Tag: Vincent Smith

2010 Recruiting Grades: Running Backs

Brooklyn Decker

Okay, so I realize the above photo isn’t Stephen Hopkins or Austin White. However, Hopkins’ high school uniforms looked like Ohio State’s, and White’s high school mascot was the Spartans. So I’m not putting pictures of them up here.

Hopkins is a 6′, 235 lb. running back from Flower Mound, Texas. With both Brandon Minor and Kevin Grady graduating after this past season, Michigan was in need of another big back. According to Fred Jackson, Hopkins can play both fullback and superback. As an early enrollee, he might work himself into good enough shape to contribute as a freshman. But his ceiling seems to be somewhat limited due to his lack of speed. He may not be a “fullback” in the truest sense of the word, but I don’t think he’s headed for feature back territory.

White, on the other hand, is a 6′, 186 lb. running back from Sterling Heights, MI. He’s probably not the type of running back who will earn Heisman hype like Noel Devine and Steve Slaton did at West Virginia, but he has solid skills. His best asset might be his ability to catch the ball, but Michigan doesn’t use its running backs as pass receivers very much. White might be the first running back under Rodriguez to consistently earn playing time both at running back and slot receiver, flip-flopping back and forth between plays. While his skills won’t wow anybody, he could be a solid option in a variety of ways.

Predictions: Hopkins will not start, but will earn playing time as a short yardage back or a fullback in the fall. If Vincent Smith can return to decent playing form in 2010 after tearing his ACL against Ohio State, I expect Austin White to redshirt. Hopkins plays a position where there is more immediate need, whereas White would presumably be behind Michael Shaw, Fitzgerald Toussaint, Michael Cox, and potentially Vincent Smith. Teric Jones and Kelvin Grady could also figure into the mix at running back, so there’s no need to play both freshmen in 2010.

Grade: B. I’m not extremely impressed with either running back, and I don’t think either one has all-conference potential. This is somewhat disappointing, because none of the backs on the current roster have established themselves as big-time players, either. But I think both will be serviceable as spot starters or as role players throughout their careers.

Statistical Analysis of 2010 Recruiting: Part III

As I was keeping track of Michigan’s recruiting efforts throughout the 2010 cycle, I began to wonder where Michigan has the most success in recruiting. The obvious answers would be “in state” and “near home” and those answers held true, to no one’s surprise.

You can see in the above chart (click to enlarge) that Michigan got the best bang for its buck in contiguous states like Wisconsin and Ohio. Pennsylvania is #5 on the list.

Sitting there at #4, though, is Louisiana. Michigan got two of the six prospects who were offered, slot receiver Drew Dileo and safety Carvin Johnson. The other four were WR Trovon Reed (Auburn), QB Munchie Legaux (Cincinnati), DE Jordan Allen (LSU), and CB Ronnie Vinson (LSU). Of those four, only Legaux didn’t have an LSU offer. As I said in yesterday’s post, kids in the deep south tend to stay in the deep south if a decent local program offers. Reed spurned LSU for a school in neighboring Alabama, but Allen and Vinson jumped at the opportunity to play in the Bayou.

Moving on to Florida, that percentage might be a bit alarming. The Wolverines extended more offers to Florida than any other individual state by far – 46 offers in all, beating Ohio by 16 – but Michigan’s success rate in the Sunshine State was just below 7%. With all three commitments from Florida being 4-stars (Demar Dorsey, Marvin Robinson, Richard Ash), the kids Michigan has stolen have been elite talents. But this is something to watch in the coming years. If Rich Rodriguez continues to offer a high volume of kids from Florida, hopefully the commitments he gets remain elite players. I would hate to see the coaching staff spend such significant time and effort on Florida only to get middling recruits from the state. That being said, the coaches have done a good job there over the past couple years. They’ve established a pipeline from Pahokee (Martavious Odoms, Brandin Hawthorne, Vincent Smith, Richard Ash) and could be in the process of building a pipeline from Dr. Phillips High School in Orlando (Ricardo Miller transferred from Dr. Phillips to Ann Arbor Pioneer after committing, and 2011 prospects Demetrius Hart and Hasean Clinton-Dix have both been offered).

Rodriguez knows what side his bread is buttered on. He’ll continue to get a high volume of recruits from Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and he’ll try to pluck a few elite talents out of Florida. Those efforts will be complemented by an occasional commitment from various other states.

Richard Ash, Wolverine

Michigan’s new defensive lineman.

Richard Ash, a defensive lineman from Pahokee High School (Pahokee, FL), has committed to Michigan. He had been committed to West Virginia University until he realized that he would have to live in West Virginia, where the women look like they came straight out of The Hills Have Eyes.

Ash is listed at 6’4″ and 263 lbs. At that size, one would think that he would bulk up a little bit to play the 3-tech defensive tackle position recently occupied by Ryan Van Bergen. However, he has a bit of chub on him that will be whittled away by Mike Barwis, and 263 lbs. isn’t a bad size for a strong-side defensive end. After all, that’s about the same size as Brandon Graham.

Watching Ash’s film, he’s a good athlete who’s going to require a lot of refinement. Although he’s a 4-star recruit to Rivals, he’s raw. He has good explosion off the ball, and he possesses good lateral quickness as well. There’s also one play where he sniffs out a middle screen, tips the ball to himself, and runs the other way with it. Like I said, he’s an athlete.

