Sorry for the crappy quality. I am too lazy to make it better.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSPlBtpgmhY]

Posted under Video

This is just a greastest hits post, because there are 200-some photos, many of them redundant. Unfortunately, Paul is retarded and didn’t take many action shots during the scrimmage.

Best pictures: Mario Manningham stares into your soul, and Johnny Sears in closeup (so you can still see is russet-colored dreadfro, made famous by my first ever link from mgoblog. Note – I am still this creepy).

Posted under Photo Album, Spring Coverage

Though Tom Beaver said not to worry about it a ways back, there has been enough rumbling about the situation to add fuel to the potential-Mallett-transfer fire.

However, sources, including this snide Texarkana blog, say that Mallett has made his decision to stay (this despite all but encouraging it a week ago). Bob Lichtenfels has also said that Toney Clemons was informed by Ryan himself that a transfer will not happen.

Posted under Personnel

From the Toledo Blade:

“Michigan was my number one school for a long time, and after I talked it over with my family and then slept on it, the decision to go there felt great,” Mealer said. “All signs pointed north for me. And as far as my room and all the Ohio State stuff – I’ll just have to figure that out.”

Bo used to live on the Ohio guys who grew up OSU fans, and always played with an extra chip on their shoulder all year, especially in the third weekend of November.

Posted under Recruiting

OH Offensive Lineman Elliot Mealer has committed to Michigan. He is a lifelong Ohio State fan, but did not have an offer.

Mealer is an honorable mention on Jim Stefani’s top offensive linemen, putting him outside the top 75, but in the next approximately 4000. HOWEVER, Jim said his OL rankings are old, and Mealer is among his top 75 prospects now, as he has had a big boost after his film has gone around.

Some film 4 u.

Mealer has implied that TE Kevin Koger, one of his good friends, may have his mind on committing to Michigan as well. Koger currently holds an offer from Michigan.

Posted under Recruiting

Michigan has 5500 fans show up at its (free) spring game.
Ohio State has 50,000+ pay $5 for theirs
Alabama has to turn people away at the gates.

So why the differences?

It’s obvious at least in the case of Alabama. In a football-crazy state, one of the two big schools gets a new coach with national-championship and NFL credentials. Ohio State, on the other hand, was on the cusp of the national championship, and have similar success in the recent past.

Michigan: the last three year, lose the last two games, one being to their biggest rival and the other being in a bowl game, and with 3 of them (OSU2004, NEB, USC) being upset losses. On top of simply not being as football-crazy as people in Alabama or Ohio State (be honest, Michigan is a basketball state), that can’t fully explain a discrepancy of 10-to-20 times as many people.

Weather is another explanation. The weather for Michigan’s “game” was really shitty. It was not bad for either OSU or Bama. However, would there have been THAT many more peopel with better weather? Doubt it.

The main issue is the publicity and the selling of the program. Most schools other than Michigan have a real spring game, on TV, with a lot of publicity. Michigan does not. Obviously, with injuries this year, it wasn’t really feasible, but that hasn’t been true in the past, still without a spring game. Michigan should move forward, and get its publicity machine going, and move into the 21st century, to generate a buzz about the program.

This helps in every facet of the game, from recruiting, to simply winning over fans in your own state, and so on.

Posted under Spring Coverage

I promise Paul will eventually post the photo gallery (last I spoke to him (last night) he was trying to decide how to post thumbnails in the most aesthetically pleasing manner possible). Depth charts have been updated with the new information from spring practice (click the “important posts” tab on the right).

Some analysis, most of it from the scrimmage:

