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PWO QB FTW. Well, it was a mild surprise when it was announced that former walk-on Davis Warren was named the starting quarterback for the season opener over Alex Orji and Jack Tuttle. Orji had received most of the hype in the off-season, and Tuttle is the most experienced. But Tuttle has been dealing with injuries and soreness, so he wasn’t really an option. Rumors started coming out a couple days before the game that Warren would be the guy. He finished 15/25 for 118 yards, 1 touchdown, and 1 interception and graded out as Michigan’s #4 offensive player (69.7 on Pro Football Focus). Overall, I thought Warren was mostly accurate. He overthrew a deep shot to Tyler Morris, and he underthrew Fredrick Morris on an open post route that could have been a touchdown but turned into an interception. There were a lot of checkdowns and short throws, probably by design to make things easy for Warren in his first start. But overall, I thought Warren looked composed and accurate.
Name: Greg Crippen Height: 6’4″ Weight: 309 lbs. High school: Bradenton (FL) IMG Academy Position: Center Class: Redshirt junior Jersey number: #51 Last year: I ranked Crippen #56 and said he would be a backup center (LINK). He played in nine games. TTB Rating: 65
Depending on how you look at it, Crippen has had one of the more frustrating careers imaginable in a Michigan uniform. After redshirting in 2021, he would have had a chance to start in 2022 . . . except Michigan brought in Olu Oluwatimi from Virginia, who won the Rimington Trophy for being the nation’s best center.
So then Crippen had a chance to start in 2023 . . . except Michigan brought in Stanford transfer Drake Nugent, who was named First Team All-Big Ten and a Rimington Trophy finalist.
Now Crippen has a chance to start in 2024 . . . except Michigan brought in former 3-star defensive tackle Dominick Giudice?
Okay, so earlier today, head coach Sherrone Moore was asked about the battles on the offensive line, and Moore said the center position was coming down to Crippen and Giudice. It’s surprising that Raheem Anderson wasn’t mentioned (perhaps there’s an injury?), and it’s even more surprising that Giudice is the primary competition after taking just 25 total snaps over the past two years.
Regardless, I’m sticking with the front-runner for the starting center job, and that’s Crippen. The former 4-star recruit has waited around for three years, and there have been positive comments coming from the coaches for the past two years. If Giudice is truly neck-and-neck with Crippen – and better than Anderson – then that likely means positive things for the depth of the line and not necessarily something negative about Crippen.
2023 Starters: LT La’Darius Henderson, LG Trevor Keegan, C Drake Nugent, RG Zak Zinter, RT Karsen Barnhart Losses: Barnhart (NFL), Henderson (NFL), Trente Jones (NFL), Keegan (NFL), Nugent (NFL), Zinter (NFL) Returning players: Myles Hinton (RS Sr.), Jeffrey Persi (RS Sr.), Raheem Anderson (RS Jr.), Tristan Bounds (RS Jr.), Greg Crippen (RS Jr.), Giovanni El-Hadi (RS Jr.), Dominic Giudice (RS Jr.), Andrew Gentry (RS So.), Connor Jones (RS So.), Nathan Efobi (RS Fr.), Amir Herring (RS Fr.), Evan Link (RS Fr.) Newcomers: Josh Priebe (RS Sr.), Blake Frazier (Fr.), Jake Guarnera (Fr.) Projected starters: LT Hinton, LG El-Hadi, C Crippen, RG Priebe, RT Persi
Michigan went from having a terrible offensive line under Brady Hoke to a decent offensive line at the beginning of the Harbaugh era to one of the best in the country at the end of Harbaugh’s tenure. In two of Harbaugh’s final three seasons, Michigan won the Joe Moore Award for the best offensive line in the country; in the third season, they lost the award but won a national championship. And now most of the key pieces to those awards and accomplishments are either in the NFL or heading there soon.
Much like the quarterback position, nobody really has a great idea of how the position group will shake out. Will it be as good as it was in 2021-2023? That’s unlikely. Could it still be a solid conglomeration? Sure. Four of the starters above (Hinton, El-Hadi, Crippen, and Persi) were 4-star prospects or better, and the only 3-star (Priebe) is a multi-year starter coming from Northwestern. Furthermore, they are all veteran players in at least their fourth year of college.
