thank you bronco mendenhall

Previously: Podcast 14.0A, 14.0B, 14.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. Offensive Tackle.

The Joe Moore Award was started in 2015 by some Notre Dame OL with money who wanted to honor their old line coach. Mike DeBord's career spanned roughly the same time period as Joe Moore's, and by any metric was as successful. Had Jeff Backus thought to endow an award before former ND tackle Aaron Taylor, it might have been the Mike DeBord Award.

This would have been a superior development. It rhymes, for one. Two, I wouldn't have to keep specifying first names when differentiating between the line coach the award is named for, and the line coach whose guys won the award in his first-ever season as line coach.

Since nobody has the time to chart every OL, the award for most outstanding offensive line is as much about vibe as anything else. Eleven games into 2021, I would bet Michigan wasn't in the Might Have Been DeBord Award committee's top three. Eleven point seven-five games into 2021, this was the vibe:

Michigan should not pass the ball anymore.

— Geoff Schwartz (@geoffschwartz) November 27, 2021

(But in a good way)

The two Michigan guards putting tears in the eyes of gruff former trenchmen who say "football" like "FOOT-ball" were just 2nd and 3rd year players with freshman eligibility. They lost an organized, underratedly agile walk-on but are joined by a transfer the Rimington voters thought was no worse than the 3rd best in college football. Our heuristics would be projecting a healthy charge up the rankings and hot-taking Moore's corps to win the Moore if they hadn't just done so.

The comparisons to 2000 and 2019 have already begun. The next generation has made the two-deep. The biggest questions people have about the interior OL are "How long can it last?" and "Can we buy them all Italian sports cars so they'll never leave?"

Michigan OL Trevor Keegan and Zak Zinter sign a Lamborghini NIL deal with Xtremexperience. @bighitslive @DenoteHunter @DzikNoah pic.twitter.com/vGzgtwxHRq

— Bighitsnil (@Bighitsnil) May 23, 2022

Okay then, so how long can it last?

Previously: Podcast 14.0A, 14.0B, 14.0C. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End.

[Bolded player rules: not necessarily returning starter, but someone we've seen enough of that I'm no longer talking about their recruiting profile (much, anyway). Extant contributor.]

Tim Drevno put out fantastic, mauling offensive lines at Stanford. The guys they recruited were 3-stars, but they were smart, and didn't have to start until they were redshirt sophomores or juniors, by which time they'd been sufficiently drilled to run Drevno's complicated list of calls and checks. At Michigan he fruitlessly chased after recruits who didn't want his immediate playing time and started a season with Nolan Ulizio at right tackle. The "Drevno Effect" never happened. He's now at UCLA.

Greg Frey, the Rodriguez assistant who recruited tight ends and grew them into Mike Schofield and Taylor Lewan, was brought back for a year. He recruited some more build-a-bears for a year then left for his alma mater. Today he's at Duke.

Ed Warinner seemed like a guy who knew what he was about. Between the first game of 2018 and the 2018 Big Ten season Warinner turned Jon Runyan Jr. from a turnstile into one of the most underrated guards in the NFL. Last year Michigan broomed Ed for a guy born the year Ed coached his first OL at Army. Warinner is now the run game coordinator at FAU.

Sherrone Moore played tackle at Oklahoma in the mid-aughts, and coached tight ends at every stop until Michigan raised him to OL coach. His first line, made of parts acquired by Drevno, Frey, and Warinner, won the Joe Moore Award.

In all that time, with all those coaches, somehow Michigan figured out how to amalgamate all of their philosophies into a stable run of tackles. Runyan graduated and instead of the fanbase collectively chewing their fingers off, a redshirt sophomore Ryan Hayes stepped in. Andrew Stueber graduated to the NFL this offseason and his backup, a 4th year guy, won the job early in spring. Behind him is a classmate who started some in 2020 and 2021. Behind that guy is a 3rd year guy, and a 2nd year guy, and a freshman who's getting talked up even though he's not needed for years. Except for Hayes they're all Warinner recruits, though most are Frey types, and they run Drevno's tackle-pulling gap system. This spring Hayes intimated that Moore was increasing the complexity of their protection calls, since the guys playing have been around long enough to handle more on their plates. Imagine that.