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

EDGE: RAT-A-TAT-TAT

  Depth Chart

STRONG OLB	Yr.	TACKLE	Yr.	NOSE	Yr.	END	Yr.	WEAK OLB	Yr.
Mike Morris	Jr.*	Mason Graham	Fr.	Mazi Smith	Jr.*	Kris Jenkins	Jr.*	Taylor Upshaw	Sr.*
Julius Welschof	Jr.*	Rayshaun Benny	Fr.*	Cam Goode	Jr.*	George Rooks	Fr.*	Jaylen Harrell	So.*
Braiden McGregor	Fr.*	Ike Iwunnah	Fr.*	Kenneth Grant	Fr.	Dom Guidice	Fr.*	Eyabi Anoma	Sr.*

Michigan won the Big Ten last year for a lot of reasons. First and foremost amongst them was the greatest defensive end pairing in school history. Aidan Hutchinson went #2 overall and David Ojabo would have been a first round pick if he hadn't ruptured his Achilles in workouts. Hutchinson smashed Mo Hurst's all-time UFR scoring record by putting up a +39.5(!!!) against Ohio State, a take that PFF echoed. Hutchinson's 15 pressures in that game is a PFF-era record.

Neither of those guys is around anymore. Instead Michigan has one guy who played pretty well as rotational piece but projects as more of a DE/DT hybrid, two guys who have played a significant amount of unremarkable football, and then a pile of question marks in various shapes. But there's good news!

Jim Harbaugh says Michigan's edge pressure is "almost as good or as good" as last year, when the Wolverines had Aidan Hutchinson and David Ojabo.

"Much improvement on the inside" of the defensive line, he adds.

— Alejandro Zúñiga (@ByAZuniga) August 8, 2022

Jim Harbaugh has set a new mark for offseason balderdash. In the long history of people saying probably false things about their football teams, this stands alone atop a mountain of minor mendacity. So we've got that going for us.

Michigan has one guy who's probably tracking towards being picked in the NFL draft, a couple of upperclassmen who provide the weakside end a high floor (and a low ceiling) and then just piles and piles of lottery tickets.

ANCHOR/SOLB: WORM

RATING: 4

HELLO YOU ARE NOW FLAT [Patrick Barron]

Redshirt junior MIKE MORRIS has the athletic background—his father was a four-year starter for FSU at guard and possessed a wicked flat-top—and on-campus trajectory to believe that he's going to step into the starting lineup without much difficulty. In many years the last word in the previous sentence would have been "dropoff." This year we're figuring out how big of one.

Realistically, it's going to be pretty big. Morris flashed talent in a fair number of reserve snaps a year ago but is pushing 290. If he was any sort of edge rusher at his weight the offseason hype for him would be titanic; as it is he projects as a pocket pusher who can attack half a man and make opposing QBs uncomfortable. He's not going to rip around the outside like a Scottish werewolf.

His UFR grading from last year is modestly positive; if the grades look uninspiring keep in mind that these were not starter's snaps. Morris was averaging about 25 snaps a game over his last six; on a per-snap basis this is a pretty good apprenticeship season:

MIKE MORRIS

Game	Plus	Minus	Tot	Notes
WMU	5	1	4	It's real. Anchor type can be 3-4 DT or 4-2-5 DE
Washington	3.5	2	1.5	Made one mistake, also started.
NIU	2.5		2.5	Limited snaps, made the most of them.
Rutgers	6.5	5	1.5	Made some DT plays, learned about mesh points today.
Wisconsin	8	3	5	Think he's our #3 DT and #2 or #3 DE right now.
Nebraska	4	3	1	Minuses were a failed pass rush gamble and coverage.
Northwestern	2.5	1.5	1	Third-best rusher, needs to do better vs screens.
MSU	4	6	-2	Opposite of Jeter: got leverage and got tackled a lot.
Indiana	4	1	3	Don Brown anchor got to ply his trade.
Penn State	1.5	1.5	0	Equal time at DE/DT/Racecar DT. Still very tweener.
Maryland	2	0	2	Pass rush meh, but held the edge as well as the starters.
OSU	6	2	4	High-motor, high-impact.
Iowa	4	0	4	Passing downs jumping man.
Georgia	1	4	-3	Backed up Hutchinson, prefer him at DT.

