Name: Kris Jenkins, Jr.
Height: 6’3″
Weight: 305 lbs.
High school: Olney (MD) Our Lady of Good Counsel
Position: Defensive tackle
Class: Redshirt junior
Jersey number: #94
Last year: I ranked Jenkins #18 and said he would be a starting defensive tackle with 35 tackles and 2 sacks (LINK). He made 54 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss, 2 sacks, and 2 quarterback hurries.
TTB Rating: 77
If there's anyone who seems to follow right in his dad's footsteps - after all the legacies Michigan has seen - it appears to be Jenkins. Jenkins, whose dad and Uncle Cullen played defensive tackle in the NFL for a long time, has grown immensely over the past two years, putting on 20 pounds in each of the past two off-seasons. Last year's 20-pound jump put him at 285, which is feasible defensive tackle size. He proceeded to blow up a bunch of run plays, get after the passer a little bit, and put himself on the Honorable Mention All-Big Ten team. He was named Michigan's Defensive Player of the Week five times (including sharing the honor against Illinois in week eleven).
You could make an argument to place Jenkins higher in the countdown, but I think Michigan's defensive tackle depth is solid, especially in the two-deep with Mason Graham, Kenneth Grant, and Rayshaun Benny. Throw in grad student Cam Goode and that's a solid fivesome, which doesn't include redshirt sophomore Ike Iwunnah or any of this year's freshmen. Jenkins is Michigan's top entry in Bruce Feldman's "Freaks List" for this year, and in some of the workout videos produced by the @umichfootball Twitter account, he looks jacked and supremely confident. I think it's going to be a fun season of seeing him consistently in opposing backfields.
Prediction: Starting defensive tackle; 50 tackles, 4 sacks
Remember when people were mad at Don Brown for recruiting too many tweaner DLs? Old takes exposed. Jenkins was under 240 pounds as a recruit.
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Jenkins is a beast and while I think Michigan would be fine losing him in most games there would be a substantial dropoff if Goode is getting 25 snaps instead of 5 against OSU.
I will differ slightly here. I think Jenkins is going to have a big year and possibly be our best defender. Yes, I am buying into the preseason hype for him. I would probably slide him in around 4 or 5, definitely ahead of Roman Wilson.
ReplyDeleteRemember when DT was a critical vulnerability, and recruiting only tweeners was a cause? Now we have half dozen legit Tackles, and losing a first round draft pick doesn't make a difference ...
ReplyDeleteWAIT, maybe defensive tackles don't matter? Nah, the Don Brown era proved otherwise
Defensive tackle is massively important and always had been. It was the strength of the team in Brown's first year 2016 when we had Glasgow, Mone, Hurst, and Godin.
DeleteI do remember when DT was a relative liability (in 2019 and 2020), but you got the cause wrong. Don Brown recruited Mazi Smith, Kris Jenkins, Chris Hinton, Mike Morris and Donovan Jeter. Not to mention a hoard of big bodies he didn't land. He also gladly started jumbo players he inherited like Bryan Mone and Chris Wormley - playing them over more athletic alternatives. Like Greg Mattison, Brown recruited players expecting to build them up.* He insisted on DTs who could penetrate and create a rush but by no means did he ignore size.
The 2021 DT group was very good - and they were all Don Brown guys. Heralded big body Jordan Whitley did not make an impact, nor did any of the freshman recruited by McDonald's staff.
What happened in 2019 and 2020 was not a philosophical problem with Brown's recruiting strategy. It was an issue of execution. The guys they recruited in 2017 and 2018 either busted, transferred, or took time to develop.
Michigan recruited plenty of big bodies in 2017 (Solomon, Jeter, Hudson, Paea, Irving-Bey) -- that wasn't the issue. You can line these guys right up with the recruiting classes early in the Hoke/Mattison era. There is not quantifiable difference in beef supplied.
