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.

Series: RB Hassan Haskins, OL Andrew Stueber, DT Chris Hinton, DT Donovan Jeter, DE Aidan Hutchinson, DE David Ojabo, LB Josh Ross, S Daxton Hill, S Brad Hawkins, CB Vincent Gray.

Quickly: Speed-limited long and tall cornerback. DON'T PANIC.

Draft Projection: Undrafted free agent (signed by the New Orleans Saints).

NFL Comp: I could go with the guy Michigan tells every tall cornerback they recruited they will be, but I feel like I should do some research fir—

Yeah okay Richard Sherman. Gray is a slow, legitimately taller than 6'2" cornerback. He doesn't twist like Sherman, but if Gray's to have an NFL career it'll be because he came as close to Sherman as he can. That would mean learning to use that length better in jams, though. So Michael Ojemudia?

What's his story? We don't like to speak of it but there was this one class when Michigan, tired of competing in the rarified waters of cornerback recruiting (where ability is most of the game), tried to moneyball it by stuffing their class with Richard Shermans. They did this consciously; every recruiting profile that summer inevitably stumbled on the player relating something along the lines of "They see me as another Richard Sherman," be that high 4-star Myles Sims, low 4-star Gemon Green, 3-star Sammy Faustin, or Green's low 3-star twin brother. Gray, a Mizzou decommit with a 4.76 forty, was the last of the bunch.

All of them redshirted, Indiana and Ohio State undid Michigan's slow, handsy press specialist cornerback Brandon Watson, and the fretting began. Come the 2019 offseason, Gray's was the only name from the 2018 long and talls coming forth, and doing so a lot. Indeed the coach-beloved afterthought assumed Watson's #3 cornerback role. There, for a time, the takes diverged; results-based charters (e.g. PFF, the Michigan coaches) saw a guy getting the job done. This tweet got action.

Lowest completion % allowed by a B1G DB since 2014:

1. David Long Jr, Michigan ('18) - 29.0%
2. Channing Stribling, Michigan ('16) - 30.2%
3. David Long Jr, Michigan ('17) - 31.0%
4. Jourdan Lewis, Michigan ('16) - 31.7%
5. Vincent Gray, Michigan ('19) - 32.4% pic.twitter.com/mYM3KMTxdo

— PFF Draft (@PFF_College) June 22, 2020

Our (Brian's) charting revealed a lot more luck—there was a decided difference between the balls 4.5-star Ambry Thomas was batting down from perfect position and the passes dropped by Notre Dame WRs who had Gray beat. The week after that Gray picked up a –6, with eight negatives, against Illinois. My prognosis for a 2020 without Thomas (opted out) was a meter set to "panic."

Unfortunately that proved disastrously correct. He was tortured by Roshad Bateman in Week 1, then legendarily abused by MSU's Ricky White in a game Michigan State won with bombs downfield and virtually nothing else. Ricky White's MSU career ended with 223 total yards, 196 of them from that one game. Gray wasn't alone, but he was the #1 cornerback. Michigan subsequently went into panic mode, quickly installing a Cover 3 and leaning on its Cover 2 so that Gray wouldn't be left on any more islands. The season was a train wreck. Don Brown didn't survive, not because of Gray, but certainly for getting themselves in a position where they had to play him at cornerback.

If this doesn't sound like an NFL cornerback, well, it doesn't sound like a team about to finally beat Ohio State, win the Big Ten, and make the playoffs for the first time in program history, all with Gray playing the most minutes of any cornerback. They changed up their coverages again, rotating pattern match principles with quarters, cover 3, and cover 1 (mostly on passing downs), and leaving Gray high on the boundary. That did lead to a lot of dumpoffs beneath him, but Gray was a solid tackler, and expecting it, and no team was willing to make the offense out of 7-yard hitches when Gray might throw off his conservative any moment and go for a pick. When they tried him deep, the head start was plenty to make up for the slowness, and Gray's height and length made it tough even for Ohio State's vaunted downfield threads. MSU's entire team matched Ricky White's output from the year before. The one team that really managed to target Gray and come out the better for it in 2021 was Georgia, on three spectacular busts when Michigan was down and Gray threw conservatism to the wind.