The issue, at least as far as replacing Hutchinson goes, is all the references about being a DT or a tweener, etc. And in fact Morris is even less of a tweener than he was last year because dude went into the offseason screaming BEEFCAKE:

On adding about 15 pounds in the offseason:

It feels great. I came back, got Abigail O’Connor, our nutritionist, and I said I want to be bigger. I want to be bigger-bodied. I want to play all levels of our D-line so that’s what our game plan was. But I also wanted to maintain my speed, my athleticism. So that's the game plan the whole month of May. And we did that and I feel great. Passed my conditioning test with flying colors, running with the linebackers, quarterbacks and the tight ends, and feel great.

This makes sense given what he plays like. He's never going to be your teleporting edge guy. When he did rush straight up from an edge spot it was all bull rush all the time.  Most of his out-and-out rush snaps are from interior positions, as Morris was part of a third-down all-DE rush package. He was occasionally eye-opening in that role:

DT #90 on bottom hash

That was 15 pounds lighter, and that power was the main distinguishing feature of his play. His preferred method of getting things done was to run over whoever was tasked with dealing with him:

DT just inside of Hutchinson

Aidan Hutchinson wasn't the only Michigan DL to put an OSU OL on his ass last November:

Doubles were a bit of a problem last year but with the added weight they probably won't be as effective. And with Mazi Smith lining up next to him they should be… uh… rare. When not doubled he frequently defeated single blocking even when he wasn't able to pave a guy. He'd stand his guy up at the LOS, extend his arms to get the opponent away from his body, and then shed at the appropriate moment.

Run defense should not be an issue.

Morris combines that power with just enough agility to be a problem if he's given license to fire into a gap. Here Michigan baits the Northwestern center and Morris is fast and powerful enough to rip through the guard:

DT to top inside Ojabo

This is exactly Chris Wormley. Wormley was not much of an edge rusher but was nonetheless effective as a strongside DE. Opponents would put a tight end on him and that guy would get wiped every time. The above indicates that Mike Morris vs TE is also ending one way and one way only. He bumped inside from time to time and was able to attack half a guy like the above. This combination of size and just enough burst isn't a ticket to the first round, but it does make for a quietly effective college player.

The other positive that leapt out was Morris's intelligence. He had a key part in Michigan's fourth-down stuff of Nebraska, as when a WR tightened up to the line Morris anticipated what was coming:

The violent shed after is back to the power thing. He was also good at anticipating Indiana's various College Bullshit plays, and his twenty-yard zone drop against Georgia looked surprisingly polished.

While Morris didn't generate a ton of pressure himself there were several events that point towards a resurgence of one of Michigan's favorite things to do when they had Chris Wormley hanging around: stunt. Stunts are most effective when you have a guy who can sacrifice himself by bulldozing a couple of guys back into the pocket, and then another guy who's quick enough to get around the corner. Morris, like Wormley, can fill both halves of that equation:

DT to right of screen inside Hutchinson

Michigan didn't do this a ton because the guy sacrificing here is Aidan Hutchinson. If it's Mike Morris and Kris Jenkins can loop around that's a different equation entirely. Having guys who can both push the pocket and loop means your twists can be more diverse and harder to pick up, thus more effective in the long run.

This scramble is probably a missed assignment from Hinton because Morris puts himself in a perfect position as a stunt sacrifice guy. He attacks half a man and is probably being held—albeit in a way that you never see called. The upshot is that if Hinton loops around Nebraska's RG is completely boned:

DT #90 to right of C

A looper there then gives that OL a choice of which guy to let free. You can see the same twist against Penn State, this time with Upshaw pressing the gap and Morris looping around:

PSU plays it better, with the RG picking off Morris. Upshaw still almost barrels through for the sack but lacks the raw power to get there. This space believes that Morris—particularly the 290 pound version—completes the sack here if he's in Upshaw's spot. It is extremely hard for a tackle to get in a pass set and then be able to anchor against a guy like Morris. This again looks like Hinton not getting the play call, but just look where Morris ends up: in the heart of the pocket four yards deep.

standup DE to bottom

Expect this to be a staple of Michigan's rush this year. Junior Colson should be a major benefactor.

