Previously: The Story. Quarterback. Running Back. Wide Receiver. Tight End. Interior OL.

TACKLE: I HOPE YOU DIDN'T EXPECT TO GET SOME OF THAT BACON BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY OFFENSIVE TACKLES IN THIS ROOM THAT THEY'RE PROBABLY GOING TO EAT ALL OF THE BACON AND WHY ARE YOU HAULING BACON AROUND LIKE THIS ANYWAY IF YOU ASK ME THAT'S PRETTY WEIRD BEHAVIOR

RATING: 4

[Bolded player rules: not necessarily returning starter, but someone we've seen enough of that I'm no longer talking about their recruiting profile (much, anyway). Extant contributor.]

LT	Yr.	LG	Yr.	C	Yr.	RG	Yr.	RT	Yr.
Karsen Barnhart	Sr.*	Trevor Keegan	Sr.*	Drake Nugent	Sr.*	Zak Zinter	Jr.*	Trente Jones	Sr.*
LaDarius Henderson	Sr.*	Gio El-Hadi	So.*	Greg Crippen	So.*	Reece Atteberry	So.*	Myles Hinton	Jr.
Jeffrey Persi	So.*	Amir Herring	Fr.	Raheem Anderson	So.*	Connor Jones	Fr.*	Andrew Gentry	Fr.*

Well… it's going to be a little weird. Harbaugh liked his quarterback competition from last year so much he's going to replicate it wherever he can:

“There’s four starting tackles that we have and it'll go through camp. I envision starting two tackles one game — the first game — and two tackles the second game."

Those four guys are Karsen Barnhart and LaDarius Henderson on the left with Trente Jones and Myles Hinton on the right. Compounding the lack of clarity is that guys are perfectly capable of flipping sides—Barnhart played right tackle last year plenty—and this is really just a pile of tackles that Michigan will select two from. Our chart above has to say something, so we're going with the current depth chart, but this space believes that Henderson will move into the starting lineup after a few games, leaving Barnhart and Jones fighting over the right tackle spot. Hinton is a longer-term play. Probably.

In any case, Michigan has five different tackles with college starts and four different guys with extensive experience. Nobody is an established, elite college tackle but short of having one of those this is about the best possible scenario to find yourself in.

---------------------

THE OLD GUYS: I DON'T GET IT

Last year the right tackle belonged to Trente Jones. Despite having a seasoned contender in Barnhart, Jones's offseason work was sufficient to make the 2022 RT position battle one of the least interesting in recent history. Harbaugh dubbed Jones the "frontrunner" for the spot during his first spring availability last year—absurdly early as these things go—and Barnhart never seemed to close the gap.

Things went as expected until Jones got injured against Indiana. Barnhart drew into the starting lineup and never relinquished the job. Jones got back on the field, seeing snaps in the final five contests as a bonus OL, but could not dislodge Barnhart. And it kind of seems like he's not going to be dislodged this time around, either. When Harbaugh ran down the depth chart during BTN's fall camp visit, he said that Barnhart is "probably having the best camp of any of the tackles."

Your author was slightly confused by how this all played out. To my eye, Jones was some way clear of Barnhart. For what it's worth, PFF also thought Jones was well clear. Our usual complaints about PFF OL grading are almost all irrelevant when we're talking about teammates running the same scheme against (more or less) the same opponents, being graded by the same guy. Jones's season grade of 78 was actually ahead of Zinter and Hayes, behind only Oluwatimi. Barnhart checked in with a 61. Barnhart had a significantly tougher slate of defenses to oppose… but probably not anywhere near enough to close that gap.

Let's dive in.

eat your liver Urban [Barron]

So. KARSEN BARNHART. The Barnhart theme from last year's UFR is "mid," as the kids say. After MSU:

Barnhart seems… ok?

Barnhart's been fine, for the most part. He's been excellent in pass protection, where Jones had some hiccups. He does seem to be a clear step down as a run blocker. I think there were two different plays in this game where Jones probably clears the way for a monster gain. One's above—the block on Windmon that doesn't get made. There was also a pin and pull where it looked like Corum had the jets but Barnhart got blown back by a charging safety:

RT #52 pulling

He doesn't have a lot of oomph, which is why he had a ton of trouble with Slade in this game last year. Keegan had his moments of struggle, too, but came out with a clear W. Barnhart is more suited to tackle.