Gray left with two years (2018 was a redshirt, 2020 didn't count) of eligibility remaining, but also with the emergence of DJ Turner II as a No.1 CB opposite him, and a lot of young talent that threatened to relegate Gray to the bench had he remained.

Positives: Height and length are very hard to throw over. Reads the play well, has a natural feel for Cover 2 zones, superb tackler (except one time when he took a bad angle on Stetson Bennett). Good ball skills when he has a chance to get his head around, anticipates slants well and uses his size to reach around and break them up. Has the body/hands to be successful at press if he can regain his confidence. Good head/football IQ for possible conversion to safety (UM needed him at CB too much to consider it).

Negatives: Not fast. Trusts his brain to read pre-snap too much and panics when trying to adjust on the fly. This happened often when in press, with Gray often going into grab mode and picking up flagrant pass interference flags.

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What others say: We'll start with MockDraftable's measurements:

There's a difference between 28th percentile in the forty and, like, 1st. The Draft Network's Drae Harris had an extensive and largely positive evaluation:

He uses his good length to stab and can stay in phase in this regard. He lacks the quickness to close at the top of the route. He also lacks good deep speed. In the NFL press heavy, zone coverage teams may value his skill set slightly higher than man coverage teams. He has some physical limitations that could be mitigated with scheme.

The Athletic saw Gray as its 28th best cornerback and 6th round pick, hitting on the same points:

With his height and length, Gray looks the part to match up on the outside and also flashes the burst to close when working downhill. He doesn’t have ideal speed for the position and will lose a half-step in his transition, forcing him to play catch-up. Overall, Gray is physical and patient in press and has zone instincts to sort through everything in front of him, but he plays a step behind too often and doesn’t create ball production opportunities for himself. He can fill a backup role as he continues to develop or possibly move to safety.

Ian Cummings identified an area for improvement: stop thinking!

The most prevalent problem with Gray, at this point, is anticipation. Both at the line and downfield, he sometimes has a habit of anticipating instead of taking in information and reacting. When leverage is incorrectly anticipated, the receiver can take advantage of that. Gray can position himself poorly by anticipating leverage, allowing space to wideouts. In that sense, he needs to be more consistently reactive.

PFF also had Gray in their draftable range—241st, or mid-7th round—in their final rankings, albeit after dropping him to the 300s after pro day, and Honorable Mention all-Big Ten.

Our Scheme/Best Scheme: Michigan dreamed of using Gray as a press corner in their pure man scheme, and the Gray-related failure of that dream was the major reason Don Brown—a bona fide college legend—was the 2020 season's sacrificial lamb New England Bobcat. Gray was successful/mitigated in their hastily installed zone defenses of 2020 and a success in the zone and pattern-match scheme they installed for 2021. He never developed press ability, but would have been a good college Cover 2 cornerback if he'd played in such a system his whole career, and might be an adequate one in the NFL.

2021 Grading

The following numbers are based on my 2021 charting in Upon Further Review. One point is roughly equivalent to an action that affected the play by 5 yards, i.e. zero points are awarded for simply filling an assignment. Certain scores require context, e.g. defensive linemen are expected to score 2 to 1 to the positive because of their greater opportunities to make plays, and rarely get negative individual grades when pass-rushing, since those are handed out through a team metric. Team defense charting.

2021 GRADING BY PLAY TYPE:

I'm actually surprised that the grading came out so close to the impressions they left. Gray was tried often enough to get a decent enough sample of how he defends certain things. They would try him long, but with a decent cushion he would usually be over the top; catches were made, but they were the kinds of circus catches that get Ohio State receivers picked in the 1st round. You can even see in the charting how Michigan baited teams to throw underneath Gray, happy to live with a 50% chance of 7 yards, give or take. And then the play-action: Remember what I said about mid-play panic?