Add it all up and this spot would not be a worry if we weren't calculating what happens against Ohio State minus Hutchinson slamming down his Heisman candidacy marker. Morris should be an upper-echelon Big Ten DL—maybe just outside of All Big Ten level—who can compensate for his one major deficiency by crushing pockets closed. It's fine.

BACKUPS

We're going to address the rest of the position group in the next section. By virtue of size, JULIUS WELSCHOF, TAYLOR UPSHAW, and BRAIDEN MCGREGOR are most likely to spot Morris when needed.

OPEN-SIDE EDGE: SPIN THE WHEEL

RATING: 2.

I dunno and they dunno and you dunno either. The best thing you can say about this spot is that Michigan has a hell of a lot of options here. The worst thing you can say is that they have a hell of a lot of options here. Harbaugh did name Taylor Upshaw and Jaylen Harrell as DE starters along with Morris during his In The Trenches lineup dump, and I'm sure that will be the case, at least early. As the season goes along Michigan will hope for someone else to grab the reins.

Some of the folks in this section are true DEs or even hybrids who will back up Morris at the DE/DT anchor-ish spot, and some are DE/LB hybrid types. But the real distinction is between guys and wildcards. The two starter-type substances are in the first bin.

GUYS

Upshaw: trying, not really getting there [Bryan Fuller]

Not TJ Guy. A guy. As opposed to a dude. That's the book on TAYLOR UPSHAW [recruiting profile], who got rotational snaps at DE a year ago and was definitely… there. Seth's one extended mention of him in UFR:

Upshaw isn’t on the same level as the other guys, at least not yet. He’s also, like Morris, a dude that Don Brown recruited to play anchor … When you judge Upshaw as a DT his pass rush jumps from a “D” to a “B” relative to the position. …He’s a guy, with a long way to go to replace either of the Dudes on his depth chart.

You want to be around the tackle at 8 yards to sack, and Upshaw was more of an around-at-nine kind of guy.

standup DE to bottom

We don't have a clip of an entirely successful edge rush from him. The sack we did clip was Upshaw gamely running down Chase Wolf after Ojabo tore off the edge. We did catch him almost getting around and causing the QB to step up into a world of Mazi Smith pain:

But that's about it. The above play is the context in which Upshaw fits best. He turned in some other bull rushes on the edge that are sort of useful when you've got regular DTs and extremely useful when Mo Hurst is ripping up through the interior on a regular basis. If Michigan rolls a natural 20 for either Mazi Smith or Kris Jenkins—or both!—then they can roll out the responsible upperclassman most of the time and it'll work just fine.

Upshaw is a plugger. He does not give up on plays—as you tend not to when you're getting 15 or so snaps a game—and works hard in pursuit and when initially stymied by his blocker. That's pretty much all the time. Seth's UFR chart notes are universally ominous glances towards next year like "no mistakes, no pass rush whatsoever" and "won't blow a run fit, won't frighten a quarterback." This is our concern unless context means it's no big deal.

Fall camp chatter, as summarized by Alex:

Taylor Upshaw's name is still in the battle, but it mostly gets brought up because of his experience and leadership, not because he's suddenly on track to stardom.

