frank clark

We made it! [Patrick Barron]

A series covering Michigan's 2010s. Previously: QBs, RBs, and WRs, TEs, FBs, and OL, best blocks, the aughts.

Methodology: The staff decided these together and split the writeups. Considering individual years but a player can only be nominated once.

DEFENSIVE TACKLE: Maurice Hurst Jr. (2017)

image

The spread age means defensive material gets moved away from the box, simplifying the game by taking away most of the defense's opportunity to surprise. You can't bring pressure from everywhere if your OLBs and safeties have to split out with slot receivers. RPOs, quick passing games, receiver running backs, cross-motion, run-threat QBs, and read-based rushing offenses nerf the effectiveness of even the elite edge rushers until passing downs take those options away. But the one thing spread offenses have no answer for is a penetrating defensive tackle who won't get doubled and won't get out of his damn lane.

Into this math stepped Mo Hurst, and oh was that first step unholy quick.

The spread has no answer for that.

Hurst was the son of an NFL father who'd left only his name, from a fancy Massachusetts private school his mom had to Mom Out to pay for, and a first step looking to be attached to a football player.

Why Mike Martin? Two words: snap explosion.

Martin was a bit higher rated—consensus four star outside the top 100, IIRC—and an ever-growing slab of pulsating muscle from day one. Hurst isn't going to be quite as ripped, but he is a kid who can get off the ball in a flash, bury himself in the chest of the opponent, and then rip through the dude before he knows what's going on.

We were hype, with distant future caveats. The burst came in 2015, first as a passing down sub for Ryan Glasgow, then a cycler with the aforementioned and Willie Henry. Hurst made his mark on the season with quick flashes into the backfield, but got exposed for his youth when Glasgow was out and Kevin Wilson's fast-paced Indiana stretched him to death.

By 2016 the MGoBlog love for the wrecking ball responsible for Michigan's second line (Gary/Hurst/Mone/Winovich) matching the starters (Wormley/Godin/Glasgow/Taco) in production was expressed in UFR (+84.5/-20) then surpassed by Pro Football Focus—then at the fulness of their scouting, and it was on. We called him the defensive MVP (over Peppers). They put him on the All-American team. We wrote a profile in and put him rubbing his belly on the cover of HTTV, they put him on the top of the top players returning for 2017. We created a maurice hurst is so good he is kind of boring tag. They put him in Heisman territory:

This site wasn't far off—Hurst's senior season tape is the best by a DT or any other position in the history of the exercise. His +152/-27.5 is the standing record for UFR. The 3-3-5 they routinely deployed, because there wasn't a second line of Mo Hursts anymore, nerfed his statistical impact. This site was saying this after Game 2:

He is Mo Hurst. The end.

How far you want to go with the superlatives after that is up to you. The best player of the 2010s? There's an argument. The best DT in Michigan history? Depends how much film you want to watch. But if you want to know what's different about Michigan's last two defensive efforts against Ohio State and the two that gave wobby offenses a chance to win in 2016 and 2017, he is Mo Hurst. The end.

--Seth

[After THE JUMP: MGoBlog and the mid-teens were good for one thing]

F_47ebce3823c9e186a5ffcf725cbde6b251ade70d5333a[1]

skill position recruiting under Brady Hoke

Where is the talent?

Brian,

Hoke's recruiting classes were consistently highly ranked, bringing in 4 and 5 star athletes coveted by other reputable football programs, yet I keep reading that we lag many Big Ten teams in talent. I find it hard to believe Hoke is this bad at talent evaluation and missed on this many athletes. What do you think of the innate talent on the roster? Is this a pure development issue, or was Hoke that unlucky or bad at identifying talent?

Peter from Horsham, PA

It could be there, but concealed by the Hoke chaos.

Last year's D was 14th in yards per play and returns eight or nine starters, depending on how you define the term. The only personnel losses were Raymon Taylor, Frank Clark, Jake Ryan, and Brennen Beyer; Michigan gets Desmond Morgan off an injury redshirt and adds Wayne Lyons.

It didn't feel like that good of a defense, though. Part of that was the quality of competition. Michigan is 41st in FEI despite having shiny regular stats. (MSU is one spot ahead of them in 40th.) Part of that was the offense putting the D out there so often in bad situations that they were going to crack eventually. Many, many games over the past two years have had a similar pattern. The defense scratches and claws to keep Michigan in it and then they collapse in the fourth quarter because they're out of juice.

The other part of that was Michigan going to a man press defense their team simply could not hack. Blake Countess was exposed for half the season before they went back to their old ways. Is that "talent"? In some ways. But Hoke took an All Big Ten sophomore and destroyed him because he couldn't see that he was being put in a terrible situation for his skill set.

Meanwhile on offense… I got nothing. With the exception of projected TE Devin Funchess, Michigan recruited horribly at QB and WR under Hoke. The Chesson/Darboh class was all right, but they appear to have missed on all three guys they took the next year and the jury is very much out on last year's class. QB… I want to throw a rock in Hoke's general direction every time I think about it.

Recruiting very badly at QB is a way to have your recruiting rankings far outstrip your ability to play football. It's only one spot. Michigan's piles of OL are five. Michigan has nothing to show from the Hoke era other than a three star they took early with little competition and Shane Morris, who it is now clear was wildly overrated by the services. Morris is the kind of boom-or-bust guy you can take happily in a Harbaugh context where the roster has five or six or seven QBs on it; he is a disaster waiting to happen if the two guys in front of him are Russell Bellomy and air and the guy behind him is a middling three star. Harbaugh set about fixing that, at least.

Meanwhile the places Hoke did best—the lines—are the ones where you have to wait the longest to get a return on your investment. OL are particularly unpredictable.