The issue was developing them into high quality players. To put it bluntly -- Greg Mattison did not do his job the last 2 years of his Michigan tenure. And he skipped town when he saw it was going to be a problem.
What we saw under the Hoke/Mattison era and what we saw out of the Harbaugh/Brown era is the same as what we are seeing in the Harbaugh/Minter/McDonald era -- our best DTs are sometimes guys who are built up from edge sized. They are turned into interior players after going through S&C. Sometimes our best guys are maybe a little undersized (like Hurst and Jenkins) but they make up for it with quickness and athleticism.
It's true that Brown didn't see a need for a Jordan Whitley sized 350 pound nose tackle. That wasn't his scheme and with the new Ravens/multiple front we have value for that. Still the one guy we've recruited like that since Brown left -- he spent his freshman-sophomore offseason dropping 20 pounds.
The 2022 recruiting class was awesome for DT. But don't sleep on the fact that Don Brown's 2019 DL class was too (Smith, Hinton, Morris, Ojabo) and Jenkins. He was going after Benny also. Don Brown wanted big guys.
*The new staff also expects to bulk some edges up - that's why they've recruited roughly 60 different guys for edge. For everyone of them that gets projected as an outside linebacker in somebodies preview (a position that barely exists) there are going to be 3 of these edges that pack on 40-50 pounds and move inside.
Same as it ever was.
I agree, defensive tackle matters. When we stopped recruiting Tackles, our defense sucked ... it took until Hinton & mazi matured before we were back
DeleteExactly when did we stop and when did we start anew?
DeleteI'll answer for you. Never. We did not stop recruiting DTs. Some might call this assertion a lie. You keep repeating it but it's not true.
Look up 2017 class - Brown's first at Michigan. There were 3 guys listed as DTs and 4 DL listed over 280 pounds. The problem was that only Donovan Jeter panned out, and it took him 4 years.
After the huge DL haul in '17 it made sense to focus elsewhere in '18. If you call that a "stop" well that's not how most people would see it. 2019 had Hinton and Smith.
We have been through this before. Aubrey Solomon was the only pure DT commit for 2017. Jeter was a tweener, DE/DT. Pae was either a OG or DL
DeleteNo DTs in 2018
Two in 2019 (Mazi & Hinton)
Back to zero DTs in 2020
That's three legit DTs over four recruiting classes ... and it showed
You picked a 3 year sample and think you proved a point. This is as good as me grabbing 3 carries where blake corum ran for 5 yards total and concluding he's a bad RB or can't run between tackles.
DeleteGo ahead and give me the number of "pure DT"s by season and see if you can demonstrate a pattern. Please apply consistent methodology to exclude tweeners and guys who might play OL. See where that gets you.
You can't do it - because Greg Mattison was the DL coach for most of the Brown era and Don Brown knows the importance of impact DTs. There was no substantial change here. Mattison also ran a 4-3 that didn't rely on jumbo NTs.
2020 was the class we recruited Jenkins in. It proves your thesis wrong. We have perhaps the best DT since Hurst on our hands thanks to the approach you've criticized. The whole premise (that there was any change at all) is fake. If it WAS real, the outcomes wouldn't back it up that is was problematic.
Like a lot of narratives that get concocted to explain failures -- this one can't be backed up, and in fact stand in direct contradiction to, the facts on the ground.
Again - here is what happened. Don Brown recruited 6 or 7 guys to the DL in the 2017 class and expected that they would get developed to fill out the need. Greg Mattison failed to develop them and skipped down when the stuff was about to hit the fan.
In hindsight, it was a mistake to go light on DL in 2018 but at the time it was a reasonable tradeoff given other roster needs. Solomon looked like a future star at DT, Jeter looked on track to grow into the position most always expected for him, Hudson was an obvious talent on the line (on one side or another, these things are always fluid). It didn't work out but the issue was development and retention - not anything attributable to poor recruiting philosophy.
