Preview 2016: Defensive Tackle

Previously:Podcast 8.0. The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End And Friends. Offensive Line. Defensive End.

[Eric Upchurch]

Holy pants, you guys. This is bar-none the best situation Michigan's had at defensive tackle since… I don't know. Probably since scholarship limits came into effect. Michigan has three guys who should go in the top few rounds of the NFL draft, plus a Tongan who was generating more hype than any of them before an injury robbed him of his 2015 season. And on top of that they've got a fifth-year senior who's been productive and would be a strong rotation contributor on any Michigan DL of the last ten years.

Just stay healthy. Knock on all available wood, ladies and gentlemen, that Michigan will get to the Ohio State game without having to unearth Michael Dwumfour.

NOSE TACKLE: DAMMIT IF YOU DOUBT A GLASGOW YOU HAVE ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME

Rating: 5

[Upchurch]

No. Shut up. Stop it. I know Harbaugh said that thing. I still insist that you cease flapping your mandibles about in some misguided attempt to denigrate the play of Ryan Glasgow, who yes was a walk-on upon his arrival but is no longer. Glasgow was long ago awarded the Order of St. Kovacs and if you insist on talking about Bryan Mone even an instant longer I will have no alternative but to unlock his cage. A cage for robot Vikings.

You still doubt, sir? Reap the pointy-helmeted whirlwind:

Glasgow was good as a sophomore, when he ascended to the top of the depth chart in front of former five-star Ondre Pipkins. Pipkins was coming off an injury, so people assumed that was a temporary thing. It was not. Glasgow held up in the run game excellently but provided close to zero pass rush, and that was fine with Frank Clark coming off the edge a ton. Michigan used Glasgow as a screen or draw spy frequently of the time, and coped with the fact that he wasn't having much impact in that department.

Then Glasgow got better, DJ Durkin deployed a ton of stunts, and dude blew up.

Glasgow alternated solid performances with center-wrecking exhibitions until leaving for good on a harmless-looking tackle early in the Rutgers game. The previously nonexistent pass rush showed up in a major way. Against Utah he ripped his way past their center more than once, and by Northwestern he'd started deploying a deeply unfair technique scouting sorts call "push-pull" where you blast the dude in front of you as hard as you can, then grab his jersey and rip him forward.

Glasgow wasn't quite dominant enough to rack up a ton of counting stats; no longer was he sitting back and waiting for screens. He forced a lot of scrambles and helped other guys get their numbers, especially as a dangerous man in Michigan's stunt game. Despite the lack of stats PFF had him the #18 pass rush DT in the country a year ago, a huge step up.

Meanwhile he was a rock as a run defender. He's explosive and he's smart as hell. After he and Hurst spearheaded the goal line stand against Minnesota, Adam got a brief one-on-one with him. Michigan won that game largely because Glasgow read the Gophers' intentions on the last two plays:

I really want to talk about isn’t the last play but the second to last. When they motioned what were you thinking, and did you expect that to happen?

“I mean, you can kind of tell by an offensive lineman’s demeanor what kind of play to expect, and they were all in loaded stances the whole game when they were coming off a run and they were sitting back. I was kind of confused at first when they were in their tight bunch set and everyone’s like really close splits but didn’t look like they were ready to fire out."

Over the course of the year guys will vacate their gaps or a rush lane and open it up for the opposition; I don't have a single clip from last year in which a Glasgow mental error was worth noting. Like his brother, Glasgow thinks the game at an advanced level.

While he's not 330 and occasionally succumbed to a double team his terrific technique allowed him to stack and shed most single blocking. Guys got hurled to the turf:

And not just jabronis from Minnesota:

With his stamina and lightning quick penetration I started comparing him to a star nose tackle of recent vintage. After BYU I compared him to Mike Martin thanks to plays like this:

I was chided for this take, and now I will have my revenge. Glasgow's Martin vibe only got stronger as the year went on and he blasted through and knifed past OL after OL. After Maryland:

Meanwhile, Glasgow did not have a day that was spectacular statistically (just one tackle) but contributed to the general defenestration of the Maryland offensive line. We talked about his crazy ability to pursue on that Delano Hill TFL. There was a also a screen on which he made a tackle outside the numbers after getting knocked over. His range and endurance are major assets.