There are worse things than having a responsible run-stopper type as your floor. Upshaw should be fine. The situation here is not hyping up Johnny Sears at cornerback because there's nobody else. Upshaw gets his mentions and it's clear Michigan wants someone who's more of a playmaker at the spot but if Upshaw is getting standard down snaps it's not a disaster. I don't think there's much chance he's going to be in there on passing downs.

edge eraser [Patrick Barron]

Also in this bin is hybrid LB/DE JAYLEN HARRELL [recruiting profile], who was brought in to be the next Josh Uche and isn't. Uche was a raw missile who didn't do anything other than pass rush; Harrell has a smoking jacket and a cool demeanor and does all the little things but not the big thing. Seth's clips for him include a lot of Mario Ojemudia/Jake Ryan stuff. He is exactly a 4-3 SAM in that if you had to call him something you'd say he's a defensive end but he's got a lot of versatility to his game. No other DE-shaped person who saw time last year is making this play:

Trying some edge stuff with a tight end also did not go well, generally.

standup DE second from left

This was part of a theme. When Harrell set an edge he set it with authority.

In this he is reminiscent of previous 4-3 under SAMs who were the "so you tried to edge MICHIGAN NICKEL" of their day. Aside from one or two read busts, Harrell was downright excellent at funneling guys back inside at points where other players could go whack them for minimal gain. Occasionally he'd get to do the honors himself and get clipped. Seth's UFR table notes are a fine summary: "great edge defender"; "good day in 5-2 edge duty"; "good edge-setter, bad pass rusher." (If you are wondering if a Jake-Ryan-to-ILB thing is possible, no. Michigan (very) occasionally lined him up as a true linebacker. It did not go well. It was like watching Craig Roh try to play there; as a linebacker he proved he was a defensive end.)

"But what about pass rush," everyone moans, and okay yeah there's not a ton of reason for optimism here. We had two clips of Harrell pass rush; one was a free run at a waggle. The other was this:

That's not terrible. He's all the way around at eight and that's usually profit if they haven't half-rolled away from you. But it was unique.

Harrell is a useful piece and is going to be a major part of the defense because he provides a valuable service. You can't rely on anyone else to execute the important thing he's excelled in so far. That role is the standard-down edge shutdown dude. This space doesn't believe a leap forward to Jake Ryan is in the offing, because if there was the barest hint of plus pass rush from the guy who is the smart, fundamentally sound guy who makes the defense work we would have heard about it over and over.

Also in this bin… well, it's TJ GUY [recruiting profile]. You can rest assured the entire MGoBlog staff is racing to be the first one to tweet "TJ Guy? More like TJ DUDE" the first time he does something on the field. As of yet this has not transpired. The clip we've got is Guy not giving up on a really long pass rush. We've had one solitary take about him from fall camp chatter and it was "looks the part and has had a few strong days of camp" from Josh Henschke. Guy is in the LB/DE mold of Harrell and may have a path to the field spotting him. Otherwise it's scout team time.

Also in this bin is redshirt freshman KECHAUN BENNETT [recruiting profile], who has not drawn mention since his enrollment. At 6'5" he's likely enbeefening to 260-270 before anyone can evaluate his suitability.

WILDCARD!

Your other genre of option here: insane athletes who could be anything but are currently behind the Guys.

certainly looks the part [UT-Martin]

Alpaca-out-of-nowhere transfer EYABI ANOMA isn't the most likely wildcard but he's the wildest card so here he is. Anoma was a St. Frances kid who played on the same team as Blake Corum (and various other familiar names) who considered Michigan but eventually committed to Bama as the #4 recruit in the 2018 class. He washed out of Bama after just a year after being named to the SEC All-Freshman team despite just 90 snaps, then washed out of Houston a year later. Both of these dismissals were the proverbial Undisclosed Violation Of Team Rules, so this tweet from an Alabama reporter is the only explanation on offer internet-wide:

Hearing it was a combination of factors that led to Eyabi Anoma being dismissed from the team at Houston — tardiness, skipping class, clashing with teammates, insubordination, etc.

“Some of the same issues he dealt with (at Alabama),” one source said.

— Matt Zenitz (@mzenitz) February 11, 2020

No word on if he cut anyone's brakes.

Then he went to UT-Martin, sat out, and became a rotational piece for an FCS playoff team. He racked up 6 sacks and 9.5 TFLs.

