chris wormley

I started a bit of offseason content during the long offseason so I might as well finish it. I'll post the 3-, 4-, and 5-star teams next to each other at the end and link a poll if you want to compare.

What is this? I'm making a team of Michigan four-stars since 1990. Offense is here. For the writeups I gave up on focusing on the recruiting rankings because compared to 3-stars (there's always a reason) and 5-stars (there's always a story), 4-star recruitments are boring. Instead I'll try to tell you something about the guy you didn't know.

More All-Michigan [Blank] Teams: 5-Stars, 3-Stars, Pro Offense/Pro Defense, 1879-Before Bo, Extracurriculars, Position-Switchers, Highlights, Numbers Offense/Numbers Defense, In-State, Names, Small Guys, Big Guys, Freshmen

Rules: Lower bound: must be a four-star to at least one major ranker of his era, and average over 4.0 stars on the Seth scale. Upper bound: cannot a 5-star to anybody or average higher than a 4.50 on the Seth scale. Since 1990 because data go back that far. College performance considered only.

Defensive Tackle

image

Left: photo via Maize and Blue Nation. Right: Bryan Fuller

Mo Hurst (2013) burst into the consciousness of recruiters with a play he made while on offense, as the nation delighted in the fullback shrugging off eleven overmatched Northeastern schoolchildren for a 70-yard touchdown run.

The rest of the tape was the dude teleporting into the backfield. His coach used "yay" as an adjective.

The recruiting comp for Hurst was Mike Martin (2008), whom Brian described as "pulsing" and "a single twitching muscle." A wrestler and "crab person" for his perfect pad level, the Detroit Catholic Central committed to Lloyd Carr in June and stuck when the staff switched. In the interim he blew up, with his film showing a slab of muscle running down ballcarriers like a linebacker. Because Michigan had just experienced The Horror while this was happening, every recruiter checked in with Martin to ask if he's sure he wanted to "be on a sinking ship."

All of that negative recruiting might have helped Michigan keep Martin in the fold when Notre Dame made their serious run at him in November; according to Mike he was swayable right up until his Notre Dame recruiter started his visit by badmouthing Michigan. If everyone else started their pitch with why he shouldn't choose Michigan, that probably meant they knew Michigan had the most to offer. I have his contact so I might reach out about bringing back this shirt:

MGoBlog Profiles Six Zero | mgoblog

[After THE JUMP: Even I can't make Dan Rumishek interesting, but I can certainly make you appreciate uninteresting]

We made it! [Patrick Barron]

A series covering Michigan's 2010s. Previously: QBs, RBs, and WRs, TEs, FBs, and OL, best blocks, the aughts.

Methodology: The staff decided these together and split the writeups. Considering individual years but a player can only be nominated once.

DEFENSIVE TACKLE: Maurice Hurst Jr. (2017)

image

The spread age means defensive material gets moved away from the box, simplifying the game by taking away most of the defense's opportunity to surprise. You can't bring pressure from everywhere if your OLBs and safeties have to split out with slot receivers. RPOs, quick passing games, receiver running backs, cross-motion, run-threat QBs, and read-based rushing offenses nerf the effectiveness of even the elite edge rushers until passing downs take those options away. But the one thing spread offenses have no answer for is a penetrating defensive tackle who won't get doubled and won't get out of his damn lane.

Into this math stepped Mo Hurst, and oh was that first step unholy quick.

The spread has no answer for that.

Hurst was the son of an NFL father who'd left only his name, from a fancy Massachusetts private school his mom had to Mom Out to pay for, and a first step looking to be attached to a football player.

Why Mike Martin? Two words: snap explosion.

Martin was a bit higher rated—consensus four star outside the top 100, IIRC—and an ever-growing slab of pulsating muscle from day one. Hurst isn't going to be quite as ripped, but he is a kid who can get off the ball in a flash, bury himself in the chest of the opponent, and then rip through the dude before he knows what's going on.

We were hype, with distant future caveats. The burst came in 2015, first as a passing down sub for Ryan Glasgow, then a cycler with the aforementioned and Willie Henry. Hurst made his mark on the season with quick flashes into the backfield, but got exposed for his youth when Glasgow was out and Kevin Wilson's fast-paced Indiana stretched him to death.

By 2016 the MGoBlog love for the wrecking ball responsible for Michigan's second line (Gary/Hurst/Mone/Winovich) matching the starters (Wormley/Godin/Glasgow/Taco) in production was expressed in UFR (+84.5/-20) then surpassed by Pro Football Focus—then at the fulness of their scouting, and it was on. We called him the defensive MVP (over Peppers). They put him on the All-American team. We wrote a profile in and put him rubbing his belly on the cover of HTTV, they put him on the top of the top players returning for 2017. We created a maurice hurst is so good he is kind of boring tag. They put him in Heisman territory:

This site wasn't far off—Hurst's senior season tape is the best by a DT or any other position in the history of the exercise. His +152/-27.5 is the standing record for UFR. The 3-3-5 they routinely deployed, because there wasn't a second line of Mo Hursts anymore, nerfed his statistical impact. This site was saying this after Game 2:

He is Mo Hurst. The end.