The first play linked in that section is worth an embed:

That is simply absurd mobility from a 300-pound nose tackle. The only other guy I've seen play the spot and regularly involve himself with plays outside the hash marks was, yes, Mike Martin.

By midseason UFRs had a section in which Glasgow was praised in ever more fulsome terms. Oregon State:

Right now not so much. Glasgow has built on a promising first year as a starter and is now a highly consistent, disruptive interior DL. He's got a great feel for the game. Here he catches a downblock and rips through it almost automatically:

I don't think he even bothered to look at that guy.

Glasgow is capable of blowing guys up with raw power as well…He has terrific endurance and has even added a little pass rush this year. Michigan is lucky to have him.

Northwestern:

Dude is elite. … He is playing out of his damn mind. Last year he'd flash talent and battle most of the time; this year he is violently discarding anyone put in front of him.

Like Hurst, his explosive upfield motion was occasionally used against him, but as you can see in the chart above minuses for him were close to nonexistent.

Glasgow was the linchpin of a ridiculous run defense, and it drove off a cliff immediately after his injury. Michigan gave up 864 rushing yards in nine games with him and 725 in four games without him; their yards per carry plummeted from third nationally to 26th. That's partially on Durkin's inability to deal with spreads and is still a stark reminder of just how important Glasgow was to last year's team.

Goals for Glasgow this year include "stay healthy," which is 1-100, and then to get that increment better so that his rushes that were previously effective at making the quarterback uncomfortable become rushes that deposit Glasgow's helmet into the quarterback's midsection. He'll be elite against the run. I'm loathe to project postseason accolades for a position that often gets overlooked so people can throw four DEs on the All Big Ten team, but Glasgow will absolutely deserve them on his way to the second or third round of the draft.

[After the JUMP: four more potential/extant dudes. And Jabrill Peppers! Really! He's the very next thing!]

BACKUPS

no whammies no whammies no whammies also Peppers [Bryan Fuller]

"Strictly nose, baby!" Mone said. "I enjoy playing nose. It's the gutter! You've got to play like you're in the gutter. Really me and Glasgow started that. We call each other 'the gutter boys.' That's our motto: play like we're in the gutter."

All right, so, BRYAN MONE [recruiting profile]. This is the thing that Harbaugh said that fairly boggles the mind:

"He was one of our top players last year. We ranked the team going into training camp from one to 125 and Mone was three."

If Mone was one of Michigan's three best defensive linemen last year he would have been awesome. Third best player is… well, it's unlikely, for one.

Nobody else cares about the likelihood of that statement and too many still attach "walk-on" to Ryan Glasgow's name, so there's been a persistent and annoying clamor directed at anyone who still lists Mone as a backup. 1) See above about Ryan Glasgow and 2) this is nose tackle, the position with two starters. Mone himself pointed out the depth chart's irrelevance:

Coach calls it like he doesn’t really have starters, he has a two-deep group and everybody—basically anybody could play.

Mone's going to play 30-40% of Michigan's snaps. He's starter-ish.

Anyway. Mone only played a bit as a true freshman and then missed his sophomore year, but thanks to the way the spring game worked out we did gather quite a bit of data. Mone was matched up against Mason Cole (and some other less excellent OL) in the spring game. Seth broke that matchup down, and came out of it thinking that two two were evenly matched:

Against a guy who was our left tackle the last two years Mone destroyed the pocket as often as not, and when he didn’t he usually was occupying multiple guys. The offense chose to run elsewhere, which makes sense given it’s a Spring Game and there are easier lunches to be had.

Mone had an excellent day. While Cole got the best of him as often as otherwise, Mone never gave up his gap, and was a terror in the middle on passing plays.

And Mone did do this:

That's impressive. I didn't see anyone do that to Cole last year.

The drumbeat of hype has slowed somewhat but more because it's already been established that we should be very excited to see him hit the field this fall. Back in spring Mone said he was down from 330 when the injury happens to 309, and he appears to have stabilized around there—he's 310 on the roster. He could have played in the bowl game if Michigan was so inclined; for obvious reasons they were not. He's physically ready to go and should start delivering on his considerable prowess.

