Previously: The Story. Podcast 12.4A, 12.4B, 12.4C. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. Interior OL. Offensive Tackle. Defensive End. Defensive Tackle. Linebacker. Cornerback.

Depth Chart

I could write anything here and you would read DAX HILL! I could tell you that a meteor was going to hit your house and only your house because you are a big jerko and you would only think "I bet DAX HILL! can deal with slot fades." Well, buddy: you're gonna get meteor'd. That's right.

You're not paying attention at all. Jerko.

SAFETIES: DAX TIME!

RATING: 4

It's blowup year for DAX HILL [recruiting profile], the first five-star safety at Michigan since… uh… Ernest Shazor. Nevermind.

Anyway, Hill is still the guy who did this:

That is an electronically timed 4.3 flat 40, yessir, along with the best vert amongst safeties nationally; he would later improve that shuttle time to a 4.13, per ESPN. This is on another level from Donovan Peoples-Jones. It's on another level from Jabrill Peppers, who put up a 4.46 40 and 36 inch vert at the NFL combine. To be fair, Peppers did that about 25 pounds heavier than Dax was at his Opening regional. Even so, as soon as Dax Hill walks on campus he will take his place amongst the most absurdly athletic persons to ever don the Maize and Blue.

Everyone expected Hill to start immediately, which did not transpire because Brad Hawkins emerged into a quality player.

[After THE JUMP: an amuse bouche]

Hill emerged into the nickelback midseason, and was immediately an explosive presence on the edge, able to slalom through trash and redirect with five-star ease:

S #20 over slot to bottom

There was a fair amount of freshman stuff as well. He'd bust coverages. Here Michigan's trying to fool Rutgers into thinking it's man coverage. Hill is also fooled:

This cropped up in Hill's first start, which came when Hawkins missed the Indiana game. The Hoosiers immediately went at him and had success. That game had two different incidents in which Michigan veterans outperformed Hill on near-identical plays, demonstrating why he'd spent much of the year on the bench:

IU's initial success on offense was a lot of screens and some chunks at Hill's expense. Their first play was a corner route from a bunch set on which Hill got a step behind and couldn't challenge:

S #30 to top

Serendipitously, Indiana's final charted play was also a corner route from a bunch set, but this one was against Josh Metellus, who played it better:

S #14 to top

Metellus is in a spot where he can grab the WR's arm and turn that into a near-impossible catch.

The other IU chunk at Hill's expense was the rub wheel route:

S #30 to bottom

And here too we have a look at what this is supposed to look like, because on Indiana's first drive they tried a wheel route to Scott. This time it was Lavert Hill on the edge, and he nerfed the route:

CB #24 to bottom

The first of those is about coverage technique and knowing what to expect from the offense. The second is just a bust.

Even Hill's good plays often had an element of freshman in them. He more or less got got by an Indiana wheel route on which he took a false step to the line of scrimmage and put himself in the firing line of two attempted pickoff routes, but it didn't matter because Dax Hill:

He'd overcommit to the outside on certain routes and still nail guys on the catch. He was playing through a bunch of mistakes. He may be Superman but playbooks are always kryptonite in year one.

And now for the inevitable slot fade discussion. The theory around these parts is that Dax Hill can allow Michigan to blitz their linebackers like they did when Devin Bush was a rabid sophomore racking up sacks. A brief recap of the situation here:

1. Michigan lines up their safeties to take away slants so their LBs can go nuts
2. Opponents hit Michigan with a bunch of 30-yard slot fades
3. Michigan lines up their safeties to take away slot fades
4. Opponents hit Michigan with a bunch of seven-yard slants
5. Michigan buzzes slants with their inside linebackers
6. Devin Bush has less destructive (but still excellent) final year

A guy who can cover two ways when placed over a slot receiver would allow a return to step 1 and allow Cam McGrone to go nuts, hopefully covering for the fact there's no Uche this year.

We did not get a ton of evidence about this theory but we did get a tad. Here's Hill getting over the top of a slot fade from outside leverage:

He gets flagged there after winning the route because the WR tries to jump through him—always a frustrating call. The more important thing is that he is not, say, two yards behind the WR trying to catch up. But that's what outside leverage is supposed to do even when you're not Dax Hill. Mortals shut off slot fades with outside leverage.

