Michigan Wolverines: Tough But Necessary

I think it is safe to say this season did not go anything like we expected. Michigan really struggled across the board, going 2-4 on the season. It was not truly all bad, but there was not exactly a ton of good. I am here to sort through all of it and see what things might need to happen going into next season.

Quarterback

Joe Milton was not what any of us expected or hoped he would be. I mean, I expressed my concerns in my season preview, but I did not think he would look as bad as he did. For having such a big arm, he just does not have the accuracy, especially down the field, to consistently move the offense. He has all the physical tools you could ask for, but at the end of the day he just does not have the finesse or the mental game necessary to be successful.

Cade McNamara, on the other hand, looked outstanding in his limited playing time. He looked calm, confident, and put virtually every single pass on the money. He single-handedly won the Rutgers game, which was one of the best performances by a quarterback that I have ever seen. Then, of course, he got hurt early on in the very next game against Penn State, and we never saw him again. If J.J. McCarthy was not coming in next season, I would undoubtedly say it is McNamara’s job to lose, but the highly touted freshman could potentially come in and win the job outright. What is more likely is that McNamara will start the season so that we do not thrust a true freshman in before he is considered ready, and then if McNamara either struggles or gets injured, McCarthy could potentially step in. Remember, even generational talent Trevor Lawrence did not start at Clemson until Kelly Bryant got injured, so do not be surprised if McNamara is still our starter Week 1.

Running Back

Hassan Haskins seemed to take over as the lead back over Zach Charbonnet, and he looked good doing it. Haskins runs so hard that it makes him unbelievably hard to tackle, even though he is not the fastest guy and also not particularly elusive. He just has a knack for running through guys, and it is very fun to watch. As for Charbonnet, I do not really know what to do with him. I think he is a good running back, but he just did not get enough carries to really make an impact. I do not know what the reasoning is for that outside of Haskins just playing better than him. With the two running backs we have coming in next year, Donovan Edwards and Tavierre Dunlap, I honestly am not that surprised that Charbonnet ended up transferring.

Chris Evans was a nice story, coming back after being ineligible last season, but he did not do anything impressive. Fortunately, his fumbling issues did not really come up at any point, but that is pretty much the best thing I can say about his season.

Blake Corum, on the other hand, was an instant playmaker, just like I hoped he would be. He was explosive on every single touch he had, demonstrating both incredible speed and elusiveness. If I were in charge of personnel, I would have given Corum 20 touches every single game this season. I cannot wait to watch him continue to develop the next few years. A backfield duo of Edwards and Corum sounds incredibly intriguing.

Fullback

Ben Mason is a big dude. That is pretty much it. This offense seems to be moving away from using a fullback, anyways, so the fact he is graduating is probably not the biggest loss.

Wide Receiver

I feel bad for this unit because they suffered badly from the poor quarterback play (Milton and McNamara combined for a measly 1,502 passing yards on the season). For what it is worth, Ronnie Bell was our leading receiver with 26 catches for 402 yards, and Cornelius Johnson, who had one of my favorite plays of the year with his 46-yard touchdown against Rutgers, was the next closest with 16 catches for 254 yards. Now, the numbers are surely a little skewed to look worse because we only played six games this year, but they are still quite low. Even on a full season, Bell still would not have exceeded 1,000 yards. Mike Sainristil was not as involved as I expected him to be, but I think that is a combination of the quarterback play (Milton missed him a number of times) as well as just the sheer number of weapons we have to at our disposal. Giles Jackson and Roman Wilson, the deep threats, naturally were the worst off because Milton could not throw an accurate deep ball. True freshman A.J. Henning was more of a gadget player for us, typically getting the ball on jet sweeps, but I really like the speed he flashed. I feel that all of the receivers on this team did about as well as they could, and I think all of them will be very good for us in the seasons to come. This unit is particularly interesting because of how young they are. Ronnie Bell is the oldest, and he is only a junior. Everyone else is a sophomore or a freshman. Not to mention we have three more receivers coming in the next recruiting class: Xavier Worthy, Christian Dixon, and Andrel Anthony. That means we are slated to have nine receivers that could all be in the rotation, which is insane. I have no idea how we are going to balance that, but I do know for sure that this unit will put up a lot more numbers next year with either McNamara or McCarthy throwing the passes.

Tight End

I do not have a whole lot to say about these guys. Nick Eubanks was solid, and Erick All showed a little bit of his potential. I think he has all the talent in the world, no pun intended, but he had a couple bad drops this year and I would love to see him take that next step going into next season.

Offensive Line

I liked three of our starters just fine, Jalen Mayfield, Andrew Stueber, and Ryan Hayes. They did relatively well all season, and with two of them, Stueber and Hayes, coming back next year, we have a good starting point. The other two starters, Andrew Vastardis and Chuck Filiaga, I took issue with for a couple reasons. First of all, they just were not very good. They would get beat on a way more consistent basis than the other three starters. Secondly, they are both seniors, and the way I see it, if they were actually good, they would have already gone to the NFL. That concern certainly came to fruition. I liked what I saw from the younger players that saw playing time, Karsen Barnhart, Trevor Keegan, and Zak Zinter, and I would much rather see them get meaningful playing time over guys that have been here for a while but were never good enough to start. We have even more young guys waiting in the wings like Trente Jones and Nolan Rummler, as well, so I am really hoping that next season we get to see a revamped offensive line.

