Previously: Podcast 14.0A, 14.0B, 14.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back

WIDE RECEIVER: OLIVERS TWIST WANT SOME MORE TARGETS

RATING: 5

Depth Chart

WR	Yr.	WR	Yr.	SLOT	Yr.	SPREAD H	Yr.
Roman Wilson	Jr.	Cornelius Johnson	Sr.	Ronnie Bell	Sr.*	Donovan Edwards	So.
Darrius Clemons	Fr.	Andrel Anthony	So.	AJ Henning	Jr.	AJ Henning	Jr.
Tyler Morris	Fr.	Amorion Walker	Fr.	Eamonn Dennis	So.*	Blake Corum	Jr.

A note on the depth charts: they do not take potential COVID years into account. 

Sometimes not knowing where to start is a problem. Like, you know, the Rodriguez-era secondary where you didn't know where to start because everybody left the damn team.

Sometimes not knowing where to start is because there's a guy who looked like Braylon Edwards in one game and a guy who blazed past Ohio State's secondary and a guy who legitimately runs a 4.3, and then there's another one of those guys, and then you're getting back a guy who led the team in receiving yards for two straight years. Oh, and there are tight ends. And a running back.

This is less of a problem.

THE MANS. MENS? WE'LL WORKSHOP IT. WA'LL WORKSHOP IT? ANYWAY

zip zap zippity blad I have a touchdown now you're sad [Patrick Barron]

We'll start with Cornelius Johnson because there's more to say of recent vintage. With Bell's injury, Johnson emerged into Michigan's #1 receiver with 39 catches for 620 yards. That doesn't sound like all that much for a #1 receiver, but Michigan put up 42 points on Ohio State by throwing once in the second half. In that context it's a minor miracle anyone threw the ball at all.

Johnson did this in a slightly unusual way for a strapping 6'2" guy: with route artisanship. This first really popped in the Indiana game, where he turned a Hoosier DB 360 degrees and would have had an easy touchdown if JJ McCarthy hadn't gotten lit up on the throw.

This pass isn't complete, but THIS is how a receiver gets open. Excellent route that gets the DBs shoulders turned. pic.twitter.com/UhPw5Nr6r7

— Due# (@JDue51) November 7, 2021

He did catch a bomb later after slickly selling that corner route and turning into a go.

Those two occurrences weren't the first time Johnson had torched someone. People first got hyped about him giving future ND safety and first round pick Kyle Hamilton the business during his high school All-Star game, and against NIU he got open by five yards on an 87-yard touchdown. They were a tipping point, though. Going over Seth's UFR's from last year the sheer number of Johnson (route+) events really leaps out.

By the time Johnson torched an Ohio State quarterback on a go route that was just a thing he does.

The flipside of that happened early in the year against Washington, when one of their excellent corners got so concerned about Johnson doing the same thing to him resulted in a back shoulder throw that the cornerback was not even in the same zipcode on—even though the called defense shaded a safety over the top! In the Northwestern game Michigan converted a third and eleven on an out to Johnson because the cornerback was straight-up afeared of that man.

NFL scouting types are taking note. The Draft Network:

…enticing toolbox to defeat defenses on all three levels. His long and angular frame quickly stood out. … uses his frame and strength to play through contact during his route stems. He does a good job mirroring his stems early in the route—they look the same until they are not. He pushes vertically well to stress the defender’s reactive transitions down the field. … stem work is impressive for a bigger receiver. The way he sets up defenders is exciting. He combines route tempo, stems, and sharp plants/cuts. He attacks space and leverage to manipulate his opponent’s hips before breaking away. … Once in the open field, he can pull away from defenders.

The Draft Bible:

Long, linear build that easily carries an impressive physique. … Sudden athlete with notable start-stop and overall functionality in short areas. Will break defenders off at the top of his route, using body control and footwork to ensure separation. Agile after the catch, employing his lower body twitch. Not elite in downfield separation

Both evaluations focus their negatives in one area: hands. We had him for three routine drops, and The Draft Network asserts that he brought in only 5 of 16 contested opportunities a year ago. Clean those up and Johnson will be a candidate to go early in the NFL draft. He is one Jason Avant upgrade away from being the total package.

It's possible that Avant package is already in there, kinda. A couple years back we stood on the table for Bell after an offseason of hands slander that was (almost) entirely undeserved, about which more in a sec. Johnson's disappointing contested catch rate is low sample size because of the nature of last year's offense—particularly McNamara's hesitancy to throw at covered guys—and his outstanding route-running, so events like this are extra distorting:

It's hard to catch passes when the opposition has gone full facehugger. I also wonder about the fidelity of whatever this data source is when it comes to passes on which Johnson is essentially playing DB or ones that are just so far off that Johnson has a hard time recovering from torching his guy. We saw "finger on ball == catchable" run most of that bad drops talk on Bell. I think there might be something similar going on here. It's notable that our charting had Johnson bringing in 75% of his tough opportunities, which is very good.