The change Don Brown brought to the front that Mattison had created was...to get bigger. In Brown's first year they moved SDE Taco Charlton to weakside, kept Wormley (who played NT in the NFL and weighed over 300 pounds) at Edge, and brought in a 290 pound DT recruit and made him Wormley's backup. They also got Mone back from injury though, as with Kenneth Grant, they asked him to lose weight. The previous year under Durkin they called their weakside edge a buck linebacker and played an undersized guy. They also asked their EDGEs to bulk up to be less linebackery (Marshall and Winovich).
DeleteMattison is an all-time great DL coach. My suspicion is that he got old and let things slide. He saw the writing on the wall and took OSU's check. That's my conjecture and there is an alternative reality that Brown pushed Mattison to recruit smaller players, Mattison got frustrated at his boss, and skipped town because of it.
That's not backed up in the recruiting results. It's also not backed by the recruiting offers. Please see the 2018 DT class and let me know if Michigan offered these "true DTs" in a deliberate effort to not recruit such players.
https://247sports.com/Season/2018-Football/RecruitRankings/?InstitutionGroup=highschool/&Position=DT
If you look you will see many many offers from Don Brown's team. Vincent, Mustipher, McNeil. Michigan offered them all. They just failed to reel them in.
Ditto in 2017. Solomon wasn't the only true DT they landed let alone the only one recruited. They were hot after Jay Tufele too. You think Don Brown didn't want Marvin Wilson? He very much did.
https://247sports.com/Season/2017-Football/RecruitRankings/?InstitutionGroup=highschool/&Position=DT
If you just wanted Brown to take some big bodies -- well he did that! That's what Paea was, and Hudson,
Now let's jump to 2020 - which is kind of a funny thing to do given COVID, our DL coach bailing on us, and the fact that things worked out quite well for us at DT in 2021 between Smith, Hinton, Jenkins, Jeter, etc. But let's play this out and see if Don Brown was deliberately avoiding recruiting "true DTs" as a matter of strategy. Did Don Brown recruit local 310 pound NT Justin Rogers? Yes - very hard. He got paid and went to Kentucky. Did he offer Bryan Breesee? Yes. Brown didn't chase every bigtime DT prospect out of the south - wisely IMO - but he picked guys and went after many big bodies.
Nothing changed. Every one of our coaches has gone after both "true DTs" and "developmental" tweeners who are not fast enough for edge but project to pack on enough weight in the next couple years to end up inside. You want both!
This is just standard stuff and entirely not worth criticizing. Literally everybody does it. Mattison did. Brown did. Nua did. Elston does. The next guy will too.
Yes, I picked the years (4) that contributed to us being trampled
DeleteTweeners are fine, if a part of a strategy that includes guys that are locks for that position ... 3 pure DTs in 4 cycles is not good enough. almost like RR recruiting OL, and the lack of quatity. Both worked out the same
Well there you go doubling down on bad takes. RR had a great young OL on the roster and more (e.g., Jake Fischer) on the way. He set Hoke up for success in 2011. Hoke failed to follow-up, failed to replace Fisher, and failed to develop any semblance of OL or develop them with the worst OL coach in our lifetimes - Darrell Funk. So you are 2/2 in misdiagnosing the issue.
DeleteI see you skipped doing your homework. Here are the answers: 5, 5, and 5.
Delete5 "True" DT recruits over the last 3 year 2021-2023 after Brown.
(Roderick Pierce, Graham, Grant, Iwannah, Benny).
5 True DT recruits over Brown's 4 years 2017-2020
(Mazi, Hinton, Solomon, Hudson, Paea).
5 "True" DT recruits the previous 4 years (2013-2016)
(Dwumfour, Mone, Pallante, Hurst, Gary)
BTW Brown recruited Benny and I'm including him in the "after Brown" count because he was listed as a DT, had DT size, and most expected him to be a DT. But some people liked him better at OL - including Thunder - so that was an option for him (like most interior linemen on both sides). If you want to cut potential OL then cut him too.
