Ryan Mallett is one of the most talked about recruits Michigan has had in a while. Luckily for us, he decided to enroll early, which meant we could see him in the Spring. A couple commenters asked for video on Mallett’s throwing mechanics. Well… without further ado:

The final slow motion throw is just the first one. I’m not exactly an expert on mechanics, and this is just warm up throwing, so I can’t really draw a huge amount of conclusions. One thing is that he seems to have a fairly high release point which is something that, despite being about the same height, John Navarre did not.

Next, it has been rumored that Mallett’s arm has been replaced with a rocket launcher a la Grindhouse. To examine this, we have a couple shots of Mallett throwing downfield (there was one that was deeper than both of these, but the snuck it in right after some special teams practice).

During that second throw, all I could think of is replacing Greg Mathews (I’m pretty sure) with Mario Manningham, who, if he stay for his senior year, could be running under a ton of Mallett bombs. He looked like he has good touch on the deep balls, but just like most freshman quarterbacks, a year under an experienced, senior quarterback will help him develop even more.

As brief as it is, we have Ryan Mallett’s Michigan career highlight reel. Look for it up on YouTube with more slow motion than 300 and the most NSFW rap song I can find:

It looks like he is pretty comfortable with the staple DeBord play action waggle to the TE (assuming Michigan has TEs…). Also, I was really hoping that either Mathews or Savoy would have caught the touchdown pass from Mallett, so I could say something cliche like “You’ll be hearing that combo a lot in the future!” The TD pass was caught by David Middleton, who looked good for a walk-on, but probably won’t see the field with Manningham, Arrington (fingers crossed), Matthews, Savoy, Hemingway, Clemons, etc.

Finally, there were those who saw the vitals on Mallett (6’6″, 247lbs) and immediately started complaining about how Michigan always recruits statuesque quarterbacks that can’t escape pressure. In defense of most Michigan fans, most of these people were on the espn.com message boards. Anyway, in response to that, here is Mallett using his legs. Please note the hilarious stiff arm conveniently slow-mo’d for added bad ass-ness (despite my previous snide 300 remark):

What makes the stiff arm so funny is that the defense isn’t allowed to tackle the quarterback, so they just had to touch Mallett for him to be down. So by stiff arming he’s touching which might make him technically down. Ignoring the obvious hold, he showed he’s not slow, although he might be a loper, but he has some moves. Don’t expect Vince Young, but don’t be looking for Mt. Rushmore either.

I have some pictures as well, but I think I will just put those up on flickr and link since this is already fairly heavy from the video.

In the coming days we’ll have interview wrap ups as well as scrimmage footage from people other than Ryan Mallett. I know a lot of people were curious, so I’d love to hear your observations or thoughts on how he looked, so use that comment section.

Posted under Spring Coverage