That lack of oomph showed up in a major way against Ohio State, when it seemed like he just wasn't able to take on a JTT:

RT #52 to bottom

Or the non-Newton Illinois DT:

RT #52 second from top

This also fits with a rough game at guard against MSU in 2021—Seth issued a –17!—where he was just not physically ready for a healthy Jacob Slade:

LG #52

There were positives. He absolutely crushed Rutgers's Aaron Lewis on the ground and participated in the team-wide beatdown of Nebraska. He racked up a lot of positives on doubles with a tight end; those guys would collectively dump a DE a couple yards downfield:

RT #52 second from bottom

Paired with Zinter he was able to do this to defensive tackles semi-regularly. Barnhart has good feet, which helps him drive on those doubles without falling off the block and allows him to pull from tackle:

RT #52

Those feet make his second-level blocks effective; he's able to drive on guys and rarely gets shed by a linebacker:

RT #52

He rarely makes mental errors and when he's not in one-on-one situations he's extremely effective. It kind of feels like he's in the wrong situation. If he was an Iowa lineman or in a Debord-era "all stretch, all the time" offense he'd probably be racking up the accolades, but when Michigan is the gruntiest grunts and runs a bunch of duo he sticks out as not a hog-molly.

Meanwhile the pass protection was solid but not great. Lewis is an excellent pass rusher and the only Nebraska defender with a pulse last year was DE Garrett Nelson; Barnhart suffered a total of nine pass protection minuses—approximately four and a half sacks worth of errors—in those games:

This is similar to the struggles on the ground in one-on-one situations with beefy boys. His season charting looks like he's a flat track bully.

Opponent	+	-	TOT	Pass -	Notes
Indiana	6	2	4	0	One -2, one +2.
Penn State	6.5	7	-0.5	-2	Three big mistakes, otherwise good.
MSU	9	3.5	5.5	0	Had a couple bad plays that held down promising runs but you'll take that easy.
Rutgers	8.5		8.5	-5	Two +2s for whipping Lewis.
Nebraska	10.5	3.5	7	-4	I wonder how much dropoff there actually is between the two.
Illinois	6	6.5	-0.5	-3	Physically overwhelmed few times.
OSU	4.5	5	-0.5	-2	Tough matchup usually against JTT.
TCU	3	4.5	-1.5	-2	Solid pass pro, still lacking in ID department in run game.

Barnhart whooped up on Indiana, MSU, Rutgers and Nebraska on the ground but couldn't quite handle good rush defense DEs; he also got a bit exposed against guys who could actually rush the passer. (I don't think JTT actually counts in this department; his season pass rush win rate of 9% is pedestrian. Contrast that with Mike Morris's 17%. Taylor Upshaw had 10% last year.)

Despite the above, Barnhart held the starting right tackle job through the end of the season, even after Jones was healthy enough to get bonus OL snaps, and there's that quote above from Harbaugh in which Barnhart is first in line. I'm not entirely sure what to make of this. It feels like Barnhart is the option with the highest floor and lowest ceiling amongst the four "starting" tackles. On the positive side of the ledger, Barnhart's 2022 charting is a big step forward from his 2021 and OL might be the slowest-developing spot on the field. The leveling off you see from a lot of positions (Blake Corum is going to be Blake Corum; Cornelius Johnson is going to be Cornelius Johnson) doesn't happen nearly as much at OL, and since Barnhart's major issue is the ability to be biglarge it's possible a final offseason of Ben Herbert gets him across the tipping point and he becomes a plus Big Ten tackle.

