsible." There is no way for a non-medical person to know.
As an orthopedic surgeon and physician, even I would rely on my primary care doctor and cardiology consultants to weigh in.
I do not see how a personnel person can make this proclamation. This opinion should carry the same weight as a team physician publicly criticizing Baker Mayfield as not worthy of the first pick in the draft.
I also don't know what's going on with Hurst's heart; hopefully everything works out for him.
Apparent hockey exit. The USHL's various drafts are ongoing—I won't bother you with the details—but since one weird hockey thing is that transfers will often return to the USHL for their NCAA mandated sit-out year, you occasionally get roster news. Roster news:
Wisconsin's JD Greenway selected 7th by Chicago; Michigan's James Sanchez selected 8th by Dubuque. A good indication that both are leaving their respective programs to return to juniors.
— Chris Dilks (@ChrisDilks) May 8, 2018
Sanchez had 8 points in 27 games last year after playing in 34 as a freshman; he was stuck on the fourth line and probably had a talk about whether that was ever going to change.
Also in USHL draft news, highly touted 2020 commit Owen Power went 7th overall to Chicago in a different USHL draft—yes there are like seven different ways to get in this league—after being an early second-round pick in the OHL draft. That's a good sign for this edition of Michigan's never-ending blood war with the OHL.
Fellow touted 2020 commit Cole Perfetti went in the third round, also to Chicago. He went fifth overall in the OHL draft and will either be traded to a different OHL team for a bushel of picks in August or September and report or stick with his commitment. Due to yet more details about junior hockey that you don't need to know*, a high OHL draft selection is not necessarily the kiss of death. As Antonio Stranges demonstrated, it's more about location than draft slot.
*[OK, fine: Saginaw has a nearly full roster this year with or without Perfetti and will get a compensatory pick one slot lower than Perfetti's #5 selection next year if he doesn't report and is declared "defective."]
Etc.: AFC Ann Arbor plays an Open Cup match in Ypsi at 6. This year's basketball noncon tourney projects to be pretty lame, especially since M gets GW in the first round. Ok thanks Bobby Kotick but when do we get an updated Mechwarrior? Very detailed take on Comcast dropping BTN out of footprint.
So what exactly happened to Drevno? Was he not the oline coach for the 1st and 2nd years of Harbaugh's HC tenure here at Michigan?
Seems to me a mix of 3 possibilities:
- He got Peter Principled. Maybe his OC ambition got the best of him & he wanted the complex plays/line calls made so he could get the high risk/high reward benefits of having the offense improvement show up on his watch. And/or he just got too much stuff on his plate and the OL suffered most.
- Personality mix/dynamic with Frey gummed up the works.
- Maybe line calls were about the same from 2016, but for whatever reason the personnel mix on the OL changed & certain key people couldn't grasp the advanced concepts.
He was, but he also had OC responsibilities for all of that time. And he maintained some of them last year.
IMO he couldn't do both effectively. There's a lot of work involved in coordinating and installing a gameplan every week, in making sure everyone is going where they need to. I don't think the OL was getting adequate one-on-one coaching from Drevno, and I think that's why Harbaugh snagged another OL coach to help shore things up.
And the results spoke for themselves, not in a good way.
I think it's possible that Drevno could be perfectly good as a dedicated OL coach at Michigan if that's all he were doing, but he was a seven-figure co-OC and you don't just drop that guy back down to a position job. Might not have worked out too well behind the scenes, either.
Anyway, it was better to get a clean start, and that's what happened.Tough turn for Drevno, who had a nice place to live and a good position and is now in limbo, but that's part of the business.
I wish they'd kept him doing more OL stuff like they did at Stanford. I think that would have made things better overall, but it is what it is.
Harbaugh getting Warinner gives me warm fuzzies. It had to be hard for him, but once again, he found the best guy he could have.
How could he think he'd get invited to the combine when his ankles are still hanging in Wagner's locker?
Great to see that Devin Bush's size won't be a hindrance to his draftability, but on the other hand it's going to be sad to see him go. Let's make the most of this last season for him and Gary.
Long/Hill
Selfishly, I woudn't mind one bit if the two of them are overlooked for another year. Was hoping the same for Bush & Hudson but it doesn't sound like that will be the case.
And also not eligible to be drafted
That's certainly not saying that doctors are necessarily infallible; they're not. But an anonymous layperson second-guessing a licensed professional at, well... his/her actual profession almost always gets a side-eye from me. Hopefully Hurst's medical issues are not ongoing ones that will prevent him from a long NFL career, but if they are... all of us have 4 years of game-watching to prove how strong his heart really is.
The complexity of the line calls and the structure of the offense in general has been addressed by other commenters, but the part of the quote that stuck out to me was this one:
What makes it hard is our defense is so complex, that they break a lot of rules and you have to advance a little bit.
This agrees with something we heard Harbaugh admit with respect to training his quarterbacks, too -- our offense trained against a Don Brown defense that differs in important ways from most of the defenses that our offense faced during the season. Any rep the O line spent preparing for unique wrinkles in the Don Brown defense was essentially a wasted rep. For all the talk we heard about "iron sharpens iron," it now appears that having our offense practice against our defense is if anything somewhat counterproductive.
Even ignoring time wasted on extra wrinkles, if all your practice is against Dr. Blitz and the hellbeasts on the DL of the last couple years, it's going to be hard to evaluate your performance (and therefore hard to improve). If you get whupped just as bad on a rep when you do 90% right as one where you do 50% right - how do you know what to fix?
Practicing against a simpler D more like what you're going to see on Saturday will give you better feedback. If you're still working on the basics, you need to be repping against the basics.
Nobody has pointed this out yet - we actually have the same amount on that NFL list as OSU. The list accidentally labels Jaelan Phillips, a UCLA DE, as an OSU player. So, OSU actually only has 7 players on the list (instead of 8), same as us.
Am I missing it? He said Dobbins and Haskins were speculative inclusions, but I missed where he said the list falsely counted Jaelan Phillips as a Buckeye.
I have mentioned this before, my nephew is a hockey prospect. Thanks in small part to the Board giving me the contact details of the hockey recruiters, he is now being recruited by Michigan. He has also gotten interest from Wisconsin and North Dakota but he wants to go to Michigan if he does college hockey.
He had an unofficial visit to Michigan last month. He just got drafted in the WHL Bantam draft in the 4th round - so he will have to make a decision on juniors vs. college.
Anyone know how the WHL Bantam league translates to top tier college hockey?
Guys play 4 years anymore? Thank you Chase, Thank you Karan, Thank you Seniors.
I Love our SENIORS.
that whole "one nfl scout says" thing was and is utter bullshit. a numbnuts ex-coach type who calls himself a "scout" has no earthly idea of whether maurice hurst is healthy or not. i don't either, but i don't pretend that i do.
that he didn't go until the fifth round basically tells you that way, way, WAY too few of these guys actually watch, you know, football games, and that the nfl is an extreme form of follow-the-leader. once it became clear that teams were passing on him because of "concerns," NOBODY was going to be the team that "wasted" a pick on him.
here's what i DO know - that guy is a goddamned football player. i look forward to him laying waste to entire regions for years to come.
Comments