As for the "Other Run" and screen scores, those weren't surprising either. Gray was a good tackler, but sometimes got stuck on his receivers, by choice or otherwise. The way we grade holding is if it's not called it's on the defender, but Gray had a rough relationship with Big Ten officials—probably due to his reputation as the league's resident grabber—and probably earns a few of those calls back if he [quickly checks it's not the Lions] is getting a fair shake. Size is part of that too; he keeps his weight in the 190s to keep his speed up, but on a lanky frame it gets him tossed around.

CAREER CHARTING:

We take no pleasure in seeing 2020 coming, and much pleasure in not seeing 2021 coming.

Josh Imatorbhebhe was the warning shot, but Michigan could also hide Gray for most of that year behind the starters. They couldn't hide him in 2020; the Ricky White Game is going to remain state legend as long as there's a Diet Michigan. Big negatives against didn't go away the rest of 2020, and sometimes came back in 2021, but I thought it notable that Nebraska, with all of its misdirection, was the only offense to unsettle Gray and bring back the 2020 form. Rough stuff against Jahan Dotson (Penn State) and the ninjas of Ohio State/Georgia is understandable.

For the record, the way we do grading is to give a cornerback credit for making a catch difficult, with a tie going to the results. This play was a –2 because Gray bailed in Cover 3 to bracket the TE seam and would have given up an easy 3rd and long conversion if it wasn't batted:

Same game, this was a +1:

Because what more can you ask of an NFL cornerback than to have an equal shot at catching a pass thrown to Garrett Wilson?

Video of All Varieties: (Collection)

He *can* hack it. Straight-line speed is ample for most receivers, then height comes into play:

Note down/distance.

Studies receivers, anticipates their moves to defeat their routes:

Note down/distance/score/time.

Has to plays off/gives up too much space underneath zones:

At his best as a zone corner who anticipates the playcall and activates:

Willing/good tackler on the edge:

…usually.

Gangly/bad backpedal conversion and agility prevented some big play opportunities:

Was not good at press:

Note: His number used to be #31

Strength an issue/gets hung up on blocks:

If he gets surprised or guesses wrong he starts to panic and grabs onto something:

But watch Hutchinson

…or he doesn't and you lose:

Summary and Projection: I think we covered all the bases here. Gray is the kind of cornerback who often gets drafted in the late rounds after a successful career at Iowa that raises questions about how translatable that might be to the National Football League. The difference is Gray had all of his warts exposed, and not at a position like defensive tackle where the casual fans don't usually see it. His tendency to panic marred his early career, and still popped up as late as his final game as a Wolverine.

There's an argument he could have improved his draft stock by transferring to a dedicated Cover 2 school, but probably not by much; he'll still be a 4.55 guy with length and Ricky White Day hanging around his neck. That was also a couple of years ago, during a COVID season, with Gray playing press man all day. Guys do get better, and discover what they're better at. In four years Gray turned out to be a decent Big Ten cornerback, and probably wasn't going to be more. He also graduated.

The more comfortable Vincent Gray gets, the more he becomes a plausible NFL backup. I have my doubts he can stick on a roster long enough to get there, but if he does he'd be a special teams-worthy useful backup you can survive with for multiple weeks when the starters go down. If the faith his coaches have in him is any clue, Gray is probably on the extreme end of locker room positives as well.

He's an interesting study for a league that's used to drafting or signing Cover 2 cornerbacks without any clue what they might look like if asked to cover 1st round receivers in man. The Saints took a chance that most guys will probably look like that, and Gray has a lot of good plays in there too. I admit I have my doubts, but those have a lot do with seeing his breakdowns return in the CFP game, and it may just be that particular game and game state messed with him. Had his season ended on the Ohio State game, perhaps what would stand out more was Gray's NFL-worthy level of preparation to face Garrett Wilson. You bring that every day, you can make it. Just don't panic.

[Note: Jeter will be the last one of these unless I can pull enough Daylen Baldwin film to warrant one for him]