But when he finally earns playing time at Michigan, I’m sure we’ll see a very different player. He has kind of an awkward stance where his butt sits lower than his shoulders, which forces him to stand straight up as soon as the ball is snapped. As a high schooler who is physically dominant, he can get away with belly-bumping offensive linemen out of his way, but he will get absolutely mauled if he plays like that in college. When he learns to play lower, he’ll probably also learn to use his hands better to disengage from blockers. He tends to play “patty cake” with blockers and sometimes stops his feet on contact. In order to see the field at Michigan, he’ll need to learn to go hard on every single play.

Ash will give Michigan four players from the same high school; he’ll join sophomore running back Vincent Smith, sophomore linebacker Brandin Hawthorne, and junior slot receiver Martavious Odoms on the Michigan campus. The Wolverines have also offered Chris Dunkley, a 4-star slot receiver who transferred from Royal Palm Beach, FL, but Dunkley’s recruitment probably won’t be affected by Ash’s commitment.

I expect Ash to end up at 5-tech defensive end, Brandon Graham’s old position. I think he could easily transform his body into a 265 lb. strongside end, whereas I see Terry Talbott as a 3-tech DT. We could still see Michigan add a couple more defensive linemen in the 2010 class, particularly NT prospect Johnathan Hankins from Detroit and DE Clarence Murphy from Florida.

P.S. The picture appeared because it popped up when I did a Google image search for “Richard Ash.” I’m not sure what Richard Ash has to do with Kim Jong-Il, but I’m guessing the FBI is checking into that right this very moment.

Ohio State 21, Michigan 10

Brandon Graham was the best player on the field.

• Brandon Graham had a great game. He is perhaps the player from the senior class that I will miss most. He dominated his side of the line repeatedly, ending the game with a sack amongst 4 or 5 tackles for loss.
• I really thought Brandon Minor would play, but he was in street clothes. His inside running was missed in this game, as the running game was forced to play the third- and fourth-string running backs (Michael Shaw and Vincent Smith) with Carlos Brown also limited.
• Vincent Smith might be Michigan’s running back of the future. He doesn’t have the speed to be a game-breaker, but he gains yards consistently, runs tough for his size, and makes decisive cuts. I was wrong about him being unready to play this year.
• The defense played extremely well in this game. For the most part, Michigan didn’t allow the big play. They did allow the 29-yard TD by Brandon Saine, but OSU picked on walk-on DE Will Heininger on that play.
• J.T. Floyd got picked on and was beaten a couple times. Fortunately, OSU quarterback Terrelle Pryor was horribly inaccurate on the two deep balls he threw. I still maintain that Floyd’s future should be at safety, but I liked the move by the coaches to move Troy Woolfolk back to safety and re-insert Floyd at cornerback. It may not have helped Michigan significantly, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
• Speaking of Pryor, I’ve been thinking this all season but had no reason to mention OSU sooner – why does a 6’5″, 230 pound, speedy guy run like such a pansy? He runs through arm tackles, but anytime someone gets a chance to tackle him solidly, he wusses out. He either stops moving his feet and collapses into the fetal position, or he prances out of bounds. For example, when he scrambled early in the game and Steve Brown came up to pop him near the sideline, both players bounced off each other, Pryor gathered himself and had a chance to gain two more yards, and he . . . side-stepped out of bounds.
• Tate Forcier had a horrible game. Ohio State didn’t do anything too confusing defensively. Forcier just made bad reads and bad throws. And that fumble on the opening offensive series was inexcuseable. Not only did Forcier retreat into his own end zone, but then he didn’t tuck the ball away when he scrambled. He’s been lucky all year that his lack of ball security didn’t cost him more, but it showed up in the biggest game of the year.
• I liked the wrinkle where Denard Robinson started in the backfield, shifted to wide receiver, and ran a fly pattern. I did not like the facts that a) Forcier underthrew him and b) Denard was interfered with by the cornerback and it wasn’t called. Denard was clearly being pushed while the ball was in the air, and it wasn’t an instance where both players were jostling each other. That was a textbook interference call and the officials blew it.
• I did not like the modified pistol formation. Out of shotgun, Shaw lined up as the deep back with a fullback to either side of Forcier. It led the defense to the play each time, and Michigan didn’t show a play to complement it.
• Roy Roundtree looks like he might be the next Michigan wide receiver to wear the #1 jersey.
• For the love of all that is good, can Michigan please install the sprint counter draw? It worked against Michigan for the thousandth time over the last several years, where the shotgun QB takes the snap and rolls toward the running back, who pretends to block and then takes the handoff going in the opposite direction. Ohio State, Michigan State, Oregon, and Purdue have all torched Michigan with that play, and those are just the times I can think of off the top of my head. I have never seen Michigan run that play, but it works every time against us.
• I will miss Brandon Minor, Brandon Graham, Greg Mathews, Mark Ortmann, David Moosman, and Steve Brown. All of these players are good to great college players, and it’s disappointing that their careers coincided with such a huge reconstruction project for the program. They might have been here during a couple bad years, but they weren’t the reasons for these two losing seasons.
• Go Blue!

Michigan 63, Delaware State 6

5th string QB Jack Kennedy