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| Jeremy Clark shed his grayshirt after a strong senior season.
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As a medium-sized city, Ann Arbor can be viewed as either a thriving urban area or a small college town, depending on perspective. In the case of incoming freshman free safety Jeremy Clark, it’s clearly the former.
Jeremy is moving to Ann Arbor from Madisonville, Kentucky, a small, isolated town with a population of less than 20,000 people. Daily fishing trips, eating at Long John Silver’s and enjoying the outdoors are among his favorite activities, and although Jeremy has seen his fair share of states and cities due to his father being in the army, he recognizes that living in Ann Arbor will be quite a change after spending the past few years in Madisonville. “It’s a real small town, like a ghost town almost,” he said. “It’s different [from Ann Arbor].”
But Jeremy is less concerned with acclimating himself to a new city than he is about making an impact on the football field. He recently took some time out of a summer afternoon to talk football and answer
several reader questions.
Choosing Michigan: “I like to win. So out of all of my offers, Michigan was winning the most. I sure didn’t want to go to a losing team. . . .When I went on that visit, they made me feel very comfortable, so as soon as I went on that visit I felt like, ‘Yeah, I belong here.’ I was hearing from Florida, Villanovia, Kentucky, Illinois, Cincinnati and NC State; those were the major ones. Everything else was from – uh, I forget the name of the little conference – oh, the MAC. But once I committed to Michigan a lot of the schools started backing off. . . .The schools that offered me were NC State, Illinois, Cincinnati, Ohio – not Ohio State, just Ohio – Western Michigan, Western Kentucky and I can’t really remember the rest of them.”
6’4” and fast: “My height is 6’4” and my weight is 190. My forty time is a 4.47, and then my bench is 260. . . .They’ve been working on me getting faster. My junior year, I ran 4.6s and then my senior year, I didn’t run anything above a 4.5. . . .I ran track my junior year going into my senior year. I ran the open 400 and then the 4 X 100. Track helped me get a lot faster than what I was.” (Side note: T
his website lists a 11.56 second 100 meter dash for Jeremy.)
Playing safety, maybe wide receiver: “When I went down for there camp, they tried to use me down in the box, and it wasn’t really working all that well, so I guess they see me as more of a ballhawking safety. . . .There were other schools that wanted me to play linebacker, but I wanted to stay in the secondary, so Michigan told me I could stay back there, and that’s one of the reasons that I committed to them. . . .No, they never talked to me about that [playing wide receiver], but I’d be willing to play there if they needed me there. . . .When I was playing wide receiver in High School, all my routes were basically go routes. I was faster and taller than everybody, so I’d just go straight and the quarterback would just lob it to me. . . .If they wanted to try me out at wide receiver, I wouldn’t mind it.”
Strengths and weaknesses: “I need to work on flipping my hips and my feet work. But then my strength is that I’m fast, so I have make-up speed. And I’m 6’4”.”
Taking off the grayshirt: “When they first offered – like you said they’d have to grayshirt me – I was just happy to be able to go to Michigan. Then I started thinking, ‘I want to get out there and play now; I don’t want to do the grayshirt.’ But then they said that it depends on how good of a senior year I have. And I had a good senior year. I had a good senior year so then they took it away, and that was very, very good.”