Despite this roundabout way to being an FCS contributor, PFF ranked him their #10 edge for the 2023 draft on little more than recruiting memories; they even note that his 2021 grade was 72—not exactly gangbusters, especially at the FCS level. (It's very difficult to disentangle football grading from your opponent.) When I watched this highlight reel of UT-Martin's second round playoff game against Montana State, Anoma was pretty anonymous—he was on the field for maybe a third of the snaps that made the reel and did not do much of note. His pass rush did not leap out.

It is distantly possible that Anoma is David Ojabo 2.0. The backgrounds here are eerily similar: insanely athletic, raw kid with little experience who's going to play weakside end. Those guys do occasionally blow up out of nowhere. Anoma's maturity issues may have robbed him of the development that got Ojabo to the NFL after year three, and maaaaaybe he's turned a new leaf and will bust out. This space thinks that's deeply unlikely since he was added to the roster little more than a week ago. He was not here for spring; he missed almost all of fall camp.

Despite all that, here's Harbaugh:

“Eyabi Anoma has been practicing with the team for about 10 days, 12 days, something like that. He's been really good,” Harbaugh said. “He’s been a great teammate, and I look forward to seeing what he can do this coming season.

“He’ll be hopefully playing right away in the first game, and show some outstanding assets that he can bring to the team.”

I guess it doesn't take that long to lock in as a pass rush specialist. Let's roll the dice. 

in an upset Welschof wasn't the pump it up guy [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Also in freakish athletes without a lot of production to their name yet: JULIUS WELSCHOF [recruiting profile]. Welschof was always a random German athlete and moguls skiier who may or may not Ojabo. Indications last year pointed to "not Ojabo," as he got scattered snaps as a defensive tackle and did not particularly stand out on them. Seth's grading was a smattering of pluses and minuses with notes like "not made for doubles duty," "still not a DT," and "agility is a plus."

And, yeah, on the clips we have of him most of them are Welschof giving ground to double teams. Even when he got a plus he gave ground to a double team before either spinning off of it or splitting it:

DT just inside of Ojabo as stand-up end to bottom

Seth on the above play:

He’s still more Anchor than DT, and not many teams are going to trot out three interior OL under 300 pounds like Northwestern was willing to, and this is not how you *want* your sixth DT to take on a double-team. But it’s interesting. Welschof is an athlete on a completely different level with the rest of the tackles. He can pull this off, and become a major nuisance if left unblocked in pursuit, or if read on a midline option.

That's a hard way to make a living as a DT because if you don't spin off or get skinny you're just a guy on the wrong side of the LOS and then you're the gap.

Given the situation at DE last year it made total sense to try him on the interior, and it makes yet further sense to abandon that project now that the DTs look pretty set and all available men are storming the weakside end Bastille. We have seen some hints that Welschof is the kind of edge athlete who's… you know, an athlete on the edge. Sort of thing. This preview was going to quietly acknowledge that, note that he was a low-floor, high ceiling lottery ticket, and move on. Then Bruce Feldman came in brandishing his Freaks article like it was the 95 Theses. Lo, behold:

“Juice,” who has leaned down 22 pounds to 268, broad-jumps 10-5 consistently and vertical-jumped 34 1/2 inches this offseason. His 40 was 4.66. The most amazing numbers posted by former Wolverine Freak Aidan Hutchinson were his shuttle times. Hutchinson did 6.73 in the 3-cone drill in Indy (sixth fastest among all players there). Hutchinson clocked a 6.54 last offseason in Ann Arbor. Herbert said Welschof ran a 6.76 this offseason. He’s also done a 4.19 in the 20-yard shuttle — only Hutchinson’s 4.15 was faster among D-linemen and linebackers in Indy. Hutchinson was the first athlete Herbert ever witnessed do a “Turkish Get-Up” with 135 pounds and no collars (to lock on the plates) in a quarter-century working in college weight rooms. This offseason, Welschof did it with a 160-pound dumbbell “like it was effortless.”

