Michigan Football, Team 139, 2018 Season

[Jeff Buchanan]

Tarik Black tweeted this last night:

Gold Is Refined In The Fire, Diamonds Are Formed Under Pressure.

Pretty remarkable attitude.

There's been some discussion about when and if he returns during the 2018/19 season how his career will play out with M. Seems to be a consensus that he's not draftable in 2019 with only a few games played and two seasons of injuries. He'll likely take a 5th year at M to demonstrate that not only is he the superstar he hopes to be but he can play a full season without injury.

There's also been some discussion on the question is he simply injury prone due to having some funky feet. There are such players with aspirations for an NFL career those aspirations destroyed because they can't stay healthy due to repeated injuries. Time will tell if that is the case with Black but M has seen its fair share, if not more, of players whose careers have been cut short by weird injuries. Someone at mgo did a recounting of player names but I'm not going back to find it. It was more than a dozen though and the point he was trying to make is that M seems to be victimized at a high rate by career ending injuries to players with a lot of potential.

[iam416]

He's a RS Frosh right now? Why is he taking a 5th season? Next season he'll be a RS Sophomore.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Black was in the 2016 class and enrolled early. He played in 2017 as a Freshman, got a redshirt and is, as you asked, a RS Frosh this year. He's in his second year academically and will probably earn a degree and graduate in May of 2020. Frankly, I'm not sure if he can take another medical RS this season which would mean he could potentially have 6y of eligibility if he got one. He won't leave after this season (in 2019) but if he graduates in in May of 2020 he would have done so after 4y of eligibility. He'd take his fifth year of eligibility in 2021.

You're right, that does not occur in the 2019 season, nor the 2020 season. I'm off by a year, probably 2.

[hack]

Seems like for now let's just see the guy get on the field before considering how he should position himself for the draft.

[Hannibal]

The Black loss is devastating. We need Black like Charlie Weis needs his insulin.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Dunno ...... just guessing but I'd say the deep ball, what Black probably does best at grabbing, is less than 10% of the 35 or so passing plays JH might run in 4 quarters. DPJ and Nico Collins are capable long ball threats. I know DPJ may not have Black's hands or leaping ability, reportedly elite, but both a threats to go long. DPJ showed that capability on multiple occasions in 2017 (not sure of the targets on him but, he went long a good deal in 2017). M's shitty QB situation precluded the long ball threat.
As well, I don't know about Black's ability to get off the line clean to support an RPO look but both DPJ and Collins got a good deal of hype in camp on that score. Perry is going to be the biggest threat on short balls that a DC facing M has to contend with and the TEs and backs are always a threat. So, M is loosing only a small portion of the play book and there's quality behind Black.

No doubt you and I are at the opposite ends of the optimism scale for M football in 2018 and damn, you were right in 2018 more than you were wrong in that regard.

[hack]

Whoa. Look, Black was ready a little bit earlier than DPJ was, but at this point DPJ has far more snaps and significantly more natural ability. DPJ is the athletic freak with all the measurables and agility. Now has a season of route-running uner his belt, and is presumably benefiting from having a dedicated position coach too. He was the one to be really and trulye excited about.

I don't know if Patterson is the deep-ball cannon you need to really get the most out of DPJ, but it doesn't seem sensible to worry about the deep ball here. Black's loss is probably more about the ability to put two elite WRs on the field, and even that is a stretch. Collins was also a top-100 recruit, just like Black. Martin was top-100 as well, or close to it IIRC.

IMO it really sucks that Black is hurt again and may not have a body to stay on the field, but Michigan has plenty of other talent at the position and isn't fucked because of this. We should be worried about the tackles, IMO. Not the WRs.

[iam416]

M folks are project Patterson as an NFL draft pick after this season. There's no credible way to do that if he doesn't have the arm.

[drok]

I'm having a hard time dampening down my enthusiasm for this season. The glaring hole at both tackle positions is the only thing keeping me from being downright bullish.

This must mean that soul-crushing doom awaits.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Here, this will feed your enthusiasm. Ian Boyd writes for SB nation and does these football study hall pieces. I think he's nailed some fundamental play's in Harbaughffense 2018. He also names Hudson as starting RT. There's been multiple comments/support for the notion that Hudson will surpass JBB and become the starter at some point. I don't think it's against ND.

Moreover, this study hall piece makes it clear why the loss of Tarik Black isn't devastating. I think if M was playing offense with Peters and playing like it did in 2017, that would be a huge loss but if JH runs anything close to what is depicted in this article linked below, Black would have been a sometime player that DCs would probably have to insure was double covered or S under CB over type of thing. DPJ can create the same kinds of problems. Blacks loss is probably more of a depth creating problem for M's offense than it is a loss of a key tool in the tool box of plays.

https://www.footballstudyhall.com/2018/8/27/17766048/what-could-a-jim-harbaugh-spread-offense-look-like-shea-patterson

[iam416]

As a quick reminder, last year M threw 9 TD passes and 10 Interceptions...all season. 13 games. One of those numbers is acceptable. One of those numbers is unspeakably awful unless Jamielle Holloway is your QB.

The QB Whisperer shall have his vengeance. HARBAUGH!!!!!

(In two games as starter in 2013 filling in for Braxton Miller, Kenny Guiton tossed 10 TDs with 1 Int).

[Jeff Buchanan]

The only team in my recent memory that was offensively worse than the 2017 team and the Peters/O'Korn disaster, was RichRod's first year team featuring Nick Sheridan at QB.

[UMStan White]

Whatever happened to Kenny Guiton

[Jeff Buchanan]

If you can read through Brian's writing style, which I dislike although folks call it entertaining, he does a very good job of breaking down the entire OL depth chart. As you may know if you read any of his stuff during and after the 2017 season, he was down on the OL more than Hanni is down on anything related to M football. Called it a disaster and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future due to Tim Drevno's inability to bring in any decent OTs, Ulizio being the only one he landed and we know how that went...... and Drevno's OL coaching, also a disaster if you were watching plays develop early in the season (actually got better in the run game late).

Brian believes the OL will be P5/B10 well below average in 2018 baring an amazing turnaround produced by the hiring of Ed Warriner or a combo of that and a revamped offense with Patterson at QB that minimizes what Brian thinks are insurmountable talent deficiencies at OT. It's a pretty disheartening picture but it might help to stem the emerging optimism with a dose of reality ......or he could be blitheringly wrong. I hope for the later but that's just me.

The best part of the piece is his description of the battle for RT involving Hudson (former highly touted DE moved to OT for obvious reasons), JBB (a utter disaster at pass blocking, better at run blocking, Runyan (very athletic but smallish) and Mayfield (a freshman with prototypical OL build that needs weight - classic Greg Frey OT) that ended up moving Runyan to LT.

Good read:

https://mgoblog.com/content/preview-...fensive-tackle

[iam416]

Hoke's fault.