[Bryan Fuller]

Previously: Podcast 10.0A. Podcast 10.0B. Podcast 10.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver.

Depth Chart

Fullback	Yr.	H-back	Yr.	Tight End	Yr.	Flex	Yr.
Ben Mason	So.	Ben VanSumeren	Fr.	Sean McKeon	So.*	Zach Gentry	Jr.*
Jared Wangler	Sr.*	----	Fr.	Zach Gentry	Jr.*	Nick Eubanks	So.*
Ben VanSumeren	Fr.	----	Fr.	Luke Schoonmaker	Fr.	Mustapha Muhammad	Fr.

Given the situation at quarterback Michigan is unlikely to reprise their approach for most of the second half of the schedule, which surely pleased Bo and every other three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-guts devotee watching:

FORMATION NOTES. Hello, manball. Michigan's approach in this game was downright neolithic, featuring 32 snaps with one or zero WRs. Feel the Harbaugh goodness as Michigan goes with a goal line set on first and ten on their own 34 (the "WR" is Gentry and he will motion to a TE spot presnap):

Michigan did suffer to allow two wide receivers on the field 22 times; three WRs managed to get out there on 14 snaps.

But you know Harbaugh wants to. Probably not enough to do it... much. But if you're telling me he's got two returning starters at TE with NFL upside and a third guy who ran past the Florida secondary last year and he's not going to do it at all, well, sir. I disagree.

And now it's time for...

ANNUAL EXPLANATION OF THE FINE GRADATIONS OF BLOCKY/CATCHY

A few years ago we split tight ends from the WR post and fullbacks from the RB post, figuring that under Brady Hoke there would be enough of them to warrant it. We even split guys into various categories because a tight end is not just a tight end. Then Jim Harbaugh came in. After an internal struggle this site has decided not to split each one of these columns into its own post, but it was a near thing. Those columns are:

• FULLBACK: a man with a steel plated head who runs into linebackers, gets two 50 carries in his career, and has six catches. See: Kevin Dudley, Sione Houma.
• H-BACK: A "move" tight end who motions all about, rarely lines up on the actual line of scrimmage, often goes from fullback to a flared spot or vice versa, and operates as more of a receiver than the fullback. Must be a credible threat to LBs; ends career with 40 catches. See: Aaron Shea, Khalid Hill.
• TIGHT END: Larger than the H-back, the tight end is a tight end who is actually tight to the end of the line. He comes out, lines up next to a tackle, helps him win blocks, and clobberates linebackers at the second level. He goes out into patterns as well, and may end his career with 40 catches himself. See: AJ Williams, Jerame Tuman.
• FLEX: Big enough to play on the end of the line credibly. Agile enough to play H-back credibly. Not great at either. Capable of splitting out wide and threatening the secondary. Sacrifices some blocking for explosiveness. Can be a prime receiving threat. See: Jake Butt.

And of course many of these people bleed into other categories. Think of these position designations as Gaussian distributions in close proximity to each other.

TIGHT END AND FLEX: HOW FAST DOES THIS BATTLESHIP GO ANYWAY

RATING: 5

Last year's preview threw all available guys in more or less the same bin and then selected Ian Bunting and Tyrone Wheatley Jr out of that bin as the nominal starters. Nope and nope: both guys got scattered snaps as the younger generation pushed through. Now both Bunting and Wheatley have read the writing on the wall and lit out for greener pastures, leaving Michigan's tight end corps somewhat thinly populated.

But hoo boy the remaining villagers could really be something. ZACH GENTRY is the headliner despite a bit less playing time than his compatriot. This is because Gentry is a 6'8" guy who was Michigan's fastest and most agile tight end in last year's team combine. As Jay Harbaugh put it when they moved him late in his freshman year:

"He's got what we call a 'dominant trait.' He's super fast and super tall and has very good hands. He has something naturally that gives him a chance to beat everybody as a route-runner.

