Posts by: Thunder

Goodbye, Jalen Mayfield

Offensive tackle Jalen Mayfield, who would have been a redshirt sophomore in 2020-2021, has declared for the NFL Draft.

HIGH SCHOOL
Mayfield, from Grand Rapids (MI) Catholic Central, was recruited to Minnesota by then-Gophers offensive line coach Ed Warinner, but he flipped to Michigan when the Wolverines came through with an offer. He ended up playing in the Army All-American Bowl and finished the 2018 recruiting cycle as a 4-star, the #16 offensive tackle, and #268 overall. I initially gave him a TTB Rating of 84 (LINK) before bumping him up to an 87 at the end of the cycle (LINK).

COLLEGE
Mayfield redshirted in 2018. He became a 13-game starter in 2019, earning Honorable Mention All-Big Ten on the offensive line.

CAREER STATS
13 games played (13 starts)

AWARDS
Honorable Mention All-Big Ten (2019)

SUMMARY
Boy, this is going to be a short summary. Mayfield was a very athletic and exciting recruit who needed a year to work on his body. He had a rough start to the 2019 season against Middle Tennessee when he made some mental mistakes, but as the year went along, he improved significantly. His potential was exciting, and I was looking forward to watching him block relentlessly for at least another year or two. His combination of athleticism and aggression was a notch below Taylor Lewan.

I WILL REMEMBER HIM FOR . . .
. . . leaving “too early.” Who am I to say he’s leaving too early when we’re in the middle of a pandemic and the 2020 season was postponed/canceled? But we’ve never seen a guy leave Michigan for the NFL essentially after his redshirt freshman year. This is very odd and leaves me wondering how he would have looked with another year of strength, conditioning, and technique work. He would have been really good this year. Drat.

PROJECTION
It’s not often that we have to project a redshirt freshman to the NFL, and I have no idea which players will be entering the 2021 draft. If he were eligible for the 2020 draft, he would not have been a first round pick. He simply wasn’t playing at that level. But he did show a ton of athleticism. Some people think he’s too short for tackle at 6’5″, but I think he has enough length to stick at tackle at the next level. If I had to guess right now, I would say he would be a second or third round pick in 2021, but that’s only a slightly educated guess because everything is so fluid.

2020 Season Countdown: #29 Donovan Jeter

Name: Donovan Jeter
Height: 6’3″
Weight: 318 lbs.
High school: Beaver Falls (PA) Beaver Falls
Position: Defensive tackle
Class: Redshirt junior
Jersey number: #95
Last year: I ranked Jeter #1B and said he would be a starting efensive tackle with 20 tackles, 3 tackles for loss, and 1 sack (LINK). He strted one game and made 3 tackles.
TTB Rating: 78

This is my mea culpa for the 2019 countdown. I ranked Jeter at #1B – just behind Shea Patterson – because I thought he was going to have a little bit of a breakout, but also mostly because he was a big guy at a position where Michigan really didn’t have many big guys.

In my defense, the defensive tackle position was probably the weakest position group, and that really hurt Michigan. But Jeter was not even close to being the guy who mattered most. That honor should have gone to Carlo Kemp, and the likes of Chris Hinton, Jess Speight, and Michael Dwumfour outperformed Jeter.

Kemp, Hinton, and Speight return, while Dwumfour transferred to Rutgers. Jeter will also be battling redshirt freshman Mazi Smith for playing time, along with any of the young whippersnappers who try to step up and play inside.

I don’t expect much from Jeter because he burned me last year. Not only that, but he’s up from a listed 290 to a listed 318 when quickness and conditioning seemed to be part of the issue even at a lighter weight. (For the record, I believe he was heavier than 290 in 2019, but that’s how the roster listed him.) But it’s a now-or-never situation with Jeter, who’s a redshirt junior without much to show for it at this point.

Prediction: Backup defensive tackle

2020 Scholarship Count

Players are listed in order of remaining eligibility. With 82 scholarships allotted, Michigan is currently under its scholarship limit by 3. Meanwhile, 9 seniors are scheduled to graduate, so the 2021 class should have at least 12 players.

TOTAL SCHOLARSHIPS ALLOTTED FOR 2020 = 82

• Removed OL Jalen Mayfield, who declared for the NFL Draft.
• Removed DE Aaron Lewis, who transferred to Rutgers.
• Removed LB Devin Gil, who transferred to USF.
• Removed DT Michael Dwumfour, who transferred to Rutgers.
• Added LB Edward Warinner as a walk-on, who transferred from Michigan State.
• Removed walk-on RB Tru Wilson, who transferred to Northern Colorado.
• Removed S Jaylen Kelly-Powell, who transferred to Akron.

Hit the jump for the breakdown by class.

2020 Season Countdown: #30 Jake Moody

Name: Jake Moody
Height: 6’0″
Weight: 177 lbs.
High school: Northville (MI) Northville
Position: Kicker
Class: Sophomore
Jersey number: #2
Last year: I ranked Moody #45 and said he would be the starting kicker (LINK). He was 6/9 on field goals with a long of 43 yards, and 34 of his 75 kickoffs went for touchbacks.
TTB Rating: N/A

Moody had an up-and-down season in 2019. He made his first 4 field goals of the year, but then he went 2-for-5 down the stretch. On the flip side, fellow kicker Quinn Nordin missed his first 3 field goals of the year and then went 10/10 once he took over the job full-time from Moody. Moody made a giant kick against Army, which broke a 21-21 tie to win the game in double overtime. That was the highlight of his year.

I put Moody here at #30 because he is likely to be the kickoff specialist and handle at least some of the placekicking duties. It’s a very odd dynamic between him and Nordin, and there must be things going on in practice and behind closed doors that keeps the competition seesawing back and forth. Nordin was a highly touted kicker and is returning for a fifth year, so the coaches must see some value in having him around . . . but Moody keeps hanging him around, too. It’s not often that Michigan has two scholarship kickers in such a battle.

Prediction: Starting kickoff specialist, part-time placekicker

Ranking Michigan’s Running Backs

Tim Biakabutuka

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I went through the process of ranking Michigan’s quarterbacks (LINK), which created a lot of debate. This has been in the works for a long time, but here’s a look at my ranking of running backs, going back to the beginning of the Lloyd Carr era.

To be considered for this list, a running back must have started at least ten games in a Michigan uniform*, which roughly equals one full season’s worth of starts with some wiggle room for being banged up a little bit.

*There are two exceptions to this for different reasons, which you’ll see in the post.

Hit the jump.

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