The "during Brown" could be much higher. I did not include Jeter - who was listed as a DT and most projected as a DT and weighed 285 according to his HUDLE, or Irving-Bey (who was also 285 and ended up at DT as many expected but technically listed as an SDE on 247 so I didn't include ), or Jenkins (whose dad was a DT and was projected to DT by most but given his size and skill is fairly represented as a tweener). But given the gray area you should probably add 1 to the above tally.
Before Brown has an egregious addition but one that technically meets the consistent methodology I used (DT sized, listed as a DT, projected by many to DT). Including Gary here is highly dubious since he was recruited to play EDGE and did so from day 1 and is called a LB now in the NFL.
5, 5, 5. There is no meaningful change here. The only way you get there is by selectively cutting people who are listed as DT sized, listed as DTs, and projected to DT by most.
Michigan is recruiting more guys now, of all types, across the DL than ever before. So getting 5 in 3 years instead of 5 in 4 years can be framed as an increase if you want. They also recruited Whitley out of the portal. So perhaps there is some (extremely soft) evidence of an increase relative to the Brown era.
That makes sense given they want to play multiple fronts with 3, 4, 5 guys and have a range of skills. Michigan is more interested now in the big NT types than they were under Brown.
HOWEVER, that ignores that Brown's count is actually HIGHER than Mattison's. If there is an increase recently, it is not relative to Brown but relative to Mattison.
The fact is that Mattison and Brown recruited and produced collectively multiple elite DLs with elite DTs and that those DTs have been tweeners as well as "trues". Their approach worked in 2014 and 2016 and 2021, under 3 different DCs. There is nothing wrong with the recruiting approach. *Which you have to account for the offers as well as the successes to accurately evaluate but we're ignoring here for the sake of debate.
The problem was in the execution - the development of DT personnel from 2017 through 2018 under Mattison's watch as DL coach was a failure. And his sudden defection prior to the 2019 offseason when we needed him most was a disaster.
BTW JE.
DeleteYou also picked 4 years that contributed to us winning a Big Ten championship and making the playoff.
Three posts, more lies. I'll start chronologically:
Delete- RR came in and signed FIVE offensive lineman. This is a good start for a completely revamped system. He followed that up with THREE in his first full class (two studs, one OL/DL uncertainty). In some years this is fine, but with no portal and a major rebuild, we needed more. In 2010 he signed ONE offensive lineman. This is criminal, and followed up by only THREE for his final year (the Hoke bridge) ... for someone who argues RB doesn't matter because it's all about the OL, that's nowhere near enough ... and showed in what is now known as our dark times
- Donovan Jeter was a tweener, with an uncertain position along the DL. His local news (PennLive), team news (Freep) and team blogs (Maine & Brew, MGoBlog & yes, TouchTheBanner) introduce him as a DE. Notre Dame commitment posts split between DE & DT. The recruiting websites split 2-2 on DE & DT ... He was not a pure DT, Donovan Jeter was a tweener, who started only 4 games according to his school bio
Phillip Paea played in ONE game during his career, after practicing on both sides of the line ... He had no home. Rivals listed him as a Guard, MGoBlog profile is a "who knows?" of ambiguity. Paea went to UtahSt as an OL ... he's no pure DT, and hardly a P5 football player
As I say, I'm fine with tweeners, but we need certainty as well. With only Solomon as a pure DT, mixing him with a bunch of DE tweeners was risky, and didn't pay off. Following it up with ZERO in 2018 was as costly as RR's OL negligence, and played out similarly for the position. We had to wait for Mazi & Hinton to mature & develop (year3), and Jeter to be 'okay enough' (year5), two top draft picks at DE, and a young & modern mind at Coordinateor for our turnaround ... even in 2021, it was our DEs who were lighting it up & making our DL known nationally. The bleeding caused by THREE pure DTs in FOUR years was finally over
That's it's Lank, that's history ... spin, mislead & lie. Do your thing, but it's time to enjoy some college football
GO BLUE
Well said, Lank!
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