He only got to show his dominance sporadically due to the environment around him, finishing with 17 catches. But his per-target numbers are flatly unbelievable in context even if they are a small sample size: 17.8 yards a reception. 11.7 yards per target(!!!), a 65% catch rate and zero catches that did not move the chains or improve Michigan's chance of doing so on a subsequent down. Michigan's next-best YPT receiver who got the whole QB smorgasbord was Kekoa Crawford at 7.2. And that sample size would have been larger in--all together now--better circumstances:

Gentry is a giant man and delivers on his height. He's capable of plucking balls out of the air that are well outside his frame and when Purdue went cover zero he demonstrated excellent body control to punish that decision:

As safety blankets go, the dude nearly a foot taller than most defensive backs and much faster than most linebackers is a quality option. And he is on another level athletically from most of the front seven guys who could deign to cover him.

That tall guy seems like a good person to throw to since he's the closest thing to an imaginary eleven-foot tall person we have.

Yeah, Zach Gentry started going from potential to production in this game. His big catch and run was a great route that suckered a linebacker outside and opened up that YAC:

83, TE to top of line

That is exactly what Michigan was hoping for when the moved him there. That throw's a bit high, except Gentry is 6'7". Also he dusted a guy and ate up 20 yards after the catch.

And if Michigan wants to get weird, Gentry has flashed the ability to hack it on the outside.

WR #83 top of screen

What he hasn't done so far is high-point the ball over two-to-seven helpless defensive backs, a la former Penn State tight end Mike Gesicki. This has been entirely due to a lack of opportunity. I charted Gentry with one drop on 13 routine opportunities last year; more telling was a lack of non-routine shots. He had just one opportunity at a moderately difficult catch (which he made); I put those in a bin labeled "2" and they encompass almost all of the things that a pogo-stick giant should be doing downfield. There were only two circus opportunities, and sometimes pogo-stick shots downfield should land there, as well.

Gentry was not Gesicki by any stretch of the imagination, but largely because Michigan didn't give him the opportunity to be Gesicki. Again, offense bad sad emoji etc etc. In a functional offense with a fade machine quarterback, Gentry could blow up. Should blow up.

Gentry's blocking was meh but not a disaster. PFF had him about 200th of ~300 qualifying tight ends but I'm pretty sure they grade like me and those numbers aren't necessarily adjusted for individual "strength of schedule." So he's probably not worse than whatever MAC tight ends he's behind, he's just playing tougher opposition. And Gentry's issues were at least half mental issues that generally come with being a guy getting his first playing time. When he was on the right page he did well:

#83 TE to bottom

He was fairly regularly able to get under not-so-good players and drive them:

TE #83 to bottom of line

His athleticism allowed him to stay coiled and not expose his height unduly; sometimes he flat-out drove his (again, pretty bad) opposition:

#83 TE to bottom

Gentry was generally able to control Big Ten LBs and weakside ends; it was only when circumstances forced him into trying to control a Big Boy that his lankiness worked against him. Here he catches an MSU DT and suddenly looks like a 6'8" TE trying to survive:

#83 TE to bottom of line

When he set up in-line and took a thunk from a DL who knew what was coming he'd give some ground but he'd usually stay attached and fight his way through it. When able to take on someone in his weight class things went well, for the most part. And even when he took on a Big Boy if he was able to surprise him he delivered a blow.

#83 TE motioning to top of formation

He pancaked a DE once! A Rutgers DE. But still! Seriously, by Wisconsin he was capable of legitimately impressive moments:

#83 TE to bottom of line

That is palpable movement on a DE and then a TJ Edwards pancake. Was that consistent? No. Was it there? Yes. What's more important for Michigan going forward are not the 2017 results, which did indeed top out at "eh"--he was 55% in UFR charting--but the approach. Gentry was a very willing blocker, one who got results when he got the call right and wasn't placed in an adverse situations. PFF had him one of Michigan's best offensive players against the Badgers and 24/7 noted that three of his four highest grades had come in the run-up to The Game. He improved greatly over the course of the season.