Defensive Line

This may be overall the most frustrating unit on the team, and there are a few reasons for that. The first and most frustrating reason is that the coaching staff continued to give Carlo Kemp meaningful playing time, and Kemp continued to get blown off the line every single play. He is a 260-pound defensive tackle, and that is just not something that will work in the Big Ten against the monstrous offensive lines of teams like Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Iowa. You could maybe get away with in a conference like the PAC-12, which is ironically where Don Brown now finds himself. I did appreciate that towards the end of the year we started to see a lot more of the young guys like Chris Hinton start to get more playing time next to Donovan Jeter, because guys like that have the size to stand up against the big offensive linemen, they just need to develop a bit more. Secondly, I just wish we got a little more pressure off the edge. I like Kwity Paye and Aidan Hutchinson, do not get me wrong, and they both had good seasons, especially Paye, but there were a lot of instances where we needed a big play off the edge, and nothing would materialize, and the quarterback would just sit in the pocket for five seconds before finding an open receiver. It is times like that where we missed having a guy like Chase Winovich, who is one of my all-time favorite Wolverines. With Paye now off to the NFL Draft, Hutchinson is going to have to make another big step forward and really establish himself as a force off the edge.

Linebacker

When everyone was healthy this was my favorite unit on the defense by far. Cam McGrone, Josh Ross, and Michael Barrett were a force to be reckoned with. Barrett was by far the best performer of the three this year, as well, with McGrone fighting injuries pretty much the entire year. Barrett made big plays left and right, flying all over the field. I expected him to be good, but he surpassed my expectations. When injuries hit, though, I took serious issue with the direction we went. Instead of playing younger guys like Anthony Solomon, Cornell Wheeler, or Kalel Mullings, we decided to play senior Adam Shibley, who was pretty much completely ineffective. Why we decided to go with him, I have no idea. It was pretty clearly a lost season anyways, so I would think the young guys could only stand to gain from some playing time. With McGrone declaring for the NFL Draft, which I think was maybe a bit premature for him, personally, we are going to have a hole to fill next season. Hopefully one of the young guys rises to the occasion.

Cornerback

Oh man, where do I even begin? Losing Ambry Thomas for the season was a real sign of bad news for us, and that definitely came to fruition. This was probably the biggest dumpster fire of a position for us this year, and that is largely due to the poor play by Vincent Gray. He struggled mightily, which was extremely disappointing because he looked solid last season, and Don Brown really talked him up this offseason, but that all led to nothing. Gray was largely outplayed by his counterpart, Gemon Green, who overall had a solid season. I generally liked what I saw from Green this year, and I am hoping he can build off of that next season. Beyond those two, we saw a real rotation of players take the field: Jalen Perry, DJ Turner, and safety Daxton Hill. Unsurprisingly, Hill was the best, but we needed him at safety just as much, which I will get to in a second, so the other guys saw more playing time. Now, Don Brown did not run a very corner-friendly scheme, especially when we struggle to generate pressure, so the cornerbacks were not exactly set up to succeed, but they still need to take a massive step forward next year if we want to try to compete for anything. Maybe with a new defensive coordinator, as well, they will be able to find more success.

Safety

Daxton Hill is a stud, and he really showed signs of it this year. On a defense that was overall quite terrible, he still found a way to stand out. Whether he lined up at safety or cornerback, he still made plays. He still has a little way to go in terms of making tackles and tracking the ball, but the tools are all there, and I think we are undoubtedly seeing a star in the making. Brad Hawkins, on the other hand, is solid at best. He is not particularly dynamic, and there were a couple plays he should have made but was unable to. He announced he was coming back next year, and honestly, I was more disappointed than excited. We have so many young players at safety right now, such as Makari Paige, who we saw in spurts this season, that I would much rather see play than Hawkins. I do not hate Hawkins by any stretch like I did, say, Josh Metellus, I just feel like we have better players than him on this roster.

Special Teams

With how much of a struggle it was for both our offense and our defense this season, I do not even have much to say about the special teams unit. Quinn Nordin and Jake Moody both kicked fine, although it is still weird to me that we saw both of them yet again.

In what was overall a weird year, we had a weird football season. It is only fitting, really. I think ultimately this is a season that needed to happen to force this team to make some changes. I have wanted Don Brown gone for a while now, and I am happy to see Harbaugh ready and willing to make changes to his coaching staff. It shows that he is still about winning here at Michigan. With all the coaching changes that were made and a strong recruiting class coming in, I am extremely excited for next season. Hopefully it ends up being a lot better.