The difference here between "not good at contested catches" and "good at contested catches" here is a few catches here and there. It might not even be a thing.

This is a slightly different assertion than the Ronnie Bell one. Here we're asserting that this problem is more of an unknown than a problem. We have not yet seen Johnson go Nico Collins on someone. Even the contested catches we have are not exactly high-pointing a ball.

For the most part that's a good thing because it means no one's close enough to do so. It is an open question about his game.

The three outright drops… yeah. Not ideal.

Johnson has massive upside in an offense that gets more passing-oriented. Michigan's likely will, as is natural for a team that returns its quarterbacks. If he can work on his hands, and if McNamara is more cognizant of the times Johnson puts his dude in the spin cycle, a breakout season is in the offing. He's too big and too open to not bust out. Except… well, you know what I'm going to say, and what I'm going to say in every projection paragraph until we hit the offensive line: targets, targets, targets.

Johnson should be All Big Ten quality even if he doesn't get David Bell usage. I'd be surprised if he makes it to day three of the draft.

not bad for a flier recruit nobody had heard of [Patrick Barron]

1B, or maybe 1A, is RONNIE BELL, who entered last year as the undisputed #1 receiver before tearing his ACL against Western Michigan. Bell was a flyer recruit originally committed to Missouri State for basketball but emerged into a viable option early in his career. In 2019—the last time Bell played a full, non-COVID insanity season—he actually edged out Nico Freakin' Collins in receiving yards. That may say more about Shea Patterson's decision-making than anything about Bell, admittedly. (Do not get me started.)

Still, Bell had a knack for taking short passes and turning them into long ones. He occasionally displayed the hops you'd expect a basketball recruit to have. He was consistently targeted to excellent effect—his 9.8 YPT was second only to Collins in 2019. And yet there was great controversy about his hands because of an infamous drop against Penn State. After that Bell popped up in a couple of articles as the guy with the worst drop rate in the country, a narrative this preview did not buy into, to say the least, because Ronnie Bell 2019 was Poor Damn Ronnie Bell:

When Bell showed up in game column bullets they were titled things like "A foot away from a monster day" and "Not quite." This space saw a ton of throws that demanded difficult or impossible catches; others just saw drops. So one of the major controversies of the offseason was whether or not Bell was any good. On one side were persons of reason and taste. On the other were the Demand Excellence wing of the fanbase and some fly-by-night charting services. …

Since Bell owns one of the most infamous drops in recent Michigan history, it's easy to accept that at face value. But this is, in a word, horseshit. The only way to get to a drop rate anywhere near the one claimed is to include events like this one:

Bell did drop four routine passes in 2019 but had a tough catch rate on par with Nico Collins and a disproportionate number of insanely difficult balls. We aren't quite vindicated by subsequent events because of COVID, but in 2020 Bell led the team in receptions with 26 and had a healthy 16 yard average. He was 20/20 on routine balls and 4/7 on tough ones. He didn't have much chance to do anything spectacular because Michigan didn't trust its quarterbacks at all, and when Joe Milton missed he tended to give his receivers no shot at all. (It's also worth noting that Milton threw everything 1000 miles an hour and Bell had no issues dealing with that.) We only had him for a total of two circus attempts. Questions about his hands should nonetheless be resolved.

What, you want a circus attempt? Fine, here's a circus attempt.

Nevermind: vindicated. That was called back on one of the worst OPI calls in living memory. Then Bell caught a 76-yard touchdown; then he tore his ACL. Goodbye, season.

What now? Well, chatter from inside the program says he's back to where he was, 100%. I believe responses to open-ended questions about fall camp MVPs, particularly when there are other guys at the position who are established as excellent Big Ten players. So, Harbaugh:

“Ronnie Bell has been tremendous,” Harbaugh said when asked to name an MVP of fall camp. “… Ronnie does jump out as somebody that is faster, catching the ball extremely well, and he's stronger. He’s been there every day and doing a tremendous job.”

If Bell is faster and stronger than he was a couple years ago, look out. That's not out of the realm of possibility. A little early in the offseason chatter season (Big Ten media days), Harbaugh went into more detail about Bell's recovery:

So key performance indicators, speed and agility he’s PR-ing now to pre-injury performance. So he has (a new personal record) in speed, miles per hour, in our plyo stairs, three-cone drill, it’s awesome. He's appears right now faster, stronger, a lot of ways better than before the injury.

