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Ondre Pipkins |
Name: Ondre Pipkins
Height: 6’3″
Weight: 317 lbs.
High school: Kansas City (MO) Park Hill
Position: Defensive tackle
Class: Senior
Jersey number: #56
Last year: I ranked Pipkins #28 and said he would be the starting nose tackle with 20 tackles and 1 sack. He was a backup nose tackle and made 9 tackles.
This is maybe the biggest drop in the short history of my season countdowns, but here Pipkins falls 38 spots since last year. He tore his ACL in October of 2013, and while he was not expected to recover from his ACL tear quite as quickly as smaller guys (Jake Ryan, Jake Butt, Russell Bellomy, etc.), I thought he should be somewhat effective toward the end of the year. Instead, he played in just six games and made 9 tackles. Meanwhile, players like Ryan Glasgow, Bryan Mone, and Maurice Hurst, Jr. got more playing time.
Pipkins’s time at Michigan will soon come to an end, and chances are slim that he lives up to the 5-star status he had coming out of Missouri as a high schooler. He still has the size to be a nose tackle, but the burst appears to be lacking and he probably can’t be much more than an eater of space. On top of that, all three of the aforementioned players return. Glasgow was effective, Mone showed more flashes than Pipkins ever really has, and Hurst earned some spring practice buzz to go along with his solid redshirt freshman season. The nose tackle position seems to be in good hands, but those good hands do not seem to belong to Pipkins.
Prediction: Backup nose tackle
UPDATE: Now that the news has broken about Pipkins’s transfer, I can “officially” say that I have expected his departure for the past couple months. Regardless, until it was announced by him or by the university, I was going to place him in the countdown where I saw him fitting in. Since he sits here at #66, you can see that I do not view this as a big loss.