The heart of the distribution here is that Barnhart is a couple increments better than he was a year ago, which still leaves him as the fifth or sixth best OL on the team. There are much, much worse problems to have than "might start fifth year senior Karsen Barnhart," as any Michigan fan older than about 15 knows, but he feels like the Cade McNamara in this particular offseason rodeo with everyone else playing the JJ McCarthy role. If he gets the job it'll be because someone with more upside didn't take it.

he's a shover, not a fighter [Campredon]

TRENTE JONES, meanwhile, has to be wondering what happened to his job. Aside from some pass protection issues it's fair to describe his start as "blistering":

Opponent	+	-	TOT	PP -	TOTAL
CSU	7.5	1	6.5	-3	Agile enough to pull from T.
Hawaii	4	2	2	-2	Two pass pro minuses.
UConn	8	5.5	2.5	-1	One targeting issue, got beat a couple times, still good.
Maryland	9	2.5	6.5	0	Right handed for a reason.
Iowa	5	0.5	4.5	-4	Run game not as right handed anymore.
Indiana	3.5		3.5	0	Left halfway through with injury.
TOTAL	37	11.5	+25.5	-10

There are some good opponents in there. Iowa was the conference's best run defense a year ago and Maryland wasn't horrible. The Terps finished about average in raw numbers and were 36th nationally in line yards allowed. Even Indiana (64th in LYA) was okay-ish. To rack up a +14.5 across two and a half games of decent Big Ten opposition is heady stuff for a first year starter. This is against Greg China-Rose, a fifth-year senior with solid PFF grades:

RT #53

And this is… well, it's a guy who plays for UConn, but we have limited clip options here:

RT #53

If that doesn't move you, Jones flashed some things as a bonus OL two years ago. This is against Arnold Ebiketie, who would be a second round pick after the season:

#80 on bottom

Jones moved people with frequency and almost never gave ground. PFF thought he was Michigan's third-best run blocker behind Oluwatimi and Zinter (though as noted in the IOL post, Keegan's grading doesn't line up with the fact that he was All Big Ten and will get drafted), and our grading agrees. So what gives with the whole depth chart thing?

Maybe Jones is pigeonholed as the power guy and Barnhart the agile guy, but Michigan was completely fine pulling Jones from tackle a year ago…

RT #53

…and on the occasions Michigan ran stretch plays he was twice a relevant reach block:

RT #53

I guess the degree of difficulty on those goes down when you run so much duo that opposition DL are firing upfield maniacally so they don't get dumped in a trash can, but Jones was not one of those recruits who people are projecting inside at guard; quite the opposite. When Adam Schnepp went out to see him his impression was more Mason Cole than Trevor Keegan:

It takes less than 20 seconds to see Jones’ upside: he can move. At 00:19 he flies off the snap and targets the correct linebacker, turning the backer and moving him down the line; Jones’ block is directly responsible for at least five of the running back’s yards. He also shows some crazy athleticism (at least for a big fella) at 2:05, leaping over a fallen Archer defensive lineman to go pick off a linebacker.

And agility is nice but for what Michigan was doing last year it would seem that Jones's raw power would win out.

Pass protection, then? Maybe. Jones had some hiccups, but they were one of two things. One was the OL-wide conspiracy against Cade McNamara early in the season that saw Jones allow one pressure and one sack from CSU and Hawaii. This may have been early jitters or the offensive line putting its hand on the scale based on what they'd seen in practice. After the threat of McNamara was safely dealt with Jones only had one pass pro minus that wasn't an inexplicable missed assignment, of which there were two against Iowa:

Pass protection was… I mean… except for…

Michigan's pass pro was very good except when Iowa guys were inexplicably running free. Trente Jones twice let a defensive end run right at McCarthy, which Michigan got away with once on the Edwards TD. The second time not so much:

RT #53 to top of line

Both of these incidents were extremely weird. There was almost nothing from Iowa to indicate that Jones was going to need to come off an actual bonafide DE, and on neither play did Michigan have a back in so it's not like he expected a protection slide. I don't get it.

Until that becomes an alarming pattern that is preferable to getting whooped, because "hey block the defensive end, you yutz" is a pretty quick fix.

Barnhart and Jones had virtually identical pressure rates allowed. This is an edge to Barnhart since he drew significantly tougher assignments, but the gap here doesn't seem nearly as large as the one on the ground. At least not from the outside. FWIW, PFF also graded Jones significantly higher here despite Barnhart's slightly better win rate. Unclear why.