And, yes, I do think Hoke was pretty bad at IDing talent. Look at the Dukes/Jones/York WR class, or the performance of the tailbacks he brought in, or the Wangler/Ferns/Furbush/Winovich LB class. Do not get me started on the tailbacks. Look at the decision to move to press man.

Defensive line is an obvious exception, where Michigan's turned two three-star Glenville projects into real players, but that just re-confirms that Hoke was a pretty good DL coach who ended up in way over his head.

Uppity so-and-sos with their thesauri

Excuse me while I correct your nerdom with my (apparently) superior nerdom.  Ferret Tecmo Bowl Bo Jackson would not be the correct name.  What you are looking for is Ferret Super Tecmo Bowl Bo Jackson.  In the first Tecmo Bowl, Bo Jackson was just a man.  It is in Super Tecmo Bowl that he became an unstoppable run-circles-around-the-cpu-god.  Surely you did not mean to name the ferret after the lesser of the two Bo Jacksons.

-Ben

Bro. I said I would brook no criticism about my asymptotically perfect ferret names, and yet here you are, brooking your ass off. Well, BEN, clearly "Ferret Super Tecmo Bowl Bo Jackson" is clunky and unwieldy and stupid, as any six-year-old child could see. It is obvious to any Tecmo Bowl connoisseur that we are talking about the destroyer of worlds Bo Jackson, "Super" or not. Humor, prose, and lovemaking are all about omitting unnecessary flourishes. So too are ferret names.

[After the JUMP: Ben gets commuppanced hrrrrrd]

When the Seattle Seahawks drafted Frank Clark in the second round of last weekend's NFL Draft, the obvious question arose: how would organization handle Clark's November arrest for a domestic violence charge?

The details of the arrest report were disturbing; Brady Hoke called the incident "unacceptable" while dismissing Clark from the program; at the NFL Combine, Clark engaged in an unsettling bit of victim-blaming instead of shouldering the full responsibility for his actions.* Clark pled guity to reduced charges in April. For an NFL team looking to draft Clark, due diligence was required; this wasn't even Clark's first run-in with the law.

On Friday, Seahawks GM John Schneider said all the right things about the organization's investigation into the incident:

“Our organization has an in-depth understanding of Frank Clark’s situation and background,” Schneider told reporters in Renton after the second and third rounds on Friday. “We have done a ton of research on this young man. There hasn’t been one player in this draft that we have spent more time researching and scrutinizing more than Frank. That’s why we have provided Frank with this opportunity and are looking forward to him succeeding in our culture here in Seattle.”

Schneider said, based on the team's investigation, he didn't believe Clark hit his girlfriend, and domestic violence issues were a deal-breaker when evaluating players. That revelation came as quite the surprise to many, including witnessess of the November incident—witnesses who, according to a bombshell report in the Seattle Times today, were never consulted by the Seahawks:

But the Seahawks made him the 63rd overall pick in the draft, saying team officials had conducted an extensive investigation of their own and felt confident that the 6-foot-2, 277-pound Clark had not struck his girlfriend. The team acknowledged on Monday that their investigation did not include interviews with witnesses other than Clark.

The police report describing the incident quotes Diamond Hurt, then 20, saying Clark punched her in the face. Hurt’s younger brothers are quoted saying the same thing.

When Babson and Colie found her, Hurt “was just laying there,’’ Babson said. “She looked like she was unconscious to me.

“The kids were saying, ‘He killed my sister!’ ’’

Colie added that Hurt “was on the ground, curled up and holding her head and stuff.’’

Both women gave written statements to police via email the following day. But they say they never heard back from anybody about the case until The Seattle Times contacted them on Monday.

The Seahawks didn't perform a thorough investigation. They didn't even perform a half-assed one. They talked to the person they wanted to play football for them, heard what they wanted to hear, and willfully ignored a great deal of evidence that directly contradicted their conclusions.

It's a remarkable failure that hurts all parties involved.

It's an unfortunate reality-check for the ever-increasing number of people hoping the NFL will actually take domestic violence seriously, instead of doing the bare minimum to avoid negative PR. I can't imagine how the victim must feel seeing Clark's new employer take her alleged assailant at his word and make no effort to get the full story, one corroborated by multiple witnesses.

It also does no favors for Clark. While his alleged transgressions—and his subsequent statements—leave little room for sympathy, he's had his day in court and isn't subject to further discipline from the NFL; he should be able to move forward with his career, ideally with the support of an organization that is there to help him learn from his past and become a better person.

Seattle's investigation and its backlash, which is only just beginning, cast that into serious doubt. If the Seahawks feel obligated to correct their mistakes with this investigation, Clark will be the one looking for a job, and while he has nobody to blame but himself for being in that position, that doesn't mean it's justified. Cutting Clark may save some face for the organization, but that's about it, and it certainly doesn't help Clark find his way to a better path. If Clark remains, on the other hand, Seattle's initial handling of this doesn't instill confidence they'll do a whole lot to support Clark's growth as anything but a football player.

The Seahawks hurt themselves, too—at the very least they're facing a major controversy, and at worst they'll cut a second-round pick before he ever suits up for them—but they've somehow set themselves up as the least sympathetic party in this most recent ordeal.

What's perhaps the most galling is how unnecessary this is. Clark's alleged assault was common knowledge heading into the draft, and most expected he'd still get drafted; I don't think the central issue here is with him getting a chance to play in the NFL, or even that he got selected earlier than expected for a player with his off-field history. What concerns me most is this: Seattle didn't take the issue seriously, no matter what they say, and in doing so they set everyone up for failure.

-----------------

*Clark would later make a more contrite statement of apology (last paragraph). He still maintains he didn't strike the victim.