Also look out for him at WR.

Just in case you thought @Bmone90 was just a defensive weapon... pic.twitter.com/m3eABtpWoC

— jack wangler (@J_Wangler16) June 10, 2016

Hey, all we have to go on is practice hype and that is indeed practice hype.

Mone should get a few hundred snaps this year, and if half the hype pans out he'll be just about as good as Glasgow. Which is a thing, right there.

The only other nose on the roster is true freshman MICHAEL DWUMFOUR [recruiting profile], a middling three-star who decommitted from Penn State late in the cycle. Dwumfour is a project and a guaranteed redshirt; ask again later.

THREE-TECH: I LOOKED AND WENT YAY

Rating: 5

This position currently holds Pro Football Focus's top returning interior DL nationally. But wait, there's more:

CFB's top returning interior defensive lineman, based on '15 grades
1. Chris Wormley, UMich
2. Maurice Hurst, UMich
3. Jake Replogle, Purdue

— PFF College Football (@PFF_College) August 19, 2016

So that's all right then.

[Bryan Fuller]

CHRIS WORMLEY is the headliner and the nominal starter; as mentioned in the DE preview he is also going to see a bucket of snaps on the outside. That was where he lived last year, in the land of the soon-to-die-horriblytight ends:

Tackles found him similarly difficult to deal with on the ground. Wormley's versatility, power, and range at 300 pounds allowed Michigan to do a bunch of different things with him and racked up piles of UFR positives with nary a minus to be seen except against Rutgers for some reason:

Michigan's pass rush a year ago was heavily based on stunts because Michigan had a bunch of guys like Wormley and, with the snap-limited exception of Taco Charlton, nobody who was going to tear off the edge and make it happen himself. Wormley was a huge part of this, capable both of threatening the gap between two OL as the drive guy…

…and looping around in the hole the driver made:

His ability to get an edge rush was limited, as you might imagine at 300 pounds. You have to be a Gary-like freak to manage that at DT size. He'd occasionally overpower a tight end or catch an OL having a bad play. His most consistent move on a straight up rush was just blowing his dude back into the QB or using that push-pull:

This worked all right, but the results were a lot like the above: enough to get to the QB after a read or two, not enough to result in a thundersack. (Except that one time against Oregon State.) Wormley's upside on the outside isn't huge, but move him inside and the equation changes. Per Pro Football Focus, Wormley and Hurst were the top two pass rush DTs in the country. (PFF usually talks about Wormley as a DT despite his deployment a year ago.)

The move inside shouldn't impact him negatively as a run defender. While he won't get to fling tight ends into Ypsilanti, he was capable of stacking OL up and shedding to tackle. The power he displayed on the stunts was equally applicable when OL tried to drive block him. Often they ended up in the backfield. Per Brugler his talents lend themselves to either SDE or 3-tech:

He is an athletic mover with the lateral quickness and range for a 300-pounder to contain and chase. Wormley closes with a head of steam without slowing down through contact, showing tremendous balance to stay controlled before, after and while engaged on blocks.

He has a "legitimate chance" of going in the to 50 picks.

Wormley should be incrementally better this year, adding a little more pass rush when he's put on the end and continuing to rack up stunt pressure whether as the driver guy or the looper; I don't think he's going to get a ton better just because he's already a refined product, but a repeat of last year should make him All Big Ten. He's probably a late first rounder.

BACKUPS PROJECTED AS TOP DRAFT PICKS

[Upchurch]

Extremely nominal backup MAURICE HURST will get starter minutes as Wormley moves all over the line. He has lived up to his recruiting reputation as a lightning-quick first step looking for something to destroy, and then some. I am obligated to reference this My Little Pony-ass quote from a rough and tumble football coach:

“I think probably the first indication to me was my defensive coordinator Al Fornaro said, ‘You’ve got to see this guy come off the ball.’ I looked and went yay."

Many Michigan fans went yay last year for the same reason. Clip after clip from last year features Hurst getting +2 or +3 by teleporting into the backfield: 

Or burrowing:

Or being shot out of a cannon:

Or straight up taking the soul out of his opponent's body:

He almost singlehandedly rescued the Minnesota game, first ripping through the line to force an incompletion on Minnesota's dee-dum-derp first and goal play, then combining with Glasgow and others to stone the attempted QB sneak.

