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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — If there’s one place where you can look at Michigan’s roster and solidly declare it’s loaded, it’s at running back.
An odd feeling given this time last year.
In spring of 2019, the Wolverines were without a clear-cut starter. Yes, eventual day one starting tailback Zach Charbonnet was heralded as a four-star coming out of his Southern California high school, but he had never played a single snap of college ball. It didn’t help matters that he missed all of spring practice due to a scheduled, preventative knee surgery. But the others? Hassan Haskins had an elite year his senior season at the high school level, but flipped over to linebacker in 2018 before returning to running back. Tru Wilson led the team in yards-per-carry in his first year at RB, but that was third-string, in a lot of situations where Michigan already had the game in-hand.
Many anticipated Christian Turner — who nearly took his first early-game opportunity and his fourteenth career carry to the house in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl against Florida, if it weren’t for a toe out of bounds — could be the next man up. But he was injury plagued throughout the offseason, and had some pass protection issues to go along with injuries in 2020.
Now, the maize and blue have the bona fide starters in the backfield — Charbonnet, Haskins and, once again, Chris Evans, who missed all of 2019 due to an academic suspension. In three seasons of play, Evans has 1,722 yards and 14 rushing touchdowns to go along with 2 receiving touchdowns and 322 yards accumulated through the air.
And that’s not even mentioning true freshman Blake Corum, who’s certainly a candidate to burn his redshirt in year one.
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It’s a problem — but something of a quality one — for both running backs coach and offensive coordinator Josh Gattis, as they move on from a room that had only one player in Wilson who had played in games before, to three who have all been out there for the first play of the game at different points in time.
“Addressing our running backs – I’m excited,” Gattis said. “When you look at the room that we had there last year, we had a ton of inexperience. We had guys that didn’t have the opportunity to be a part of spring football practice. You look at Zach Charbonnet and Hassan Haskins, both of those guys were out of all spring last year. So they missed a huge chunk of physical development from January onto August. Even Hassan started the season banged up. And then Zach went through some injuries there and then now you’re able to add Chris Evans back into the mix. Get Christian Turner back healthy. Blake Corum is really, really exciting. Brings a level of explosiveness at the running back position.
“So I just think that the amount of growth you’re able to go from year one to year two is gonna be exciting for those guys. Very rarely do you walk into a situation and have all completely new players at one position. And I think the job that those guys did by the end of the year was really impressive. I think Coach Jay did a really good job of bringing those guys along and developing them. But it’s very hard to take on a position group and have no one have returning starting experience. You don’t go from having a senior running back (Karan Higdon) who’s a really good player and rushed for 1,000 yards a couple seasons in a row to having someone that had never taken snaps in games. So that was a challenge. Obviously we had some hiccups early on with some ball security-type things, protections. But to see where our guys were by the end of the year, I’m excited about the growth in that room and the leadership and being able to carry over the game experience. That’s gonna allow those guys to elevate their game even more.”
Evans’ return is particularly intriguing. He likely would have been the starter in what would have been his senior season, but with the momentum of Charbonnet and Haskins, who both caught on as the season wore on, it’s not as clear cut.
But the interesting thing is that there’s not a shared skill set. No two players are fully alike, and Evans is even more of a (quality) conundrum from that standpoint.
He’s arguably the most versatile player in that room, one who came to Ann Arbor in 2016 without an obvious position. Many prognosticators saw him more as a wide receiver coming out of high school, but he quickly settled into the backfield upon arrival. And then he made his presence known, going for 114 yards and 2 touchdowns on just 8 carries in his college debut.
The intriguing comparable that Gattis makes isn’t to any of the other tailbacks currently on the roster. He likens what he’s capable of more to an enigmatic second-year receiver who burst onto the scene late in 2019.
“We’re excited about Chris,” Gattis said. “Chris is a veteran player, he’s played a lot of football. I remember being in this conference, seeing Chris play as a freshman. Seeing the impact he was able to make early on. He has a unique skill set because of his versatility, not just as a runner but his ball skills, which are pretty elite or a guy at his position. It’s our job to maximize as much out of the players as we can. I think his role is one that provides versatility. The number of different ways and opportunities that you can get him out in space and get the ball in his hands. I think that’s where it’s gonna be exciting, all the different ways we can use him. And it fits right into what we do.
“We did a lot of things that were similar last year with Giles Jackson, all the different alignments that he aligned on the field. You got a guy now in Chris Evans who has the ability to take those as actual hand-offs and not just be in the backfield catching routes coming out of the backfield. You’ve got a guy that can do both and that’s exciting.”
But it won’t be as easy as just plugging Evans in and playing him, regardless of the talent and proven production.
When you take a year away from football, you lose a lot of the attributes that are needed to play the game. Spring was supposed to be the refresher, but with those sessions being canceled less than a week before commencement due to COVID-19, Evans is at somewhat of a disadvantage.
Still, Gattis is confident he’ll get to where he needs to be once football activities can resume. But it’s more of an uphill climb than it was already going to be.
“That’s what we’re kind of missing in the spring, mixing in, diving into everyone’s skill sets,” Gattis said. “Chris was able to practice with us leading up to our bowl game so I was able to see a little bit of his skill set. Now we have got to catch him back up on football. When you’ve spent a year away from football that’s a long time. Conditioning, the physicality of it – that’s what he’s missing right now. He’s missing the training but once we get him back, once we get all the kids back, Coach Herb will do a good job of preparing our guys for Saturdays.”
This year will be Evans’ first working with Gattis. And given his capabilities, should he be able to get back into form, he’ll be in an offense that very well could be more suited for his talents than he’s endured thus far in Ann Arbor.
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