Name: Donovan Edwards
Height: 6’1”
Weight: 212 lbs.
High school: West Bloomfield (MI) West Bloomfield
Position: Running back
Class: Senior
Jersey number: #7
Last year: I ranked Edwards #13 and said he would be a part-time starting running back with 1,050 rushing yards and 8 touchdowns, plus 30 catches for 350 yards and 4 touchdowns (LINK). He ran 119 times for 497 yards and 5 touchdowns; he caught 30 passes for 249 yards; and he completed 1/1 pass for 34 yards.
TTB Rating: 90
Well, Nostramagnus did a great job with the 2023 predictions, because I predicted Edwards would catch 30 passes and he did.
We’re just going to ignore the fact that I predicted 1,050 rushing yards (he had 497) and 8 touchdowns (he had 5) and 350 receiving yards (he had 249) and 4 receiving touchdowns (he had 0).
Just ignore it.
Edwards struggled in 2023 by a lot of metrics. First, his production was way down, and his yards per carry was among the lowest of qualifying running backs in the Big Ten. He wasn’t breaking big plays . . . or tackles. He supposedly started seeing a sports psychologist because of some of his on-field frustrations. And when he couldn’t eke out a short yardage touchdown, he campaigned visibly to stay on the field . . . and the coaching staff still replaced him with Blake Corum to ensure they would score.
That’s the bad stuff.
The good stuff is that he broke off a big touchdown run against Penn State and had two huge touchdown runs early in the national championship game (41- and 46-yarders) that set the tone against Washington. So he had his moments, but not nearly as many of them as we expected.
Now Corum is out of the way, and Edwards should be the unquestioned #1 back. He’s on the cover of NCAA ’25 and is rated as one of the top 50 players in the game. He got up to 214 pounds by the spring (now listed at 212) after being right around 200 earlier in his career, and the added weight/strength showed in the spring when he seemed a little more willing to try to bring the contact to defenders. A wholesale shift from finesse back to ground-and-pounder is unlikely, but if he can add a little thunder to his lightning for 2024, that would be an improvement. I have faith that Michigan’s coaching staff is going to restore some of his confidence and figure out ways to help him return to his 2022 form, especially if he’s on the field with run threat Alex Orji and fellow running back Kalel Mullings at times, because those are three dynamic runners that teams would have a very difficult time figuring out how to defend.
Prediction: Starting running back; 1,100 rushing yards and 8 touchdowns, plus 25 catches for 225 yards and 3 touchdowns
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