A year of experience and 15 extra pounds should improve his output further, and this will give Michigan a dual threat that someone like Mike Gesicki did not provide. Now just go be Gesicki when the ball is in the air and we're cooking. Survey says: maybe!

[After THE JUMP: tbh probably Michigan's best tight end]

[Bryan Fuller]

Redshirt sophomore SEAN MCKEON gets flung after the jump because Zach Gentry's got all the whizbang, but it's McKeon who was Michigan's best tight end a year ago. When you put up this run grade...

Of 291 qualified tight ends, McKeon ranked 29th in run-blocking per Pro Football Focus.

...and you're a redshirt freshman, well, yeah. Not bad.

McKeon popped up for a surprising number of +2 blocks in UFR, and frequently against the better class of team on the schedule. These were often edge blocks where the opposition slanted away from him, thus allowing McKeon to use their momentum against them, but early in the year those slants were getting under TEs and into the backfield. By Penn State Michigan and McKeon in particular were doing much better:

#84 TE to bottom of line

McKeon finds and obliterates #7 here as he executes a move that would have caught up Onwenu about 90% of the time earlier in the year:

#84 wing TE to bottom of line

Another example versus Minnesota:

#84 TE to top of line

I can't tell you how much frustration I've had watching these blocks not get executed over the last ten thousand years; the prospect of having McKeon for a while is a relief. That goes double because late in the year he was able to add some advanced stuff to his reel, like "effective brief double and linebacker combo":

TE #84 to top of line, no motion

McKeon palpably moves that DT and still stands up a second player. In my experience this is very difficult to do; many attempts fail to offer any help to the OL and many others end up letting a second-level player through scot free.

McKeon was not an overwhelming physical presence (except against Rutgers) but he knew what he was doing, for the most part, and when he didn't it seemed like he took coaching extremely well and then knew what to do in a new domain. Adding just three pounds over the offseason isn't likely to make a huge difference in his blocking; another year of refinement and wisdom should. McKeon should approach Elite Blocking Tight End status, which would be a first in the Harbaugh era.

But wait, there's more! Despite having Michigan's best single-season run blocking grade in the Harbaugh era, McKeon was not the kind of glorified OL AJ Williams was. He first popped up on the radar because he put up a national-best SPARQ score for TEs during his recruiting cycle, and that athleticism seems to have translated to college. He's not quite Gentry, but other than that it's hard to come up with an obviously more athletic tight end in the last decade:

His ability to turn upfield for YAC is excellent and he'll run away from the lower class of linebacker in the open field. This guy's attempt at man coverage is hopeless:

TE #84, slot to bottom

Like Gentry, Michigan mucked around with a package featuring McKeon as an outside receiver. That was against Wisconsin's hoodie patrol—not scrubs—and resulted in a pass interference call and third-and long conversion:

It'll be tough to take McKeon off the field this year. Michigan will want him to run. They'll want him to pass. He's such a coach's favorite that Lorenz is comparing Luke Schoonmaker to McKeon, and saying that's a great sign, before he's even an upperclassman.

McKeon will approached his finished product state this year, and that will make him one of the best all-around tight ends in the Big Ten and maybe the country. Targets are tough to judge with Gentry and Perry on the same roster; it doesn't really matter.

BACKUPS

The aforementioned departures leave NICK EUBANKS [recruiting profile] as Michigan's only backup with any experience. Eubanks is—surprise!—a hyper-athletic jumbo person who needed a couple years to beef sufficiently. His season was cut short with elbow issues after the Purdue game, but despite that he managed to get one eyebrow-raising highlight in:

That is a tight end flat-out running by a Florida safety who converts to man coverage as soon as Eubanks releases. Hello sir.

Unfortunately for him, Michigan's crowded TE room limited him to 11 snaps between the above and the injury, giving us almost nothing else to work with. In those extremely limited snaps Eubanks had the same blocking grade as Gentry—see "beef sufficiently, need to".