At offensive tackle, Hinton started one-third of the season before ceding his spot to Barnhart in 2023, so he seems like the most likely to start. On the right side, it could be a battle between Persi and Gentry. Both have looked somewhat rough in limited time, but Persi has two years of experience on Gentry, whose footwork still looked pretty sloppy in 2023.
At the guard positions, El-Hadi is another player who has some starting experience a couple seasons ago as an injury fill-in, so he seems likely to slide right in this season. Priebe is a veteran starting presence who should be able to fend off most contenders, if not all of them.
Word coming out of Ann Arbor about Crippen has been that he’s a potential All-American, but he’s just been blocked by two really good players in Olu Oluwatimi and Nugent over the past couple years. I have some doubts because I’m not sure why the coaching staff would recruit over him if he was that good, but he’s also two years older now than he was when Oluwatimi swooped in, so perhaps his improvement in that time has been significant.
Despite losing six offensive linemen to the draft, Michigan goes into spring with 15 other scholarship linemen on the roster. That’s somewhat mind-boggling to consider, since a team might have carried just 13 linemen a few years ago. In that bygone era of like 2019, we would be looking at 7 returning players and 6 true freshmen arriving sporadically in January and then June. Instead, there are 12 returning players, a transfer, and 2 early enrollee freshmen available for the spring, not to mention further reinforcements arriving this summer.
Some projected backups to keep an eye on are Raheem Anderson, who was reportedly ahead of Crippen early in their careers but has since appeared to be more of a factor at guard; Gentry, who could potentially start at tackle over Persi; and Herring, who’s a powerful offensive guard option that looked good in the spring game in 2023. Aside from Gentry possibly starting, Anderson and Herring are almost certainly backups for this season. Another players I’ll also be watching closely is Tristan Bounds, a behemoth of a player whose balance has been questionable in limited field time.
Name: Greg Crippen Height: 6’4″ Weight: 301 lbs. High school: Bradenton (FL) IMG Academy Position: Center Class: Redshirt sophomore Jersey number: #51 Last year: I ranked Crippen #35 and said he would be a backup center (LINK). He played in one game. TTB Rating: 65
Crippen is taking a roller coaster ride in the season countdowns so far in his career. I ranked him in the 80s as a freshman, and he played in six games, burning his redshirt. Then I ranked him #35 last year as a backup center, but he played in just one game behind Olu Oluwatimi, getting his redshirt back. Now I’m putting him at #56 and he will probably win the Rimington.
More seriously, Crippen started for the Maize team in the spring game, but the spring game was sans Stanford transfer Drake Nugent. Nugent is expected to start, but there’s also competition from Raheem Anderson II. I was more impressed with Anderson (who started for the Blue team) than Crippen and I would rank the centers as Nugent, then Anderson, then Crippen. Crippen and Anderson can both play a little bit of guard, but they’re probably not the primary backups there. Whoever isn’t starting in 2023 needs to get some experience, because it’s possible that Michigan will lose all five starters to the NFL before 2024.
Name: Greg Crippen Height: 6’4″ Weight: 301 lbs. High school: Bradenton (FL) IMG Academy Position: Center Class: Sophomore Jersey number: #51 Last year: I ranked Crippen #81 and said he would redshirt (LINK). He played in six games. TTB Rating: 65
Crippen was a big surprise to me last year and may already be approaching his TTB Rating as a sophomore. Andrew Vastardis started at center all year, but Crippen was his backup. While Michigan could have played Reece Atteberry, Raheem Anderson II, or guard Zak Zinter – all of whom have snapped the ball at times – Crippen was the guy.
Despite the presence of Crippen, Michigan still went out and tried to find a starting center, and they did in Olu Oluwatimi. Oluwatimi was a Rimington Award finalist, so maybe it was a no-brainer to take him, but if they truly felt Crippen was ready to roll in 2022 as the starter, they probably wouldn’t have dipped into the transfer portal. Crippen also appears to be a center only, and I think it’s a good idea to train a young player at just one position, especially one as critical as center. So I’ll rank him here at #35, since he doesn’t appear to be ready to back up other positions but Michigan has other guys who could step in and play center in a pinch.