How far you want to go with the superlatives after that is up to you. The best player of the 2010s? There's an argument. The best DT in Michigan history? Depends how much film you want to watch. But if you want to know what's different about Michigan's last two defensive efforts against Ohio State and the two that gave wobby offenses a chance to win in 2016 and 2017, he is Mo Hurst. The end.

--Seth

[After THE JUMP: MGoBlog and the mid-teens were good for one thing]

30513883700_69fa613ea8_z

[Patrick Barron]

All position switches are good news and bad news. Drake Harris is now a cornerback:

I'm dubious that this will work out, but Sam Webb asserts that Harris was not flat out told to move—he was in fact told that if he stays at WR he would be a contributor. The uncertainty at corner is greater and a guy with Harris's frame has a super high upside if it works out. Yes, Richard Sherman was inevitably brought up.

Moving your most experienced WR to CB after spring practice says something about the guys who are still there: DPJ and Tarik Black must have shown plenty for Michigan to move forward with those two guys and Kekoa Crawford as their main outside threats. It obviously says less than great things about cornerback, but I wouldn't get too despondent. Flipping guys around just to check is a Harbaugh trademark; sometimes it's paid off handsomely.

It is not a great sign for Harris's playing time since it directly states that he got passed by the two early-enrolled freshmen as soon as they showed up. Richard Sherman, yeah, but for every Sherman there are 20 shots in the dark that fail to salvage careers. There's a 10% chance he's a starting corner, a 20% chance he's on the two deep, and the rest of it is fading into Bolivia.

A combine weekend is good and bad. It's bad for the NBA prospects of Michigan's two potential early entrants, and that's good for Michigan. DJ Wilson had an injury that prevented him not only from playing 5 on 5 but also testing, which he would have been real good at. Wagner had a Wagner-versus-Oregon weekend, not a Wagner-versus-Louisville weekend. Both landed on Chad Ford's Go Back To School team. Both have also more or less directly stated that they are not going to stay in unless they're in the first round. Wagner:

“If I have that feeling that a team believes in me that much to draft me in the first round, I’d have to seriously consider that.

“As long as I don’t have that feeling, I won’t risk losing two years of eligibility at the University of Michigan.”

Wilson:

"If it's anything second round, then I don't really think that I'll be staying in the draft, I'll probably come back to school," Wilson said. "That's the good spot that I'm in -- I don't have a bad choice either way."

Wagner seems to be solidly in the second round and we can expect him back. Wilson is in a tricky spot; various mock drafts have him at the tail end of the first, including SBN and DX. I don't think he's going to have clarity either way unless a team gives him a guarantee.

In other combine news, any Michigan fan could have told you this:

Standing vertical leap (no steps) high scores: Donovan Mitchell (36.5 inches), Derrick Walton Jr. (36), Frank Jackson (35.5), Devin Robinson (35.5) and Derrick White (35.5)

Secretly 6'8" Derrick Walton and his rebounding chops.

WHY. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS

This week in amateurism. Jim Delany gets a 20 million dollar bonus; the Big Ten is blindsided by complaints about Friday night games. Jim Delany is still getting a 20 million dollar bonus; this year's basketball schedule is so borked because of someone's bright idea to play the conference championship a week early so it can be at Madison Square Garden that Michigan might only play 30 games. And this is on the table:

“Do you end up playing a nonconference game during that week that’s after the conference [tournament] finishes up in New York?” Phillips pondered. “That’s a possibility. But who do you get who’s available? Do you play another conference game, and it’s a ‘nonconference’ game, but you play another conference opponent during that week? And I think you’ve got to be creative … how long a layoff is too long, where it really starts to have an adverse effect when you go into the postseason, whether it’s the NCAA or the NIT?”

If it maximizes revenue like a duck, pays only lip service to everything else like a duck, and compensates executives like a duck, can we finally pay the players?

Can't even scrape right. I wouldn't pay much attention to that NCAA report about the number of staffers across college football:

The Irish have a combined 45 on-field coaches, strength coaches, graduate assistants and support staff, according to the survey distributed to the NCAA Council last month. Notre Dame is followed closely in the top five by Texas (44), Georgia (42), Auburn (41) and Michigan (40).

However, the NCAA told CBS Sports the methodology to measure the staff sizes of 127 FBS schools in 2016 came from mere website research.

That research is also wrong. The report was for internal use and was obtained by CBS, thus putting a not ready for prime-time document on display. The numbers in it are not worth your time.

More worthy, perhaps, is this thought process:

The number of those added support staff is not capped. In fact, some argue that the NCAA should limit staff size even as they try to determine whether such a restriction can be legally instituted.

"You got it," said Phillips, also Northwestern's athletic director. "Maybe you can't limit [it], but the idea is that's how we've structured ourselves in the past. That's why we don't have seven assistant basketball coaches."

The money has to go somewhere. Now a lot of it is going to low level staffers. If it can't go to low level staffers it will go to midlevel staffers. Or it will buy Jim Delany yet another Ford Fiesta. You know he's just got a hangar full of 'em.

Etc.: Notre Dame is done paying Charlie Weis. xoxo miss you, Big Guy. M-OSU on Fox appears all but official. Hockey commit Antonio Stranges gets an "A+" rating from SBN College Hockey. Money has to go somewhere.

Justin Meram is doing work in MLS this year. I wonder if he regrets closing the door on the USMNT by playing for Iraq. I certainly regret it. Haven't had a winger in a minute.