Tight ends
Michigan does return three players at the tight end group, but how well it fares could also depend on the emergence of freshman Matthew Hibner.
Not that Hibner is a fulcrum of sorts as much as the Wolverines lost a pivotal playmaker in Sean McKeon.
Gattis says that the tight ends are the most important group outside of quarterback in Michigan’s offense, due to how much he asks the unit to do. They’re not just pass catchers or blockers. They do a little bit of everything.
“It’s a lot of mouths to feed,” Gattis said. “I think statistically, I believe we had 19 different players score a touchdown last year. You’re talking about, that’s one of the aspects of our offense – the defense dictates where the ball goes, and everybody’s eligible on the field and we want to make sure that we apply stress to the defense by having them defend all eligible skill. Whether that’s our five eligible skill players or our quarterback involved in that. When you look at the tight end room, if you asked me specifically: what’s one position that’s as vital as quarterback in your offense, it would be tight ends. Tight end is the most vital position for us, because of how much we ask of those guys. Our tight ends aren’t just great pass catchers, but they’re great run blockers, and then we use them in pass protection. So they really are involved in every area of our offense in order for us to be successful.
“And what you saw last year with Sean McKeon and Nick Eubanks is how many times they’re at the point of attack for things. We run towards our tight ends. We can’t run the ball without those guys being the blockers that they are, because they’re a big piece of our success up front as well as being a part of our pass catchers, going out for routes. And also, you’ll see some of the six and seven man protections we do where we keep those guys in so there are times to be big offensive linemen, at times we ask them to be fast, eligible skill guys. But when you look at our room and the type of dynamic athletes that we have in Nick and Erick All and Luke Schoonmaker – those guys possess all those traits. They’re big, they’re strong, they’re fast, they can run, they’ve got loose hips, they can catch the ball. They’re all smart.
“So, really they’re the Swiss Army Knife of our offense, in that they get asked to do everything. And oftentimes that gets overlooked. But we could not play, could not be successful without our tight end group.”