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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Back in August, Michigan tight end Nick Eubanks said of sophomore Erick All: ‘I’ve never seen no tight end with his size, his speed, frame and the way he approaches each practice. The guy’s locked in every day. You can tell by the way he practices. Catches everything.’ But through three games in the Big Ten season, All leads the conference with four dropped passes.
But his coaches have identified the problem and are determined to get All back on track.
The second-year tight end out of Fairfield (OH) has been the focus of a lot of praise from the coaching staff and his teammates since he arrived as an early-enrollee in 2019, but he’s still a work in progress as he moves his ability from the practice field into games. All was only targeted three times in 2019, and caught the only ball on-target for 10 yards. But this year, with his production bound to go up with more playing time, he’s been targeted 16 times and only has 5 receptions to show for it — along with 46 yards.
His tight ends coach, Sherrone Moore, says that if All does one easy thing, the drops will be a thing of the past.
“For him, it’s a real simple fix: it’s an eyes problem that we’ve talked about,” Moore said. “He’s made some of the most spectacular catches in practice that we’ve seen – shoot, he made another one yesterday. It’s really just a focus on where his eyes are when the ball comes to him. I think he gets a little hyped up and a little amped up sometimes – and he puts a lot of pressure on himself. These kids put a lot of pressure on themselves to be great. We just continue to work it. We have full confidence in Erick and his ability. He’ll progress and he’ll make those plays for sure.”
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So how does Michigan intend to get him back on track?
Moore says that the team will just continue to put him through drills and help get his confidence back up in his natural abilities.
“It’s just a focus – we’ll continue to do drills to make sure he focuses on his eyes and hands,” Moore said. “Because for him, he’s such a natural ball-catcher, the thing he’s got to make sure is to see it with his eyes and absorb it with his hands. And those things will come to him. Again, we’re not down on him, we have full confidence in his ability. So we’ll continue to just work those little things with him.”
As Moore continuously says, they feel like All’s mishaps in the opening weeks of the season are not indicative of what he’s capable of.
For the Wolverines, the best thing they can do, in their mind, is to keep going to All until he starts to more replicate what he’s shown on State Street.
“Even after the drop on Saturday, just came back to him,” Moore said. “Said, ‘Look, we’re gonna be behind you. We have full confidence in your ability. You continue to do it every day with us and we know how good of a player you are.’ Just continue to emphasize the confidence we have in the young man. Make sure he knows that just because that happened, we’re not down on him or anything.
“He went back in the game and he had a heckuva block when he went back in the game and did some more good things. We’ll just continue to build his confidence and – he continued to show in practice yesterday, he had a great practice yesterday. So continue to be excited about him.”
All will have a big opportunity to rectify his first few weeks of play come Saturday, when Michigan hosts No. 13 Wisconsin for a 7:30 p.m. EST kickoff.
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