What about the other half? Well:

S #30 over slot

Five man rush on which there's one ILB that WR has to slightly redirect around, and then Hill eats the route. 4.3 flat in the wild. LFG, as they say.

The complication: Hill briefly moved to corner this fall. Harbaugh:

“Nothing is definite,” Harbaugh exclusively told The Michigan Insider. “Dax is really talented, versatile, and can play safety, nickel and corner, and has. We are really anticipating great things from him this season, and it could be from any of those spots.”

Hill has since returned to safety, apparently because that is his preference. This space believes it's also best for the team. Michigan has shaky corners, sure, but Hill changes what you can do on defense if he operates over the slot. He can define Michigan's defense there. At corner he's a corner. 

Hill should be the best safety in the league and track towards being a first round pick in 2021.

Finke turnabout [Patrick Barron]

Next to Hill, senior BRAD HAWKINS returns for a second year as a starter. This preview had a lot of trepidation about him after he was a disaster magnet in 2018, but he was okay. Good? Maybe good.

The highest-graded B1G safeties pic.twitter.com/Frm9iGtqx4

— PFF College (@PFF_College) January 7, 2020

Hawkins landed on PFF's All Big Ten team as a flex defender:

Hawkins was one of the most balanced defenders in the BigTen, with grades hovering around 80.0 in run defense (80.6), tackling (83.9) and coverage (80.3). The longest catch he allowed on the season went for only 25 yards, and it was the only catch of 20-plus yards he allowed all year.

My grading was more circumspect than PFF's. But first, some good points: Hawkins had one specific kind of bust that happened semi-frequently because he was doing a new thing. Other than that he was reliable. He gets a B+ for overall boringness. He is an excellent open-field tackler:

He's solid.

My theory about the gap between solid and All Big Ten comes down to drag routes. Michigan got torched by crossing routes against OSU a year ago, so Michigan needed a plan. That plan was to take their best tackler in space…

…and make him their designated drag route guy. Hawkins was the obvious pick to go get guys, even when they're KJ Hamler:

This came with costs. Hawkins really wanted to jump up into plays, which occasionally left Michigan exposed on the backend. This was maximally damaging a quarter after that Hamler tackle embedded above. PSU went tempo, and Hawkins defaulted to what he'd been doing:

Hamler's touchdown was a bust, per Harbaugh, but also if a guy doesn't get the call his natural thought is probably to play a deep post safety; instead Hawkins creeps up to the line of scrimmage, reacting to nobody.

S #20 to top

There are no underneath routes:

That's a guy operating on instinct because this is Yet Another Tempo Bust … His instinct right now is to go find a drag route instead of playing the deep middle.

There were other incidents where Michigan's safeties didn't know who was supposed to go get the drag and who was supposed to be a safety. If you're grading a bunch of games and aren't focused on what Michigan does weekly some of these incidents might look like bad coverage by Josh Metellus. He took the brunt of the blame for the above incident on the broadcast, and clearly PFF did not ding Hawkins for it since they asserted the longest completion he gave up was a 25-yarder. UFR dumped those on Hawkins.

That Penn State game put a hard cap on Hawkins's upside. We suspected that Hawkins might have some issues against top-end athletes after an Isiah Pachecho touchdown in 2018 that Hawkins made up no ground on:

And when he got KJ Hamler one-on-one in cover zero it went like everyone feared:

I'm not even that mad about the TD, which sees Michigan go pure cover zero and asks Hawkins to cover the whole world.

Just asking him to do something he can't.

Hawkins is not Dax Hill. You can say "well just let Dax Hill do that stuff," but it's not that easy. Teams will try to get advantageous matchups with motion and whatnot. It's likely to crop up again. Hawkins says he's working on it…

"I’ve been working very, very hard this offseason," Hawkins said. "Working on my craft, working on my speed, working on my everything that I’ve been working on to become the best.”

…but he's going to be 23 this season. He probably is what he is.

That's a senior safety with a bunch of experience, and Michigan needs him. Things didn't go particularly well when Hawkins went out for the final three games last year. He'll be Michigan's organizer and safety blanket—he really is excellent at shutting down plays just before they get out of hand. There is neither a lot of upside nor a lot of downside here. Hawkins will aspire to be boring. Which is fine!

