shantee orr

Things discussed:

  • Woodson has Craig’s back on predicting Michigan to win the Big Ten Championship
  • Ed thinks Army is the luckiest team and overrated. Craig is fearful.
  • Sam: Indiana is the trap game between MSU and OSU.
  • Ricky Rahne is kind of a mug, were still running the Moorhead plays without the Moorhead context.
  • Wisconsin’s Quintez Cephus acquitted, reinstated, took it all the way to the jury. Not a situation like at MSU—this seems like an honest acquittal of an innocent guy, but NCAA has to clear him for the missed classes.
  • Talking 3-3-5s.
  • Mike Danna reminds of us Shantee Orr, the little ball of hate from the early 2000s
  • They don’t have enough corners
  • Ambry: Sam’s personal guess is it’s not until the Wisconsin game, but he looks like he’s got his weight back.
  • Shea: In the conversation to be a guy in New York watching them give the Heisman to Tua or Trevor Lawrence.
  • Ronnie Bell is the talk.
  • Nico Collins needs more targets. Just 50?
  • Ed: Texas is way overrated. Auburn belongs in the conversation. Oregon game is interesting. Washington has an easy schedule. Utah has a good defensive line.

[Player after the jump]

2012-01-29 Museday

This is the continuation of last week's glance at the defensive line prospects from the perspective of body size against M linemen of yore at the same age. The point was to try to project what a certain body size and shape becomes and use that to relate the huge DL crop of 2012 to players we're maybe more familiar with.

This came about when I figured tried sorting the BMI (metric weight divided by height squared) of past players and found similar guys of memory ended up beside each other. Again, BMI is really for assessing whether normal people who are not 18-year-old athletes are overweight; do not interpret the numbers as any measure of how "in shape" any of these guys are.

Last week I did the nose tackles. Moving up the line is the DT, or the 3-tech. A quick technique refresher:

D-line-alignment-and-gaps-copy

Mentally shift the "1" in a 4-3 under to shaded over the center. In Mattison's defense the 3-tech is the guy lined up in the "3" spot on the line, shaded on the outside shoulder of a guard. He's the "4-3 Pass Rush Tackle," and this defense is designed to let him be more of an attacker than a "plugger." Pursuant to our discussion, greater heights that create leverage problems at the nose are not so much of a problem at 3-tech, which makes this guy more of a 3-4 DE than your traditional over-the-guard tackle. And lo the heights climb—a good 2 inches more than NT among Michigan's DTs.

6043760326_97b1775ee5_b

I thought about sprinkling in the SDEs since there's considerable overlap. Mentally start 5-techs around Willie Henry (B.Graham is above that). I'm leaving in the current players nominally slated for DT.

Pos. Name Class Ht Wt-Fr BMI-Fr BMI-Ply % Gain
3T Quinton Washington 2009 6'3 325 40.6 37.7 -7.6%
3T Alan Branch 2004 6'6 326 37.7 38.2 1.5%
3T Renaldo Sagesse 2007 6'4 303 36.9 35.2 -4.8%
3T Will Johnson 2004 6'4 285 34.7 34.7 0.0%
3T Kenny Wilkins 2010 6'3 270 33.7 35.0 3.6%
3T Larry Harrison 2002 6'2 261 33.5 40.2 16.6%
3T Willie Henry 2012 6'3 265 33.1 33.1 0.0%
3T/5T Chris Rock 2011 6'5 267 31.7 31.7 0.0%
3T/5T Keith Heitzman 2011 6'3 251 31.4 31.4 0.0%
3T/5T Matthew Godin 2012 6'6 270 31.2 31.2 0.0%
3T/5T Chris Wormley 2012 6'4 255 31.0 31.0 0.0%
3T/5T Ryan Van Bergen 2007 6'5 260 30.8 34.1 9.7%
3T/5T Greg Banks 2006 6'4 246 29.9 34.7 13.7%
3T/5T Juaquin Feazell 1994 6'4 245 29.8 33.5 10.9%
3T Norman Heuer 1999 6'5 251 29.8 33.4 11.0%
3T John Wood 1998 6'4 242 29.5 34.3 14.2%
3T Ben Huff 1993 6'4 234 28.5 33.2 14.3%
3T Alex Ofili 2001 6'4 230 28.0 35.2 20.4%
3T/5T Patrick Massey 2001 6'8 235 25.8 31.2 17.3%

You can see there's a lot of overlap, but in general the big dudes end up inside and the leaner guys are out. Latest recruit Willie Henry is right with Kenny Wilkins as kind of tweeners between NT and DT, comparable to Will Johnson, who maintained his weight (though it was much Barwicized), and Larry Harrison, who added a lot of it and played  beside like-massed Watson in a more even front.

Will_JohnsonSo long as Michigan runs a 4-3 under you need to stop looking at a 265-pound freshman "DT" and imagine him lifting his way to 300. The talk of "frame" and "carrying more weight" could matter if you're expecting Henry to be a breather for Pipkins (he might be) but not if he's a 3-tech.

After a drop-off you get to the RS freshmen Rock and Heitzman, and incoming Wormley and Godin. This is the Ryan Van Bergen/Norman Heuer*/Grant Bowman region which slowly drifts down a list of tweener 3- and 5-techs like Biggs, Zenkewicz, Banks, and Feazell, then Normal Heuer.*

Those guys were a little smaller than seems optional at the position, but they're also both quintessential Hoke DTs; if Wormley becomes RVB2 and Godin is Bowman, that would be win. Quinton Washington was a larger freshman than any of these guys, much larger than even Alan Branch or 22-year-old freshman Renaldo Sagesse. Q has dropped his BMI by 7.6% to reach a playing shape still large for 3-Tech but not as big as Branch (who was 6'6) played. A freakmonster like Branch or (pro comparison) Shaun Rogers/Tommy Kelly can do well here by bull-rushing hapless guards on a direct route to emptying a QB's alveoli…

(after the jump, you know what's coming)