SO, THEN, THE MYSTERY: why did Jones not re-enter the starting lineup? He was sufficiently healed from his high ankle sprain to see scattered snaps as a bonus OL. It's possible that he was healthy enough to thunder-dunk on tight ends but not to mirror a pass rusher trying to get the edge. It seems unlikely that would be the case for the TCU game, and then it looks like Barnhart is making enough of a case for himself in practice that he's got a nose ahead of the other two. Or maybe the people grading these OL aren't grading the same way they are inside the program.

I dunno. Your guess is as good as mine.

THE NEW GUYS: PLAYER TO BE NAMED LATER, PLAYER TO BE PLAYED LATER

Well, here's your meme.

Arizona State basketball snuck into the tournament, so they're probably happy. Michigan… less so, but hopefully LADARIUS HENDERSON [recruiting profile] changes that equation over the course of this season. Henderson surprised many when he did not enter the draft—he was even on the Shrine Bowl roster. Depending on who you listen to he was a contender for a first round slot or a solid mid-rounder. Dane Brugler recently ranked him the #10 senior guard available for 2024, five spots in front of one Trevor Keegan.

Henderson mostly played guard for the Sun Devils but since those slots are emphatically filled at Michigan he is competing at tackle. This is probably fine. Many guys destined to play guard in the NFL play outside in college (see: Jon Runyan Jr.) and it works out. Henderson is not shaped like Jake Long and this will put a cap on his one-on-one pass protection, but not a severe one. It helps that Henderson is reputed to have freaky long arms that would actually put him towards the upper end of NFL tackles, and that draft folks seem in agreement that his movement skills are upper-echelon:

If you’re looking for a guard with tools to develop, you can’t do much better than Arizona State’s LaDarius Henderson. Henderson is around 6’5″, 310 pounds, with arms over 35″, and he explodes off the line. He can struggle with pad level at times, but his athleticism is eye-catching, and his length provides a conduit for elite power.

Also:

Draft Buzz credited him with a "a strong, flexible core, and the ability to absorb and anchor against the bull rush as a pass protector," and "underrated athleticism, agility, balance, and even straight-line speed to contribute," though just "adequate foot quickness" to remain outside. They too pointed out the "surprising agility" with which he gets to the second level and connects with moving defenders.

His ability to fire out does pop on film and has been a frequent subject from NFL draft analysts on Twitter:

Circling back on guys for the updated Top 10's coming soon, and the tools with Arizona State G LaDarius Henderson continue to stand out.

Look how explosive he is off the line here when he opens up his strides. Elite mix of initial burst, length, and power capacity. pic.twitter.com/OTTRgYUPTx

— Ian Cummings (@IC_Draft) October 28, 2022

And Nick Baumgardner had this to say when he singled out a number of his favorite transfers in this class:

A 6-5, 310-pound package of athletic bend, recovery and foot speed, Henderson also has a reported 85 and 5/8-inch wingspan — that would’ve been second longest among OTs at the 2023 combine, behind only Dawand Jones.

Henderson has some experience at tackle. Arizona State flung him in the deep end upon his arrival, starting him at left tackle as a seventeen-year-old true freshman. He might have stayed there but for a desperate Herm Edwards making a playing time promise in an effort to fill spots on his OL:

The Sun Devils added Texas A&M graduate-transfer offensive lineman Kellen Diesch to its coffers. ASU head coach Herm Edwards made it clear on National Signing Day on Feb. 5 that Diesch would be his starting left tackle. It forced Henderson to the right side.

Herm kept tossing transfers into the fire until his firing, and apparently they were all tackle-shaped. Seth surveyed the "why u no LT" question in Henderson's recruiting profile:

It's surprising that they couldn't find a guard on the roster who was better than Isaia Glass, who started the year rotating at LT with their new D-II transfer, or RT Des Holmes, who moved inside to RG when they lost Henderson (the RG moved to LG and the D-II transfer started at RT). Even the up-transfer from Northern State (this has to be a made up school), Emmit Bohle looked like a substantial downgrade from Henderson out there.

