Bryan Mone (image via The Majors)
Name: Bryan Mone
Height: 6’4″
Weight: 310 lbs.
High school: Salt Lake City (UT) Highland
Position: Nose tackle
Class: Redshirt sophomore
Jersey number: #90
Last year: I ranked Mone #23 and said he would be a backup nose tackle (LINK). He suffered a broken leg and redshirted.
Mone earned a ton of hype last off-season after a mediocre freshman season in 2014. He made 9 tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss, and 1 fumble recovery as a true freshman. Naturally, the highly rated recruit was thought to be more valuable than the walk-on redshirt junior Ryan Glasgow, and the coaches did indeed say that when they ranked all their players, Mone was the #3 guy on the whole team. Maybe Glasgow was #1 or #2, but that seems unlikely. I don’t know why the coaches would lie, but I certainly didn’t think Mone was the third-best guy on the team. Either way, it didn’t matter because Mone broke his leg not long into August practices, and 325-pounders don’t recover quickly from broken legs. The Wolverines started Glasgow (who also eventually got hurt) and counted on the undersized Maurice Hurst, Jr. at times, along with other, uh, less qualified players. The run defense did okay for a while, but once Glasgow got injured, Indiana and Ohio State ran all over the place.
This year it sounds like Mone will once again be the #2 nose tackle. It might seem like a reach to rank the backup nose tackle at #15 in the countdown, but I’m a little nervous that Glasgow’s pectoral injury will linger. It’s also just tough to stay healthy on the interior defensive line, with guys hurting shoulders, getting rolled up on, etc. Michigan will rotate a lot of guys on the defense line, and the toughest teams to beat on the schedule are Michigan State and Ohio State, both of whom employ power running games. The Wolverines will need Glasgow and Mone to beat those teams, so he’s an important cog in the defense. I also like the fact that he has dropped about 15 lbs. since last season. When he came out of high school, I mentioned that he moved a lot better at a lighter weight and I was concerned with the extra pounds he added as a senior. By no means is he a lightweight at 310, but he should be moving better and playing with more energy at his new weight. I have seen speculation that he could earn himself a spot in the 2017 NFL Draft, but it’s more likely that he positions himself for a big-time role in 2017 and perhaps some notoriety heading into the 2018 draft.
Prediction: Backup nose tackle; 25 tackles, 3 sacks
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Key cog is right. Need him and Glasgow is right. The Indiana/OSU struggles can’t all be blamed on injuries (it was scheme issues too), but that was a big part of it.
I could imagine a draft last summer that went 1. Lewis 2. Henry 3. Mone. If that’s anywhere close to being true, implying Mone was ahead of Glasgow, then we have a special player.
I’d say Frank Clark gave Michigan DLmen all the notoriety they need for a while. Hopefully Mone sticks around for 17 and follows in the path of Henry, Wormley, Charlton, and eventually Hurst and Gary to create a new D-Line U: pipeline to the NFL.
Enjoyed the writeup. Thanks
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darn right the ind / osu struggles cant all be blamed on injuries (though both glasgow and mone are talented, vital players again this year) – as you mentioned they got smoked on the ground in those games due to lack of depth, poor scheme, poor adjustments, poor LB play, poor execution, etc.
brown should have a positive effect in the areas he can control so hopefully the D performs better in those situations. he will aggressively try to stop the run and require his DBs to handle gaps and tackle, plus i think hes a better in game adjuster than durkin. added to a hopefully deeper interior DL and theyre on the way. i dont think the LBs will be quite up to par yet but they cant play much worse than the LBs in those games last year. howard and elliott were talented backs running behind solid OLs but still…
itll be interesting to watch
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I think Durkin did a great job overall despite the late season stumble, but i’m fully on the Brown hype train. As a guy with a ton of experience and success, and seemingly little ambition to become a HC, he feels like a perfect fit.
I do expect a step down in LB ability from Morgan/Ross/Bolden, but the LB performance should be OK since the DL and DBs should be dominant. We all Brown can simplify things for these LBs.
With Pepeprs getting most downs, I feel pretty good about Gedeon and McCray, as long as both are healthy. We’ll see what happens against PSU and Wisc, when Michigan presumably will use 3 true LBs. Things will get more interesting when Furbush, Bush, and whoever else are given actual responsibilities.
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Thinking about the NT position …
… I think I read somewhere that for DL play “it starts in the middle and works to the edge,” but I’m not sure if I recall that correctly.
Given Thunder’s comments about about Glasgow’s injury and the subsequent drop in run-stopping, I’m thinking maybe there’s something to the idea that the NT (or interior tackles) set the tone for the entire DL … and, by extension, the rest of the defense. If so, that supports the high ranking for a backup, and Lanknow’s comment about “key cog.”
Also … in a pinch couldn’t Rashan Gary go inside? Or is it too early for that?
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Anything can happen “in a pinch” because we’ve used Tom Strobel, Jibreel Black, etc. at nose tackle over the years. However, I don’t think it would be ideal to put Gary at nose tackle, at least not for long. I don’t think he has the right body type to be a true nose tackle, because he lacks that thick lower half to anchor him down. If you look at Glasgow, Mone, Onwenu, etc., they have thick lower bodies.
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im sure there are plenty of quotes along the lines you mention bc it does start in the middle of the DL. and youll also hear coaches preach being strong thru the middle, from DT to LB to S (similar to baseball terms where they reference being tough from the C to 2B / SS to CF) – the games evolved and teams challenge the edge more and force Ds to defend the entire field but all DCs still want to own the middle of the field
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