Any Football Spring Practice updates?
I'm glad to have Michigan Basketball to follow right now. But it occurred to me that regarding Spring Football, I've heard . . . crickets. Is the team in a submarine? Are there no insiders to report anything? Of course, a thread like this basically is asking for the typical smartass remarks from the mgoblog commentariat. But usually, Ace or Brian or Seth would have something on football, and I really don't recall any front page pieces to speak of. Last thing I saw was that Steuber had moved positions on the line. And nothing else.
I can confirm that they are practicing the footballs at Michigan
Coach Moore is extremely intense and fired up. Both lines were doing Oklahoma Drill and the players were going nuts. A completely different vibe at practice. Tons of install and players being coached up.
Harbaugh and Weiss spend A LOT of practice with qb's.
Gattis spending 5x more time with wr's, running routes with them, as well as defending them.
I would agree McGregor looks good, but he's working with the 2's.
Hart seems to be spending a ton of time with Blake Corum IMO, and also time on correctly identifying the hole; when to bounce it outside etc.
Lastly, it appears to me that the staff loves Nate Johnson. I personally heard Jay Harbaugh speaking to Gattis and Weiss he asked, "can he fly like Lamar?", and Weiss said YES SIR! Gattis just grinned in excitement.
Cheers
Whenever I hear Nate Johnson, I think of the WR from TN kicked off the team for assault.
I saw a video on Instagram of Zinter and Hinton going 1-on-1 in the Oklahoma drill and Zinter basically owned Hinton; walled him up and drove him back a couple yards. Excuse me while I despair far too much about the tidings that video brings for our defensive line in the upcoming season.
The Issue with watching our OL and our DL going up against each other, is that if you saw Hinton owning Zinter you’d be concerned about our OL. No matter what, you’re going to find something to be concerned about.
March 17th, 2021 at 10:41 PM ^
Also, sometimes guys get got. If you're expecting Hinton to smash through the OL and into the backfield every play, you're gonna be disappointed.
Yeah but Hinton has been on campus 4 years now and came in as a 5 star, and Zinter is entering his 2nd year on campus and hails from the great state of MA and was barely a 4 star. I would be less concerned if this were the other way around. But hey, it's only spring football.
Well it’s easier for an OL to get the better of a DL. Even a bad OL isn’t going to get beaten more often than they’re going to beat a DL. A 310 lb human only having to hold up a 290 lb human for 2-3 seconds isn’t that difficult to accomplish.
And as someone else said, you saw one play. One play isn’t really some amazing insight into how practice is going and who is getting the better of who. Especially when that one play is an OL coming out on top, which is going to happen more often than not.
Again, I think you’re just reading too much into the outcome of one rep. And if the rep had gone the other way, you’d be voicing your concerns about the offensive line. There’s really no way for you to be happy when watching spring drills.
Thanks. Just to place an old-fashioned perspective on this: I'm glad they're going at it with enthusiasm, and I hope they're having fun. Whether they're going to be great or not, it's a bunch of kids playing sports, and if that fact gets lost sight of completely. . .
March 17th, 2021 at 11:05 PM ^
Who's Nate Johnson? Unless that's a typo on the first name, or I'm just missing it, I don't see a Nate Johnson on the depth chart.
I watched that. He gets caught from behind.
March 21st, 2021 at 12:21 AM ^
Appreciate you, Ghost. How does the defense look? Anything to be hopeful about?
Tate Forcier looks like he'll win at least three Heismans. Carlos Brown is faster than Usain Bolt. Nate Brink looks like he will contend for a Lombardi award. James Rogers is handling his position switch incredibly well and may be a Thorpe finalist.
You forgot Ryan Mallet can throw the ball over the stadium
Over the stadium is cool and all, but can he throw the ball over them mountains?
Back in 1982 he could.
This was true, he just couldn't hit a receiver in stride.
In before some "no moar hype/basketball skoool" derpage
Edit:damn, almost got in before evenyoubrutus
I have been in search of the photo gallery from the practice at the stadium last weekend. Would appreciate it if anyone could provide a link to that.