So it's back to the insider salt mines for Eubanks information. With Gentry sucking up most of the available oxygen there hasn't been a ton, but Lorenz did offer some optimism:

Now back to full strength, we have heard good things about him this spring and are expecting him to see the field in a few different capacities this season but mainly as a flex-style receiving tight end.

Eubanks added 12 pounds to his official roster weight and now sits at 252, which is still a little short of ideal for a 6'5" guy but is getting towards plausible. He says he's maintained his 4.5-and-change 40 times; unlike just about everyone else who's ever listed a 40 that seems in the realm of the possible given the clip above. TE coach Sherrone Moore says he's the best athlete in the group...

“Nick is probably the most fluid athlete of all the guys – with his speed and his size and his length.”

...and when Zach Gentry is in said group that's another eyebrow raiser. Harbaugh's mentioned him as a "continuously ascending" player when listing off groups of spring risers. They put him in front of the media recently, another good sign, and there's enough talk about TE#3 to expect some bit of it is meaningful:

“I feel like I’m almost at that level,” Eubanks said. “I can get there with a couple more months of work, but other than that, I feel very comfortable playing with those guys because they make me more comfortable.”

“Nick’s been really, really good,” said tight ends coach Sherrone Moore last week. “And he’s taken a step forward, even for him, from the spring. He’s just continued to indulge himself in the playbook. He’s a special athlete. He’s going to be able to do a lot of things.”

Eubanks will probably top out as a mediocre blocker this year and targets will be hard to come by for many reasons that have recently been detailed, so a breakout is unlikely. Good goals include earning 100-150 snaps, blocking acceptably on those snaps, warranting some Harbaugh-trademark goal line plays nowhere near the goal line, and getting behind safeties another two to six times. Next year Eubanks should be locked in as starter-quality even if McKeon and Gentry (knock on wood) block him a bit longer.

True freshmen LUKE SCHOONMAKER [recruiting profile] and MUSTAPHA MUHAMMAD [recruiting profile] round out the roster. Schoonmaker is right in the heart of the Harbaugh tight end Venn diagram since he's 1) a high school quarterback, 2) from Connecticut, and 3) has a dang quote board:

​

Michigan stumbled across him because of a Don Brown connection, naturally, and offered after the 6'6" kid banged out multiple 4.6 40s at a satellite camp. Like McKeon before him he's a guy to put in the oven for a year or two and then find out what you've got. Lorenz has been making direct comparisons:

...he's continuously been compared to current Wolverine Sean McKeon (northeastern prospect, no recruiting profile, underrated, etc.) because he keeps giving us reasons to. I'm told Schoonmaker has been a 'gym rat' of sorts and has come in as one of the hardest workers in the weight room. This is almost verbatim what we were told about McKeon upon his arrival to campus a couple of years ago.

For this and "six foot six guy running 4.6 40s" reasons, Schoonmaker was this site's Sleeper of the Year. Just not the sleeper of this year.

Muhammad is a more conventional TE recruit and was heavily pursued by the world; he stands out as one of Michigan's few big recruiting wins in a class filled with sleeper sorts. His star fell over the course of his recruiting cycle because he never paired his outstanding physical tools with production either in high school or an Army game appearance, but those tools still remain and the vagaries of high school quarterbacking and All Star targets can hit anyone. Muhammad got a lot of praise for being "well-rounded," so he projects as a McKeon type down the road: athletic but definitely inline-capable.

Both have gotten chatter about being potential year one contributors, but McKeon and Eubanks both have three years of eligibility left. It would be wise to get some separation. Hopefully they'll both get their four games and no more.

FULLBACK & H-BACK: OL' MURDERFACE

RATING: 4

​​

LB turned into hell-yes-that's-a-fullback [Bryan Fuller/Aaron Bills]

Sophomore BEN "Ol' Murderface" MASON [recruiting profile] didn't get a whole lot of time last year because he was a freshman and Michigan was the rarest of all college football teams: the one with two senior fullbacks vying for snaps. He did get some, because Michigan was also an even rarer beast: the team that plays three fullbacks. Mixed in with your typical freshman airballs were heavy thuds:

#42 FB

And perhaps more impressively, a dedication to being the most annoying person on a particular offense.