Bohl is 6'7" 290. So maybe Henderson on the inside was because Arizona State was shorter on guards than tackles. Or maybe Herm's just weird. Or maybe uh…

#ASU LG Ladarius Henderson absolutely lays out this #Washington defender while pulling to the weak side backside EDGE players, beware! Mauler at the POA. pic.twitter.com/STluXhRRA0

— Devin Jackson (@RealD_Jackson) August 4, 2022

…maybe Arizona State just wanted to pull him.

This section could keep rehashing Seth's profile on Henderson but you can just go check that out if you're so inclined. Unfortunately we have nothing new to go on because the submarine has been locked down even tighter than usual this fall and Henderson did not participate in spring. (He had to complete his undergraduate degree over the summer before he could come in.) This ceded the momentum to Barnhart and Jones, but this space is betting that Henderson's upside takes over by midseason. He's a fun quote, too:

Henderson refuses to make excuses for any mistakes — even though he has some built-in ones this season — because he doesn’t want to be in the habit of making excuses later. “All I have right now is my effort, my brain and my arm length,” he says. “I want to watch as much film as I can and be able to see everything. You can’t be undersized and dumb. That’s not OK.”

I don't think Michigan brought in Henderson because they thought he'd be a nice backup. This is a year to swing for the fences and Henderson has a ton of upside.

large man large [Stanford University]

The fourth "starting" tackle is MYLES HINTON [recruiting profile], an erstwhile five star who chose Stanford over Michigan but followed Nugent into the portal when David Shaw retired. Hinton is the younger brother of former Michigan DT Chris Hinton and was an extremely disappointing recruiting miss.

Fast forward to 2023 and things are, uh, fine-to-good on the Michigan offensive line and Hinton has had an up-and-down career. PFF has him for just over 1,100 career snaps, as he started for big chunks of 2021 and 2022. PFF graded his 2021 as a straight up disaster as he gave up 23 pressures on ~400 pass block snaps; this added up to a—gulp—29 pass block grade. Hinton improved massively last year, slashing his pressure rate allowed by two-thirds and seeing his grade shoot up to 63, which is average-ish. This is not a matter of competition level. His snaps were almost all against Pac-12 opponents or Notre Dame—there just 27 snaps of padding against Colgate in there.

Unfortunately, run blocking, while never as bad as his 2021 pass blocking, did not experience the same renaissance. He was stuck around 50 both years. Disclaimers about PFF OL grading, sure, but when Seth looked at the tape he came up with an evaluation that was in the same ballpark:

It's a bit frustrating to watch Hinton's play because sometimes he overwhelms guys and sometimes he's just standing around like a spectator. He has plenty of speed and agility in space but rarely gets more than a bump—for the record, often that's enough to earn a +1 the way we grade. … Most of my frustration however—and yes, I am spoiled by Michigan linemen—was from a lack of adjustment mid-play. Hinton tends to stay focused on his initial block instead of seeing the whole picture, which results in lots of running past the kinds of heads-up plays that Trevor Keegan has never missed in his lifetime.

So maybe he just needed some time… and focus. It seems like one of the reasons Michigan lost out the first time around was that Hinton wasn't a 100%, balls-to-the-wall Football Guy. Via Seth's recruiting profile:

“I wasn’t sold on the sport going into college, it kind of surprises people,” Hinton said on In the Trenches with Jon Jansen. “My dad and brother played, it was part of the family. Once I got to college, I learned more about football and how it was a vehicle for future success, so I was trying to put myself in a position to where I could have that.”

Moving to Michigan looks like a project to see what happens if Hinton actually scrapes his ceiling. It's certainly not a play for immediate time even if he is a Harbaugh "starter." And there is an outside chance that the combination of Herbert and Moore takes Hinton from a middling P5 tackle to something more. Hinton was rated where he was because he is one of those rare humans who can, hypothetically at least, block Aidan Hutchinson:

If a scout were to draw up a starting NFL left tackle, the picture may look like a lot like [Hinton]. His height, length and athletic build are prototypical for the position that helps protect the blind side of ultra-important starting quarterbacks.

He's still on NFL draft radars because there just aren't many Myles Hinton-shaped persons on the planet.