Offense:
QB: Henne looked pretty good, though he obviously wasn’t giving 100% effort the whole time. His throws to the left (a point of struggling in the past) looked much more accurate. Tacopants was nowhere to be found. Mallett looked very good (see Paul’s video extravaganza below), and certainly appears to be ready to step in as the quarterback of the future. He didn’t have any trouble handling snaps from under center, and there were no shotgun snaps taken. Cone looked like career backup material (which shouldn’t be surprising, because he was recruited as such, and came in knowing the situation). Walk-on Nick Sheridan looked good, but will obviously never play a down.
OL: The run game struggled most of the day, but this was also without a few starters playing, and with a mix-and-match assortment of lineups. The starting line will almost assuredly be Long-Kraus-Boren-Mitchell-?, with ? representing the best of Dorrestein, Schilling, and Zirbel. Boren and Moosman both looked good snapping.
TE: Sucky. Martell Webb and Steve Watson had better be able to come in and play, and Mike Massey should have crafted himself (shoulder especially) out of a material other than glass. Criswell could block for the run and pass pretty well, but couldn’t catch a pass to save his life. McLaurin could do neither.
RB: Minor only played 2 downs in the scrimmage, thrown to twice. No news there, though he certainly looked like an imposing physical specimen. The FBs carried the load in the scrimmage, and looked like FBs doing so. The surprise of the spring was RS Freshman Mark Moundros, a preferred walk-on who has the smart money for being the starter come fall. Vince Helmuth has a little more developing to do, but he looked like a future badass.
WR: Walkon central, as Greg Mathews and LaTerryal Savoy were the only scholarship WRs there. Manningham was in attendance wearing street clothes, and Arrington was not present. Judging by the fact that there are only 2 scholarship WRs right now, hopefully both can come back and contribute. There will definitely be playing time opportunities for multiple freshmen here, as well. Mathews looked good, though he’s definitely not a burner (overthrown a couple time by both Mallett and Henne – on passes Manningham would have easily run under). Unlike last year, Savoy looked like crap, so I hope he just confuses “final spring practice” with “opposite day.” Walk-on David Middleton looked decent, though there’s a reason he’s a walk-on.

Defense:
DL: A ton of guys played here. Brandon Graham looked good, even if his step isn’t as fast as I was expecting from a former LB. Will Johnson looked really fast off the line for his size, which is good. Adam Patterson was solid if unimpressive. Jason Kates looked to be in terrible condition. There is more depth on the DL than I was expecting, which can only be a good thing.
LB: If the season started today, I’d have to think your starting LB lineup would be (weak to strong) Mouton-Ezeh-Crable. Johnny Thompson and Chris Graham both didn’t practice, but Mouton and Ezeh looked good. Mouton especially, as he was the best LB on the field, in terms of speed and big hits. Crable did not scrimmage. Austin Panter was OK, but he got run over in the run game a couple of times. He needs to work on his lower body strength a lot in the off-season if he wants to be a big contributor in the fall.
DB: Stevie Brown is really good at the football. Johnny Sears looked bad, which can’t be a good thing. It’s not even that he didn’t have the skills and mental abilities, it just seemed like he wasn’t even playing attention during the scrimmage. Hopefully it was just a bad practice for him. Brandon Harrison was as expected, Charles Stewart looked like a good backup SS, as did (surprisingly) career special-teamer Anton Campbell. Morgan Trent was beaten more times than I am comfortable with at this time.

ST: Punting will still be handled by Zoltan. He boomed a couple but was inconsistent (I probably could have said that without even attending the practice). The Place kicker battle will be between K.C. Lopata and Bryan Wright. Wright has the bigger leg, but was more inconsistent. Lopata was more accurate, but dinged an extra point of the back of an O-Lineman’s helmet. This one will be settled in the fall, and don’t be surprised if they split duties a bit during the season.

Posted under Personnel, Spring Coverage

According to the Ann Arbor News, a new indoor football facility is planned for the area where the current outdoor practice fields are.

In the ongoing facilities race, this is a step in the right direction for year-round practice, and recruits always love shiny news things. The project is expected to cost $26.1 Million. Link to Regents Action Request.

Downsides: Soccer field moving down by the varsity tennis center, too far to walk. Obviously attendance at soccer games is too high as it is.

Posted under Misc.

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

Yeah, we’re going to try to milk this for all it’s worth.

Guys who weren’t there:
Adrian Arrington
Marques Slocum
Jason Forcier

Guys who were there, but didn’t dress:
Mike Hart
Kevin Grady (crutches)
Jamar Adams
Carlos Brown
Johnny Thompson
Chris Graham
Terrance Taylor

Dressed but only participated in position drills:
Jake Long
Shawn Crable

Recent ex-players in attendance:
David Harris
Steve Breaston
Alan Branch
Rondell Biggs

I think that’s about it, if I missed anyone you saw, drop it in the comments.

Posted under Personnel, Spring Coverage