#42 FB

That is a cut block with bonus angry squirrel action at the end. It completely prevents the opposition from getting off the block and is probably illegal in several different ways, but rubbin's racin'.

The airball linked above was in fact the only Mason play to grade out negatively in UFR. While that was a -2 he managed to pick up +13 across the rest of the (graded) season. That's unlikely to be maintained since a reasonable FB error rate seems much higher, but it does bode well as Michigan seeks to maintain its generally excellent FB production--Poggi had a 70% positive ratio in UFR, Hill a 66% one--from a year ago. FWIW, Mason graded out as one of Michigan's best offensive players in the bowl game, per PFF, on... uh... six snaps. My kingdom for a seventh and one fewer McKeon snap.

So early on-field indicators are good. Off-field indicators are even better. And no, we're not talking about Harbaugh openly gushing about Mason ("Ben Mason goes forward and hits people better than anybody I’ve ever seen and what a great thing to say about somebody that they go forward and hit people") at every opportunity. We're talking about weird. You can't be a good football guy fullback without being weird, and let's check some boxes.

“Ben Mason is a weird guy,” Gary said, smiling, on Saturday after the camp.

Yes! Tell me more!

“You’ve got to love him because he has absolutely zero volume control,” Bredeson said, laughing. “Can’t control his voice at all. We’ll be in class trying to whisper, and he’ll just be blurting out loud what he’s trying to say."

***vince mcmahon gif stage four***

 

“I think it was third grade – it was a really cold football game – I think it was snowing, actually – and I go out there, I had long sleeves on. And my dad decides to walk up to me with scissors. He cuts the sleeves off. I'm the only guy on the field not wearing sleeves. Everyone was like, 'What's going on?'"

***ahhhhhhhhhh***

Mason is up to 258, per Mason, and is now a fully weaponized slightly crazy person who may terrorize Victorian London or opposition linebackers this fall. Or maybe both. Projected dropoff here: nil, with all due respect to the Hammering Panda.

BACKUPS

SWOLE

This preview declines to list an H-back above the fold due to a dearth on the roster. The only guy looking like a true H on the roster is true freshman BEN VANSUMEREN [recruiting profile], a workout warrior Michigan flipped from Iowa late in the process. VanSumeren, like Khalid Hill before him, spent his high school career as a very strangely-shaped wide receiver, setting a regular-season Michigan record for receptions as a senior despite starting two of nine games at quarterback.

VanSumeren is... well... he's something, man. Whatever that is it is not a teenager:

Ace started Ben VanSumeren's Hello post by saying his commitment was "about as Harbaugh as it gets," and he had no idea how correct this was. A subsequent Mick McCabe article is almost Beyond Harbaugh, describing a footbaw player who:

• quit basketball because he has to go to bed at 9PM and "my body is my temple"
• decided in fifth grade to be a football player and told no one
• gets up at 5 AM to get in a lifting session and then lifts again after school
• has slept with a football since he fumbled once in seventh grade

This is a man who can have hours-long conversations about milk with his head coach.

VanSumeren is as physically ready as it's possible for a freshman to be and his highlight tape has some very promising thwacks from his time spent at linebacker, but the transition from WR to fullback is going to take at least a year. He may or may not redshirt depending on how immediately useful he is on special teams; with the multitude of established blocky/catchy guys offensive snaps will be hard to come by.

Backup fullbacks include fifth-year senior JARED WANGLER, these days most notable for being Dave Wannstedt reincarnated...

did Jared Wangler grow a mustache or did Dave Wannstedt finally download his soul into a 20-year-old's body pic.twitter.com/DNswLmB4Cn

— mgoblog (@mgoblog) August 3, 2018

...and PETER BUSH, who's the kind of walk-on whose name I remembered. Available snaps for these gents will be limited to fourth-quarter traps against Rutgers, but good news! You get a touchdown!