Worth noting: I think that Hinton has three years remaining since 2020 was his freshman year. He would have to redshirt this year to get year six but uhhhh yeah we can probably swing that. I also watched the tape that Seth did, and here I think PFF is on point. He seems some distance behind the other three options here.

I would be surprised to see Hinton get more than his four games, because this is a project that might take a minute but could have a massive payoff. Let Ben Herbert and Sherrone Moore have a minute to cook here.

BACKUPS TO THE BACKUPS

[David Wilcomes]

Michigan's fifth tackle with a college start under his belt is redshirt sophomore JEFFREY PERSI [recruiting profile], who got a start against Rutgers when Hayes was banged up. Persi did… eh, okay. UFR's post-game take:

How did Persi look?

Persi didn't look out of place, we can say. Michigan did not make him a heavy emphasis in the ground game but the times when he was relevant he was generally doing the right thing. Here he combos through the topmost defensive tackle and gets to a linebacker. You do want him to get through this faster and get to the LB a bit quicker, but the job gets done:

LT #79 second from top

He did eat a bit of a stack and shed on the long Corum chunk that stood:

LT #79 second from the top

That almost ends the play after a couple yards but Corum is able to slip the ankle tackle.

Persi's pass protection was okay. He picked up a –1 when he didn't realize that a stunt was coming and get over in time; he also picked up scattered –1s across the game. This is less good than at first blush, but for a first start against a real D you'd have to consider this encouraging.

Persi is one of those tackles who was mostly a tight end in high school—he only flipped to tackle as a senior—and needs slabs of beef slathered upon them before they're ready to see the field; usually year three is when you want these guys to pop. It's year three, but as the state flag says si quaeris loaded tackle depth chart circum spice. Persi even being in position to start a game and be "meh" in it is an accomplishment given this was the overall vibe from his recruiting profile:

… still really far away in his development … still not very strong, so he loses balance, and tends to topple over rather than be able to bend and maintain a base.

Persi hasn't generated a whole lot of talk this fall but Harbaugh did say that Persi (and Crippen) "would have been at that starter level" if not for the transfers. That is a consistent drumbeat from Harbaugh about Crippen; significantly less so Persi. It's hard to even project a spot start this year since he's not one of the four "starters" at OL, but he should be a serious contender in 2024.

GENTRY SMASH? [Barron]

The last guy worth giving a whole paragraph to is ANDREW GENTRY [recruiting profile], Michigan's other heist from UVA when Bronco Mendenhall retired. Gentry was just returning from a Mormon mission last year and needed a year of Ben Herbert-ization before anyone was going to talk about him, but now some people are talking about him. Harbaugh:

"It's just that good, really — four starting tackles. It kills me not to put Andrew Gentry in that category because he's so good to where we’ll play him at guard and tackle and find ways to get him on the field."

Normally I would believe Harbaugh when he says he's got some snaps for an offensive lineman outside of the top five, but not this year. Also, Harbaugh said that Gentry "could get a lot of play as a true freshman" last year; instead he got scattered snaps late against UConn and Rutgers.

Even if Gentry seeing the field is doubtful, this is one of them "talk about 'em before you need 'em" situations that bodes well for Gentry's future. Because of the mission he's considerably older than your average redshirt freshman, and it's not too difficult to project him into the starting lineup next year. Nobody else on the roster is quite the prototype left tackle he is reputed to be…

24/7's Blair Angulo led his eval with "broad shouldered frame with thick lower half." At Rivals, Mike Farrell had an article comparing recruits in Gentry's class to players about to go near the top of the draft. #3 Walker Little's comp was Gentry, because "Gentry has a very similar build at the same level and impressive length." Little's draft measurements:

Says Farrell, "you simply won’t find many tackles with his combination of size and talent."

…unless Myles Hinton makes a leap.

Three more scholarship youngsters round out the roster. Redshirt freshmen TRISTAN BOUNDS [recruiting profile] and CONNOR JONES [recruiting profile] are joined by true freshman EVAN LINK [recruiting profile]. To date none of these guys have been brought up in a press conference or drawn insider mention, understandably. Harbaugh press conferences cannot be three hours long and only deal with the tackle depth chart. Ask again next year.