ACLs are not a big deal these days and if the numbers are improved they're improved. Bell should take over where he left off.

Johnson may have more NFL upside but I while going over our clips I was struck by how three different quarterbacks have looked at Bell as a safety blanket over the past few years. It says something that the conservative McNamara got thrown in the Wisconsin game as a redshirt freshman and immediately nailed Bell over the middle despite facing zone.

There's two parts to route running. One of them is pretty easy to judge from our perch: how far away is the defensive back? The other is close to impossible to evaluate: are you exactly where the quarterback expects you to be? This is mostly feelingsball but it feels like Patterson, Milton, and McNamara all used Bell as a crutch because he offered no surprises.

This preview projects that Bell is going to get a ton of time in the slot. The next two guys we're about to cover fit better as outside receivers, and there's no one else on the roster who fits the bill as the underneath chain-mover on third and medium. Bell isn't only a chain mover, either. He's already established himself as a fade threat from that spot—that was his WMU touchdown. This from 2020 is against Tiawan Mullen:

Combine that ability with the aforementioned safety blanket aspect of his game (see the above McNamara slant) and his ability on WR screens…

…and you have a recipe for an elite, complete slot. While Michigan avoided WR screens like crazy in Bell's most recent complete season, the above was not a one-off. He's a guy who has more wiggle than you'd think on bubble screens and other opportunities to run after the catch.

In that 2019 Penn State game throwing bubbles to Bell was a major part of the gameplan, sometimes even when it was a very bad idea. Folks trying to tackle him often ended up leaking three or four more yards after contact. He occasionally gave off a Hassan Haskins vibe when defensive backs tried to take him down:

That's all the things you can do in the slot.

In addition to all that, Bell is a devastating blocker…

#8 to top

…who put up a UFR WR blocking record of +11.5(!) against MSU in 2019. So if you want to throw him outside when you're executing your Henning/Edwards hijinks that's another aspect of his game that he excels in.

And that's everything a wide receiver can do on the football field. NFL draft types have him in the latter rounds, and if there's a flaw in his game (other than the drops issue, which we've addressed previously) this is apparently it:

Physically, Bell profiles as a guy who should have success facing the quarterback, but he struggles to gear down and make the necessary sharp cuts to create separation underneath. … Bell seems comfortable in traffic to the point where he doesn’t make the effort to create separation.

That bit after the ellipses seems sort of nonsensical, but if it does turn out that Bell's not the ideal guy to shake a Dax Hill type on third and six he still brings a boatload of other positives to the table. He's probably not getting enough targets to get national recognition but he should be All Big Ten as long as the fact that Michigan isn't throwing it 50 times a game is taken into account.

BACKUPS: SHOCK AND AWE

meep meep [Patrick Barron]

Michigan's backup receivers would probably start just about anywhere in the conference not named Ohio State. ROMAN WILSON is a verified speedster who caught 25 balls for 420 yards a year ago, 75 of which came on that spectacular double pass in the Big Ten championship game. He got a little bit of help on the playcall there but he also dusted projected first round pick Joey Porter Jr for a skinny post touchdown against Penn State…

…straight-up torched a Georgia cornerback on a fly route…

…and has regularly featured as a hand-wavingly open guy downfield who often has to slow down for the ball to arrive.

The other thing he's done is catch blitheringly wide open hitches, out, and comebacks, because if you even think about sitting on the hitch you're going to set off all the smoke alarms in the stadium.

If this was a video game that cornerback would have dissolved into a pixel soup about 15 yards downfield.

Most of the time opposing cornerbacks didn't dare. This one was the most emblematic. It's first and fifteen from the twenty two and the guy Wilson's going up against, Penn State's Tariq Castro-Fields, got drafted in the sixth round. He's good. By the time Wilson catches this ball Castro-Fields is six yards away from Wilson because PSU decided on a bail zone in this situation.

There was also a second and fifteen hitch conversion against Indiana. People are terrified of Roman Wilson. Run fast, or run fast and stop. This is a pretty neat trick.

As of right now it's also almost Wilson's only trick. Wilson has been used in a slot context on occasion but when he's gotten the odd end-around he hasn't seemed particularly jittery.  He is not exactly in Bell's league as a blocker. When Michigan does ask him to run something other than "run fast" or "run fast and stop" it was almost always either "fake a block and run fast" or a crossing route. When he drops a route+ in UFR it is always because he's absurdly fast, and not because he turned a guy around a la Johnson.