BACKUPS

After Sammy Faustin's move to corner this is another spot where it's almost nothing but freshmen once you get past the starters. The "almost": walk-ons HUNTER REYNOLDS and CADEN KOLESAR (yes that Kolesar) have both drawn press conference mentions. Reynolds was ahead of a couple of soon-to-transfer scholarship players last year and has more experience than absolutely no experience, so he's got a shot. Also he's right about various things.

Paige could get in early [Dave Nasternak]

Meanwhile Michigan brought in three freshmen. MAKARI PAIGE [recruiting profile] had the advantage because he played in Michigan's defense at West Bloomfield, and he's translated that to a spot on the two-deep and some talk about real playing time this year. Brown got an open-ended question about freshmen on defense and mentioned Paige first:

I’ll give you a name that I’m kind of excited about. This Makari Paige is playing at a high level. And he’s a young man that we feel he can jump in there and help us at early stages, for sure. … He’s a safety all the way, tremendous length. I’m gonna be conservative and say he’s 6-foot-2 – I think he’s taller than that. He really plays well over the slot. 

Sam Webb heard he was listed as a starter at safety at some point during this extended fall camp. This was during the period Hill was playing corner, so this assertion doesn't upset the natural order. It does indicate that Michigan thought they might roll with Paige as a true freshman safety and put Hill at corner, which may be worrisome about CB but is pretty nice for Paige personally. 

Webb also quoted Bellamy about that slot item:

“He did that in high school,” said Bellamy. “I go back all the way to his sophomore year in the state semifinal game against a loaded Cass Tech team. He caught the game sealing interception when he was covering the slot receiver."

Paige's 4.3 shuttle is exceptionally good for a guy of his stature, FWIW, lending more credence to the idea that he can be a guy who plays over the slot and makes it work. Since he's 6'3" he can probably deal with those slot fades just fine.

Paige will at least be the first guy off the bench in garbage time and has a shot at scattered meaningful snaps. If Michigan decides that Hill is their nickelback he could even get most passing downs. A reasonable goal is to function in whatever snaps he gets and be the clear heir apparent to Hawkins.

JORDAN MORANT [recruiting profile] was the #1 safety in the country to 247 at one point in the cycle; he dropped a bit after those lofty heights but still comes in highly regarded. He drew the Jabrill Peppers comparisons that anyone shaped like Peppers gets. In this case they're fairly credible:

Morant has a lot of skills that will probably remind you of Jabrill Peppers. … his body type, his change-of-direction skills, and his playing style all remind me of the former first round pick. Morant is an excellent tackler who puts his “eyes through the thighs.” He’s strong in man coverage and can outmuscle receivers. … not quite as explosive and doesn’t have the all-around skill.

He's great in the open field and that might get him on the field early, but almost all the early talk is focused on Paige.

RJ MOTEN [recruiting profile] is the home run swing of the bunch, metaphorically and literally. He's another touted baseball prospect who wants to play multiple sports at Michigan. Guys like Moten are usually enticing athletes who need a lot of polish, and he's no exception:

…elite athlete … great frame, wide shoulders, he runs well and his ability to change direction and accelerate is impressive. … speed gives him range to cover all over the field. …  still needs to develop his technique, particularly in coverage."

He's a first-off-the-bust kind of guy and when he showed up on campus he immediately drew Harbaugh's eye:

Cited RJ Moten first as players who arrived to campus in exceptional shape. Said the incoming freshman was doing multiple bike rides per week of 50+ miles, and that it showed when he arrived to campus.

— Zach Shaw (@_ZachShaw) July 8, 2020

This prompted Steve Lorenz to say he'd heard Moten is "special." later he'd mention Moten is "probably going to be the hot name" amongst the freshmen."

This was prior to pads; since the pads went on we haven't heard much. We are on course for year one of Electric Athlete Needs To Learn How To Football. Stick him on special teams and check back next year.

The others: Redshirt freshman QUINTEN JOHNSON [recruiting profile] came in with excellent testing numbers—a 4.4 40 and 4.1 shuttle at an opening regional—but never got to test those out on the college level because was injured and had season-ending surgery. Nobody is talking about him just yet, which isn't surprising because he was a guy who needed a lot of refinement that did not happen while he was laid up. This will be a second try at a freshman year for him.

Redshirt sophomore GERMAN GREEN [recruiting profile] has drawn the occasional mention when press conference answers get deep in the weeds. Harbaugh said he was "playing safety and special teams"; expect far more of the latter than the former.