All weight loss and gain is good and Welschof is now in excellent edge range, and if he's got numbers in the Hutchinson zone I'm saying there's a chance. If a Scottish guy who got stuck overseas for a summer can do that in one season, Welschof can too. Arguing against that: age. Welschof's already been on campus for four years, and he's drawn little mention in either spring or fall. Henschke is one of the few to mention him and that's when he said that any Ojabo-like potential has "yet to materialize" just over a week ago. If forced to guess, it's not happening. Welschof should be a useful rotation piece who can spot Morris, though. He's the most likely sub there.

how soon is now [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

A few young guys round out the wildcard options. Redshirt sophomore BRAIDEN MCGREGOR [recruiting profile] was tracking towards Aidan Hutchinson 2.0 before suffering a horrendous injury early in his senior year of high school. He recovered enough to chip in as a redshirt freshman but did not pop off the screen. We have a few clips from noncompetitive portions of games; one is a bull rush through a tackle and a running back chip:

standup DE to bottom

Another is this unblocked edge explosion after some Nebraska tomfoolery:

standup DE to bottom

That latter feels exactly like it was: enticing but a step adrift.

There's been some encouraging chatter. Steve Lorenz recently asserted that he likes McGregor's chances of "being a legitimate contributor"; both Henschke and Chris Balas had some encouraging rumbles, although Henschke has an assertion that McGregor is the "least explosive" weakside option. If true that would seem to confirm that McGregor's injury has sapped him of many of the things people were excited about when he was a touted recruit. He would still have a path to the field because he's big enough to pursue the Wormley/Morris route.

 

if you run he will chase you [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Michigan's final lottery ticket here is true freshman DERRICK MOORE [recruiting profile], a top-50 composite recruit who decommitted from Oklahoma and flipped to Michigan in the aftermath of their breakthrough against Ohio State. Moore enrolled early and started generating hype immediately, in part because he does not look like a freshman. Like, at all. This is in part because he's already 19. And that was before the phonebooks declared he was up 29 pounds from his listed weight on 247 and is now sitting at 279.

Moore has that explosion off the edge that everyone covets. His recruiting profile is littered with references to it:

Agile and athletic. … Chases plays down … Possesses closing speed. Is able to corral ball carriers in space. At his best when using speed. … Speed off edge is extremely disruptive. Has speed for backside pursuit."

That's just one guy! The ellipses are not jamming scouting reports together. That is one guy who just cannot get over Derrick Moore's ability to go from one place to another place. Here's another guy: ""speed, speed, and speed. He's blazing off the edge with great bend."

There is also a consensus that Moore needs something else in his repertoire, because right now he just tries to zoom around the corner and that's it. This had not changed by the time of the depth chart dump. Harbaugh:

Derrick Moore has been fantastic. When that motor becomes like Chase Winovich and Aidan Hutchinson and then he learns a counter move or two, I think he's gonna be close to unblockable. As soon as that happens — may take some may take some time — he's ready to play and he'll be in there.

Moore has been generating other hype from reporters around the program (Lorenz says don't be surprised if he "not only plays, but is a contributor this year") and his teammates. Mike Morris:

On which younger player has stood out to him in his unit:

I love D Moore. D Moore is doing his thing. I’m looking forward to seeing him get reps in the game.

On freshman Derrick Moore:

Freshmen coming in, our scheme is kind of very complex to people who haven’t been in it for a year. I'm only saying it's easier because I've been in it for a year. It was complex when I was comprehending it at first, but now it's so much easier now that I know everything. But a guy like Derrick, want to make sure he learns everything. So put something small on his plate and then expand it, expand it, expand it until he knows the ins and outs like someone like myself.

Moore crushed the competition at his All-Star game, winning the MVP award like Rashan Gary before him. He's NFL-sized already, has a reputation for relentlessness, and is one spin move away from being Chase Winovich, but big. Despite having the least experience he may be the best bet for Michigan to pry a playmaker out of this spot. At least on passing downs. Standard downs will probably have to wait until next year.