Graham Back, Zirbel Gone, McGuffie Concussed
A some serious newsbits from Rodriguez's recently completed press conference:
Brandon Graham should return. Rodriguez said he'd talked to Graham and he plans on coming back. Corroborating evidence:
"I'm going to eat it up right now and make sure it doesn't happen next year," Michigan junior defensive end Brandon Graham said. "This is motivation for next year to go out there and work even harder than we did this year.
This won't be official until January 15th, obviously, and I've heard that Graham will submit his stuff to the NFL's draft evaluation thingy. But, hey, thumbs up for now. That would be huge.
Corey Zirbel is done. They'd like to get him back as a grad assistant but his playing career is over.
Sam McGuffie was concussed again. This is not much of a surprise since McGuffie did not return after getting sandwiched on a kick return. This is, I think, McGuffie's third concussion of the year; we're now getting into the territory where this is a threat to end his career.
Eastern Michigan is the third nonconference opponent next year. Western and Notre Dame are the other two, if you didn't already know. Western's actually pretty good this year—they beat Illinois—and they return their star quarterback; Eastern should be dire as always. The bye week in the Big Ten schedule remains open and this year I'd be totally okay with something like The Citadel or Coastal Carolina or Southwest Canada State.
An unnamed fourth year senior was not at the team meeting. One guy with eligibility didn't show. Here are guys who could be redshirt seniors next year:
- Kevin Grady
- David Moosman
- LaTerryal Savoy
- Tim McAvoy
- Carson Butler
- Zoltan Mesko
- Mark Ortmann
- Andre Criswell
Ortmann, Mesko, and Moosman are obviously not the guy. It could be any of the others.
Your OL mentioned as potential contributors next year: Patrick Omameh was number one; he was on the travel team this year and was clearly the freshman they had the most faith in. Number two is Ricky Barnum; number three was Rocko Khoury. Other guys were not mentioned.
This will spur "what about O'Neill?" questions, no doubt, so a repeat of something I've said earlier: O'Neill came to Michigan in serious need of technique and strength work and was rated highly in high school mostly because he has that left tackle body (6'8", long arms, thick enough, etc). He retains high upside but I don't think you'll see him seriously challenge for a starting job until 2010.
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