Hurst was a superior interior pass rusher both as a stunt maestro and on just plain ol' git 'em plays. He was frequently tackled and drew holding penalties; his ability to explode into defenders and push them back opened up avenues for guys looping around him.

Hurst was fan-damn-tastic until the moment Glasgow went down and he was forced to start at nose tackle while weighing around 280. Indiana went to work on him, exploiting his tendency to burst upfield with a series of zone stretches on which he got reached:

He still edged above zero in that game because he continued to kill Indiana's inside runs; it was his worst performance of the season to date. He had similar struggles against OSU's outside-breaking runs and had a tendency to get blown out by double teams. He'd also occasionally rack up minuses as opponents took the trap stuff they were learning to defend and used it against M. Where Wormley would rack up +1 after +1 with vanishingly few minuses Hurst tended to have a bunch of spectacular plays and then some problems. Post-Citrus diagnosis:

Mo Hurst had a good game in the way he usually does:

There was a clear dichotomy between his performances against teams that couldn't handle that first step and those who could. Against the UFs and PSUs of the world Hurst crushed it. Against Indiana and OSU not so much. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that Hurst was a 280 pound redshirt sophomore and get fusty about the downsides; the upside is really good and not that far away.

The issues he had were the kind of things that get better with age, and limited specifically to opponents who were able to use his tendency to get upfield in a flash against him.

Older, wiser, and bigger, Hurst should be All Big Ten and possibly All American caliber. He's up to 295, all the better to hold up against doubles, and with Glasgow and Mone exclusively manning the nose he'll get to play the vast bulk of his snaps at three tech, where he promises to be dominant. He was just a redshirt sophomore a year ago and has a fair bit of upside left to explore. PFF has him a first round pick in the upcoming draft and the #27 player in college football…

His +38.0 overalll grade ranks third among returning interior defensive linemen despite playing only 418 snaps and he ranks with the top 15 among returnees as both a pass rusher (+20.4) and against the run (+20.4). Hurst shows the explosion to shoot gaps and the power to push the pocket while moving around on the defensive front.

…and while that would be extremely unfortunate for Michigan in 2017 I would not be surprised if Hurst played at that level. His counting numbers should shoot up as he adds 50% more snaps and gets better; hopefully he wants to play school as a senior.

[Patrick Barron]

And then there's redshirt senior MATT GODIN, who's nearly a forgotten man on this defense. I submit that most years over the past decade the fifth-year version of him is a starter and most fans are fine with this. On this defensive line he might squeeze out 20% of available snaps by playing both three-tech and SDE.

I liked Godin early last year, when he played a lot of SDE and didn't seem too different than Wormley. He racked up a +12.5 against UNLV, and since we hadn't seen him do much other than run some stunts on passing downs yet that was an enticing development. This kind of thing is rather good:

Unfortunately it was not sustained.

He ended up –2 against BYU because he "got pushed back on a few good runs," bounced back for solid games against Maryland and Northwestern, where he had the occasional solid play at NT…

…and then got stuck at three-tech against MSU. He "struggled somewhat." After missing the next two games with an undisclosed injury he returned against Indiana to find his situation radically altered. With Glasgow out and Hurst drawn into the starting lineup he was no longer the least dangerous guy on the line. He played next to Tom Strobel; he ate double team after double team.

The results were unpleasant:

He got blown out over and over again, scoring a –8 against the Hoosiers. Michigan tried to avoid using that backup DT pair the rest of the year with only middling success.

Godin can still be a useful piece. His failings late last year were a product of circumstance. The pattern's clear. If you get him singled up he can do good work for you:

Put him in a situation where the opposition can double him and you're gonna have a bad time. Fortunately for Michigan, whenever Godin is on the field he'll be next to two of Hurst, Glasgow, Wormley, Mone, and Gary—he should see single blocking virtually all year. He'll see scattered snaps at both 3-tech and SDE that he does relatively well with.

Nobody else on the roster is currently a three-tech, which rather looms for 2017. Guys like Carlo Kemp and Michael Dwumfour may end up there down the road; Michigan has also made the spot a priority in the 2017 recruiting class.