There were a couple of hints that he could expand his game. He caught a contested red-zone fade against Maryland and dug out a low throw against Wisconsin. It's also worth noting that he caught all the deep balls. This should not be taken for granted. With few exceptions (like the double pass), almost all bombs are 2s or 1s in our grading because the ball is coming very fast from far away. Remember that season after Edwards left when Michigan kept finding Steve Breaston open for bombs and Breaston kept dropping them? Wilson does not do that.

The previous paragraph is admittedly to the "to be sure" paragraph. Wilson is the bombs guy. This is fine!

Michigan has the route artisan and the slot fade guy and the jittery end-around guy and the high-point guy. Wilson doesn't need to do any of that. Wilson is the guy who will show up in Crimea to blow up a bunch of fighter jets while Ukraine's offensive coordinator coyly denies his existence. Al Davis is going to claw his way out of the grave to draft him in the first round. Shock and awe, baby. He's the cherry on top of the receiving corps.

This preview projects Wilson has exactly the same role he did on last year's team. Giddyup.

it says 1 on the jersey [Bryan Fuller]

And then there's ANDREL ANTHONY [recruiting profile]. You know, the guy Ron Bellamy and Jim Harbaugh are directly comparing to Braylon Edwards:

“Andrel, one of the guys that he wants to emulate his Braylon,” Bellamy said. “The things that Braylon’s done on the field and if you look at it they’re very similar — body structure and — I can obviously share stories because I played with Braylon for two years and just how brilliant he attacked the game — and Andrel wants to add that to his game” …

“Oh yeah, that’s probably a pretty darn good comparison right there,” Harbaugh said.

That guy. Deservedly fourth in order of mention.

Anthony literally burst onto the scene in the Michigan State game when he took a slant 93 yards for a touchdown, outdistancing the Michigan State secondary the whole way. He followed that up with a high-point touchdown that was eerily reminiscent of Edwards…

…a deep out he dug out of the turf, and a second high-point ball that was barely out of bounds. He finished the day with six catches for 155 yards. A hell of a debut by any standard.

Anthony didn't keep that up—he had one catch in each of the next six games—but see the above item about beating OSU with one second-half throw. The freshman wide receiver was lucky to get the targets he did, even if he looked like a future star while reeling them in.

And make no mistake: Anthony looks like the total package. He's long, rangy, fast, and has displayed impeccable hands. His catches to date are inordinately spectacular. We have twelve clips for a guy who caught twelve passes last year. QED. He torched a (backup but highly touted) Georgia safety for a touchdown, and Seth caught him getting a couple yards of separation on another play that ended up in a scramble:

WR #1 to top of screen

So he's provided initial indications he can get it done against A+ athletes on the other side. He's sold double moves, he's made contested catches, he's blazed past guys for long touchdowns. He was a true freshman who should be expected to improve a great deal.

It's hard to project Anthony. We have some really promising data, but not much of it, and he's the third to seventh option on a team that'll probably pass more but still has Jim Harbaugh and Blake Corum. I'd guess he gets about 25 catches, several of them spectacular, and is poised for a breakout season going into 2023. You get the number, you get the expectations. Anthony's on his way to meeting them.

misdirection ho [Fuller]

AJ HENNING should back up Bell in the slot, at least nominally. Bell and Henning are polar opposite slot types. Bell's a receiver first and foremost who's dangerous downfield. Henning is a speed in space sort who has the same sort of yards per catch as a fullback. Henning's main responsibility on offense was to be the jet sweep/end-around guy, a role he performed with aplomb:

(The Ohio State one is fun, yes, but Henning met no resistance until the two; pretty much anyone on the roster would have scored.) He also grabbed the occasional screen, that sort of thing.

The one truly downfield target he received was an awkward, probably improvised back-shoulder fade against Rutgers he may have been interfered on:

There's good and bad there. The good: he's way inside the numbers so he's got a ton of room to expand into on this exact throw. The bad: he didn't actually do it. Henning's brief moment in the sun as a guy who actually catches passes came early in the season when JJ McCarthy thought he was still in high school and had eyes only for his former teammate. Once McCarthy was like "dude… these guys," Henning was once again typecast.

Look for more of the same this year what with the absurd surfeit of receiving dudes. Targeting a 5'9" guy who hasn't already displayed unreasonable receiving chops just isn't going to happen this year, but Henning will be a useful piece when Michigan wants to exploit guys overreacting to Corum and Edwards. Edwards's presence will help him since Henning is roughly analogous—he ran the ball a lot in high school and even took a few RB snaps as a freshman. Josh Henschke in fact mentioned that Henning is the other guy being used in the Edwards package. Spread H: a real thing!

