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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — If there’s an area of consternation for Michigan fans as the season approaches, the defensive interior is among the chief concerns.
The Wolverines return Carlo Kemp for a surprise fifth-year, but with Michael Dwumfour’s transfer to Rutgers this offseason, there isn’t a known commodity to line up next to him. Plus, the maize and blue didn’t bring in any defensive tackles in an otherwise solid 2020 recruiting class.
That means that Michigan will be relying heavily on a new starter with little experience. But there’s certainly some upside to the players who should be in rotation.
Somehow, many forget about two of the players who will be a large part of what the Wolverines do up front in 2020: former five-star Christopher Hinton and fourth-year tackle Donovan Jeter.
Given that he was an early-enrollee, Michigan native Mazi Smith tends to get the bulk of the attention from the fanbase, but he got little time in 2019. He’ll also be a part of the rotation, defensive coordinator Don Brown says, but with the other two, there’s a lot of reasons to expect them to play a big part this upcoming season. Jeter was highly anticipated as a freshman until he tore his ACL in the offseason. He hadn’t quite returned to form even last year, but he got some playing time. Hinton was worked in slowly and started the bowl game against Alabama with both Dwumfour and Kemp out with injury.
Brown says that late-season experience should help that duo be a major part of what the Wolverines do up front in 2020 — along with the aforementioned Smith.
“When they look back on it, they ended up having to play at the end of the year due to injuries at tackle and at nose,” Brown said. “That’s only gonna end up paying dividends for them moving forward. It would have been nice if we could have had the ability to work in spring practice, but everybody was in that same scenario, so that’s just part of it. But we now have a chance, those guys played in two big games. Obviously, being able to play in a big game is an important piece, now we just need them to take it on an elite level in a big game.
“Christopher Hinton – I’m really excited about his potential. You mentioned Donovan Jeter. Mazi Smith is another guy as well. We think all of those guys, in evaluating and watching them in some of the winter workouts in the conditioning phases, I really feel like they’ve taken their game to the next level in terms of their physical ability, their ability to run.”
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Despite all the hyperbole and expectations out there, Brown looks at the interior defensive line and sees a net benefit.
The push up front, outside of the pass rushers, has been one of the things that Michigan has been somewhat lacking since Mo Hurst’s eligibility was exhausted, though that was one of the central tenets to the Wolverines defensive strategy.
What Brown sees is a group of defensive tackless who now have the bulk to be effective — something that wasn’t necessarily the case in recent years, to go along with the ability. It’s one thing to have solid technique up front, but if you’re undersized, going up against some of the nation’s top interior offensive linemen, it’s not going to do much good.
This group, however, has gotten to where it should be weight-wise, and Brown thinks that will pay dividends come fall.
“Sometimes things get said and the reality is they’re really out of context,” Brown said. “For example: when you have four down linemen, you want each one of those four guys to have the ability to run and hit people. Now obviously, there’s a degree of size in the tackle and the nose scenario. And we have that size. Jeter’s a 300-pounder. Mazi Smith is a 300-pounder. Chris Hinton is a 300-pounder. And all three of those guys are very athletic. We’re excited about them, and obviously we’re very excited to have Carlo Kemp come back because not only will he provide experience, he’ll provide that essence of leadership that we desperately need there. But I’m very confident in the guys we have inside.”
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While Michigan will essentially gain those players via productivity this upcoming season, it also lost a lot on the defensive line.
As mentioned, Dwumfour is gone. So are NFL draftees Josh Uche and Mike Danna — both pass rushers. While they have proven production that made them so successful at the college level, there’s another group waiting in the wings that haven’t had those types of numbers.
Yes, we know about the prowess of starting ends Aidan Hutchinson and Kwity Paye, but Michigan’s success up front has had as much to do with the guys in the middle as it has constantly rotating the starting ends with capable reserves. We saw it in 2016 with starters Chris Wormley and Taco Charlton being spelled by eventual top-end draft picks Chase Winovich and Rashan Gary. The current starters — Paye and Hutchinson — had similar roles in 2018 when Winovich and Gary became the top guys.
Though ‘salt and pepper’ remain, replacing Uche, who was drafted by New England in the second-round this year, means some changes to how the scheme is run. Brown would note that it actually means returning to how the defense was formulated before Uche became a dominant force, which led to more 3-3-5 or 3-4-4 looks, given that he was technically a SAM linebacker.
With Uche’s departure, there are a number of players who are expected to be that next man up. Be it third-year former Florida commit Taylor Upshaw or the re-acclimating Canada native Luiji Vilain — who missed both of his first two seasons due to injury — as well as second-year end David Ojabo, a relative newcomer to football who Brown notes has a lot of similarities to Uche’s skill set.
Brown is excited to see how the group progresses once they’re able to get back onto the practice field given how much talent he has at his disposal.
“Now, last year, we had another set of circumstances,” Brown said. “Well, you’ve gotta play Josh Uche. And in that respect, we needed to play in some of our three-down, 3-3 stack-type structure to get that guy on the field especially on second and third down. And in some of our four down structures, we wanted him in some of the four down guys. I still think our defensive end scenario is really blessed, because we have Aidan, we have Kwity Paye. I’m very anxious to see how Ojabo does. Upshaw – Luiji Vilain in limited reps. I go back and watch Luiji play last year at times, and obviously he was hurt because Mike Danna was there. But, the bottom line is it’s his time now and he’ll have an opportunity to prove what he can do and I think we’re gonna get productive, solid play out of him as well.”
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