hassan haskins

Catching up on 2023 Hellos that we missed during the rush of basketball/hockey postseason, we begin today with RB Benjamin Hall. Hall hails from Kenesaw, GA, and attends North Cobb HS in the Atlanta area. Michigan beat out South Carolina to land his commitment and he is now the second RB in the class: 

GURU RATINGS

Last row is Seth's conversion to a five-star scale. Links are to profiles

Hall is a player still rising up boards and therefore doesn't have full evaluations yet from many of these scouting services. Right now he is seen as a firm 3* recruit outside the top 500, but Hall has the profile of someone who will rise further over the course of the cycle. He was only a rotational piece as a junior last season, splitting carries with his team's QB, and the stats are not as illustrious as that of a typical high-end recruit. However, if he has a larger role and takes advantage of the opportunity as a senior, I could easily see him moving up the rankings. He was high on Michigan's RB board and the staff has had pretty good success at recruiting players who become late risers as the recruiting cycle rolls along. Hall seems like another possibility to add to that group. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: the usuals]

Hello, fan of an NFL team. MGoBlog excruciatingly scouts every Michigan play, and scores them to inform our coverage. Since mi atleta es su atleta now, here we share what we're sharing.

Quickly: Fools-hurdlin' thunderback who meets every moment, doesn't fumble, and always falls forward.

Draft Projection: 3rd round-caliber who'll probably drop to Day 3 because in 100 years like three NFL GMs total have learned not to say "You can't teach speed" when drafting a running back. I think Haskins will be a value pick in the 5th to 7th round because he's guaranteed to be valuable to his team (he'll play special teams until you need him), and John Harbaugh's nephew found and coached Haskins in the first place. Nevertheless, I'm bracing for Hassan to still be on the board when someone reaches for Isaih Pacheco. Someone will get a steal, fantasy types will think they've made a grand discovery when Haskins starts scoring TDs all over the place, and then everyone will shrug and say running backs really can come from anywhere/only the local fanboys can say they saw it coming. Like Joique Bell.

NFL Comp: LeGarrette Blount, but 230, slower, doesn't fumble, and a shining example of a human being.

What's his story? Friend, I don't care if your team is called the Columbus Trytosucks or the Detroit Lions. Get ready to BELIEVE!

Emerging from the bottom of the recruiting class rankings, in an era when the first and last thing anyone knew about Michigan was Ohio State gets to eat our lunch, Hassan Haskins defied the fanbase-wide notion that we cannot have good things.

very next play pic.twitter.com/PVhhYkU83B

— Due# (@JDue51) October 27, 2019

Michigan's coaches knew they had a gem and were terrified about exposing his recruiting story lest other teams pick up on it. He ran a 4.74 forty in high school. After a redshirt season in which they tried him at their hybrid linebacker job, Haskins emerged behind a crowded RB room that included a 5-star freshman Zach Charbonnet because all the others were fumbling away a well-in-hand game at Illinois. Though Michigan kept adding great backs, Haskins held onto RB#1 from the 2019 Illinois game because he never went down on first contact. He played special teams. He hurdled fools so often we made a thing out of it. When there was nobody else to stiffarm, juke, set up, or hurdle, Haskins ran for a while, then someone would catch up and there'd be a tussle for ten yards followed by a field goal try.

For this and many reasons, Haskins is a deeply personal favorite. It wasn't so long ago Michigan was coming off a 2-4 season and finding any cause for excitement in 2021 was work. It was then it struck me that Haskins was the way out of the black pit of negative expectations, or BPONE as the familiar put it. If your program is one that calls boring power runs that meet a safety at the line of scrimmage, Haskins is a reason to keep watching past what your brain's already concluded is the inevitable.

When the NIL dragon was unleashed last offseason I strongly recommended buying his jersey. I did so too, and had it hanging behind me in my office for all Coronavirus Zoom calls.

Positives: Very quick feet and acceleration make him an excellent runner behind power. Incredible balance. Always gets yards after contact, and fights for the extra 2 at the end of every run. Does not fumble. Became an excellent blocker over the course of his career.

Negatives: Has a long way to go as a stretch zone runner—Michigan didn't run it much and he often missed gap opportunities. Not fast, in case you hadn't heard.

I think I might make a habit out of breaking out things I notice in UFR. That was the origin, after all, of the old MGoBlog feature Picture Pages, which in turn was the inspiration for Neck Sharpies. This one got broken out when I realized I was taking way too long to explain why Georgia’s talent was too much for Michigan’s, at least on this side of the ball.

It’s the first appearance by JJ McCarthy in this game, the first play of their second offensive drive, and a second early sign that Georgia’s incredible collection of talent was creating issues that Michigan hadn’t faced this year—not even against Ohio State:

THE ALIGNMENT

Michigan’s got their two-TE personnel in, which isn’t odd for them. Also not odd for them is covering a tight end to unbalance the line. Refresher of the rules: The offense needs at minimum seven men on the line of scrimmage. The end to each side can be an eligible receiver if he’s wearing an eligible number (0-49 or 80-99), with the interior five ineligible. In this example Joel Honigford (#84) is “covered” and thus must be subject to the rules for linemen. Hayes is also subject to those rules, since he’s wearing #76.

Also McCarthy is in, which is a signifier that the Wolverines are looking to do some old fashioned college crappe, which usually means some kind of read that removes a defender with the quarterback’s eyes. In these situations Michigan expects their opponents to stack the box, bringing at least one safety down because the offense is down a potential receiver. It’s an invitation that few would pass up, since it’s supposed to be an advantage for the defense. If the safety gets optioned by the QB, at least the numbers advantage from the option has been nullified.

It’s also part of how Michigan likes to play offense. The gamble here is the defense can’t do enough with the extra man to significantly alter an outcome: what are they gonna do, have the safety run into Hassan Haskins? On the other hand, a safety down is a chance for a big play, and these Wolverines led the nation in generating such.

That Georgia’s leaving *both* safeties high here is a thing we haven’t seen much of. Knowing that Michigan is likely to run, that McCarthy is likely to option someone, and that Michigan likes to bring material from the backside to overwhelm their numbers at the point of attack, the Bulldogs are saying “bring it.” Their one conceit to the threat of a run to Honigford’s side is they’ve lined up their DE/DT and their SAM (a 235-pound DE/OLB) outside the TE.

That’s saying a thing too. The big gap between the tackles is an invitation to put the linebackers in conflict between a hard-charging Haskins and a quick pass behind them.

In short, the alignment of the two teams here is a threat from Michigan to run 9 guys vs 7, and Georgia is saying “Bring it.” Of course neither team is being honest about their intentions.

[After THE JUMP: This goes down]