I keep close tabs on 247, which tends to have the best insider info. They don’t really have anything juicy from spring practice. Braiden McGregor reportedly looks good, which is what you’d hope for from a big croot with his upside
He’s a clone of Hutch and that’s never a bad thing.
Antonio Bass is going to be the next Pat White (what could’ve been)
Well all those other guys were either busts, or severly over hyped, Antonio Bass had a career ending injury.
There's another web site that shares some fluff practice info about the Wolverines as it comes across the Wire.
I don't get why people think we don't want WolverinesWire linked here. Isaiah's a friend and does a good job at what he does so we can do what we do. Please pay him as many visits as you like!
Thanks, Seth. It was meant to be more of a snide comment to the OP, indicating there is info out there that is easily found.
If snide comments are your thing, website is 1 word now, boomer.
Can you find stuff on instachat or snapagram?
or MyFace?
My mom’s on myFace now. Is your mom on myFace?
exchange-a-gram
Isn't the new thing with the kids SnapTiks?
Speaking of boomers. (delete. Don't want to interrupt the flow.) Edit
March 17th, 2021 at 11:01 PM ^
According to Microsoft, "Internet" is spelled with a capital "I".
Nope. Sorry. I have a football bits draft that's friggin empty.
Crickets could mean that everyone stinks.
/s
I don't mind the no news. Keep what is happening in the submarine. Show me on gamedays. Do More, Say Less
There was an ITF to the effect of "The defense stinks."
I'm drawing a blank on ITF.
International Tennis Federation? No
International Transport Forum? No
International Taekwon-Do Federation? Nope
Can someone throw me a bone here?
Inside The Fort.
Thanks! I just couldn't find it in the glossary or through a site search.
Not that they are necessarily wrong but they are the polar opposite of Sam Webb in terms of positivity / negativity.
Sam always makes you believe Michigan is going to win a national championship and then finds ways to backdoor out of it because he never actually says "Michigan is going to win a national championship."
The ITF update wasn't shocking.
The defense does suck. Let's be honest. And the offense isn't much better, they just go against a shitty defense.
Doesn't mean guys can't improve.
QBs are average and need to take a huge step, but part of that is the WRs are below average and don't help the QB situation.
RB should be fine, nothing to write home about...no Najee Harris, but they're a solid group.
OL was underwhelming last year but the talent is at least there and they have bodies to choose from...but right now they're just bodies.
DL is not great minus one player. The interior isn't good.
LBs are average but we can expect them to improve to "solid" by August (even though the story is that they look terrible right now...new defense though).
CBs are the worst unit on the team.
Ss are a mix between RB and LB. Solid and you have to expect Hawkins to bounce back after a rough year.
...put all of that together and that's not a great team. That's a .500 team, which is what we are. In order to be where we want we need a solid QB, a Kyle Trask level QB. We need at least one WR who strikes fear into the D. We need at least one bonafide first round draft pick. At least a Glasgow on the DL. And we need an NFL corner.
Woah dude, you are a ray of sunshine.
That all sounds about right as far as what we saw last year.
Caveat is I didn't watch anything after msu.
March 18th, 2021 at 12:06 PM ^
Classic ITF update. Full of pessimism. Some likely truth in there, but it always seems to be written from the perspective of the most pessimistic outcome.
Isn’t that to be expected with installing a whole new defense...
Definitely put me in the, if this team is going to be any good, it is going to be because they score a lot of points camp, While I can walk through a cautiously optimistic story for why the offense could take a big step forward, I find it much more challenging to do so for the defense. The combination of an unproven defensive coordinator coupled with question marks at most position groups makes it hard to be optimistic.
March 17th, 2021 at 10:45 PM ^
Absolutely. The offense has no good excuse not to be very good frankly.
Well. It was certainly god awful last year. They've got a huge way to go to get to terrible.
Never have I been so ok with not hearing a peep about the football team.
No fluff. No hyperbole. No spring heisman candidates.
Refreshing.