THE DEEP END: FREAKS AND ONE GEEK

Clemons (#0) had a selfie celebration all set up, good thing he caught it [Patrick Barron]

With two draftable tight ends and Edwards in addition to the five guys already listed it's going to be extremely  difficult for anyone else to break through. Two freshmen are generating the most buzz, with a third a late-developing story because of a high school injury. DARRIUS CLEMONS [recruiting profile] had a spectacular lay-out touchdown in the spring game…

…that hilariously interrupted a Devin Gardner interview of Ronnie Bell, and AMORION WALKER [recruiting profile] is causing five-star freshman CB Will Johnson to declare that Walker is the "freakiest athlete" he's been around; Clemons added that Walker "gets in and out of breaks like nobody else." Harbaugh put a couple of Walker's eyepopping internal testing numbers on record in the spring:

"Three freak shows that are incoming freshmen in Darrius Clemons and Tyler Morris and — Amorion Walker is really doing some incredible things," Harbaugh said on a Michigan Athletics podcast last month. "Ran a 6.25 three-cone the other day, got a 43-inch vertical jump.

Despite that it seems like Clemons is a nose ahead, with spring chatter like "he's tearing it up" and fall chatter like "they will try to get him on the field as much as possible." Also Clemons is listed 25 pounds heavier than 180-pound stick insect Walker. Also also when asked if there was a Jason Avant in the WR room, Ron Bellamy said this:

Darrius Clemons right now, the young buck. Now  he’s not as polished as Jason, but he will be. He will be. But he’s the guy that — ‘Coach, watch this!’ He’s that guy that — he’s a bigger guy, 210 and now he’s strong as an ox, is explosive and he loves contact. Jason was like that.

If Clemons has anything approximating Avant's hands the sky is the limit.

Both of these guys enrolled early and these days Freshmen Wide Receivers Suck is more of a heuristic than an ironclad law. It would still be a massive upset if either guy got to ten catches. Salt these guys away and see what you've got next year. Chances are it'll be pretty enticing. Seth's comps here were Braylon Edwards and Nico Collins. No pressure, guys!

Also in hyped freshmen: former JJ McCarthy teammate TYLER MORRIS [recruiting profile] projects as a rangy slot type or possibly another Ronnie Bell, but he's coming off a torn ACL and was in street clothes this spring. A redshirt beckons, but he too is fielding fall hype as the member of the trio that "catches everything".

Dixon spotted in the wild [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

It's late early for the last two scholarship guys on the roster. Redshirt freshman CRISTIAN DIXON [recruiting profile] caught one pass in the opener against Northern Illinois and then headed back to the bench for the duration. Dixon has the kind of recruiting profile that seems a little ominous—giant early hype petering out into mid-to-low four star rankings. Those guys often don't drop enough, and Seth didn't see anything that made him want to stand on the table when he went over his film. Dixon lost his senior year to COVID and his recruiting profile is full of technique complaints, so maybe there's something in there to be uncovered with another year or two of honing. This year seems like a scout team kind of thing. He has not fielded offseason chatter save for the Harbaugh depth chart, when he was referenced as "surging."

EAMONN DENNIS [recruiting profile] is being listed at wide receiver now after spending a year at corner. Dennis arrived as a high school Chris Evans type with zero defensive film or scouting, so the move back isn't a death knell for his chances of contributing. It's not great that absolutely nothing has been heard about him since his arrival—the only mention on the site is Seth's spring phonebooks post, which notes his position swap. He's the only true slot on the roster other than Henning if you consider Sainristil a DB now, so if he's got a path to the field in the near future it'll be running bubbles and end-arounds. Roman Wilson did shout him out as one of the fastest guys on the team.

Finally, people are mentioning walk-on PEYTON O'LEARY. Sainristil mentioned O'Leary third(!) in his list of guys who are difficult to defend:

Roman is really fast. Ronnie is really detailed with his routes, and he's been looking really sharp since he's been back off his injury. Peyton O'Leary is one that's coming up right now. Walk-on guy, but I don't even look at him that way. I think he's right up there with anybody who's on scholarship. He's doing really well right now.

Bell also said he's "had a hell of a camp." Then when Harbaugh just depth-chart bombed the Michigan internet, I mean, he said this:

Another guy who has surged is Peyton O'Leary. So Peyton O'Leary is backing up Cornelius Johnson right now at at the ‘X’ position. And he has had a a Cooper Kupp-like training camp. I mean, he’s almost got that nickname around here right now.

I don't believe you dot gif. But… this is hype you have to lend some credence to because it's not like Michigan has to talk about a redshirt freshman walk-on because he's slated to be an important player. Keep an eye out down the road.