Name: Marlin Klein
Height: 6’6″
Weight: 247 lbs.
High school: Rabun Gap (GA) Nacoochee
Position: Tight end
Class: Redshirt sophomore
Jersey number: #17
Last year: I ranked Klein #77 and said he would be a backup tight end (LINK). He played in ten games and caught 1 pass for 8 yards.
TTB Rating: 81
Klein has been buried on the depth chart for the past couple seasons behind a pretty good group of tight ends. Last year it was Colston Loveland, A.J. Barner, and Matt Hibner, among others, ahead of him on the depth chart. Barner went to the NFL, and Hibner attempted to find greener pastures at SMU (Hibner caught 1 pass for 19 yards in a win over Nevada last night). Klein, meanwhile, despite positive reports on his athleticism, had yet to reach a point where he could be put on the field.
This off-season the hype train for Klein has picked up speed, largely based on his size and athleticism. He reportedly broke off a long touchdown catch and run in a scrimmage recently, and one insider report pegged him as one of the fastest players on the team. Even if he doesn't truly rank quite at the top, that's still an impressive comment about a player who's 6'6" and 247 pounds.
Replacing Barner's 620 snaps from 2023 is going to be a group effort. Klein isn't going to go from playing 37 snaps to 620. But he does appear to be TE2 on this roster, and that should be a few hundred snaps. Zack Marshall and Deakon Tonielli are a couple others who could see decent roles, not to mention 6'6", 245 lb. freshman Brady Prieskorn. The group has one proven player (Loveland) and a bunch of question marks. I ranked Barner #22 last year, so I don't have as much confidence in Klein, but we should still see the Germany native quite a bit this fall.
Prediction: Part-time starting tight end; 15 catches for 200 yards and 1 touchdown
My TE hot takes in short.
ReplyDeleteTE has the worst depth on the entire roster. An injury means doom.
Klein is NOT going to replace AJ Barner. We have NO in-line TEs to replace AJ Barner.
Harbaugh Football is dead. Moore will have to rely on more FB or bonus OL to SMASH.
The run game's effectiveness will likely suffer.
My TE takes in long:
DeleteThe TE situation remains concerning and an under-discussed changeover from the Harbaugh era, IMO. The biggest reason for this is the return of Colston Loveland, an absolute stud and maybe the best receiving TE in Michigan history, along with Max Bredeson a H-back/Fullback -- which Harbaugh did not differentiate from TE but the current staff does. So you have 2 part-time starters back and on paper that seems pretty good, especially in the midst of all the other changes on the team and especially on offense (11 starters departing). But look deeper and there's reason to worry.
Here is what we have left at TE:
- 2 FLEX TEs (Loveland and Klein)
- 4 freshman and sophomore TEs who have no notable experience or camp hype
- No walk-ons with notable experience or camp hype
- Appearing to return to breaking out TEs from FBs (Bredeson)
Thunder is right to focus on the snaps and the need to replace around 600 from Barner plus another 60 from Beetham and Hiber, but I just don't see any candidates to do it on the current roster. We don't have any 250+ pound guys to absorb those in-line TE snaps. Loveland is going to continue to do Loveland things (including trying to be a primary receiving target split out wide and filling in for the lack of bigger bodies at WR), but he was already playing 550 snaps. Surely, Bredeson can absorb more (he was only around 250 snaps last year) but if he absorbs a lot more that will reflect a big change from what we've seen at Michigan going back through the Hamilton - Gattis - Moore offenses. H-back can do some in-line TE things but not all of them so I'd say the ceiling on Bredeson stepping in is probably around 200 snaps.
So we've got a need for let's say something like 400 snaps of In-Line TE play to figure out and pretty much only one candidate to do that - Marlin Klein. The hype is there, which is a great sign, but one has to look critically when a guy is getting hype because he HAS to get hyped. There's NOBODY else competing with Klein right now. Not that is a viable candidate to be a starting TE at Michigan or that anyone would feel comfortable putting on the field against OSU.
We can certainly project 400 snaps for Klein -- he'll probably see that if he stays healthy, I agree. But it seems like an issue to me because, here's the thing, Klein is not an Inline TE. He's another FLEX. He's getting praised for his speed and freakish athleticism and downfield receiving potential. If Klein was stepping in for Loveland, this would be a natural progression. But Barner? Barner was mostly a blocker. He got targeted 27 times in 627 snaps.
DeleteHere is the other thing about trying to replace 600+ snaps with mostly 1 other guy -- it's very optimistic. Barner was a best case scenario. The 2023 snap breakdown was dependent on the top 2 guys (Barner and Loveland) being healthy all year. It's my belief that Michigan wanted to play other TEs much more often but they simply did not have the personnel to do it in 2023. In other words, 2023 depth was ALREADY very thin. After those top 2 it was Matt Hiber (who decided to take a red-shirt mid-year and thus was functionally unavailable on game days but still served as a massive insurance policy) and Josh Beethum (a walk-on who we did not want seeing any meaningful snaps). Those two were your TE3 and TE4 last year but played just 90 snaps combined. We can replace 90 snaps with young unproven players and walk-on's I'm sure, but what if the need for the position looks more like 2022 than 2023?
In 2022 our TE1 got hurt and played only 65 snaps and our TE3 was elevated to that spot and played 525 -- because of good health in 2023 Barner was able to functionally replace the snaps of All and Schoonmacher combined. But setting aside that need to turn TE3 into TE1 due to injury, you also had TE4 (Honigford) with 260 snaps and TE5 (Hibner) ending up having to play 11 critical snaps against TCU after Schoonmacker was hurt.
Let me reiterate that while TE3 and TE4 played just 60 snaps in 2023, TE3 played 500+ snaps and TE4 played 260 snaps in 2022. This year TE2 is Marvin Klein and TE3 and TE4 are a gaggle of guys Thunder (fairly) ranked in the 40s because we have no idea which of them are going to play no role whatsoever and which might be out there playing critical downs against Texas and Oregon if any one of three guys is dinged.
We do not have a TE3 ready, let alone a TE5. Even TE2 is a big huge question mark who drew only 20 snaps last year, when Michigan had a real interest in playing more guys but chose not to.
DeleteAll of this is to say is that TE room, despite having an absolute all American stud TE, looks incredibly thin and unproven after Loveland. It looks VERY different from TE rooms that Jim Harbaugh had
If Loveland's healthy all year and Kelin is good enough to play 400 snaps it will all PROBABLY work out fine but it's a huge departure from the Harbaugh way or at least what we saw of the Harbaugh way. It was not so long ago that Harbaugh was putting 260 and 280 pound TEs on the field, even 2023 was a departure from the past in that regard.
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I really hope that Thunder's thinking on TE (paraphrased: you can teach anyone to block) is on point and I really hope our top 2 guys are healthy and I really hope the hype on Klein is real. If all that happens we'll probably be fine. But what I see is a pretty substantial departure from the identity of Harbaugh Football - which some people equate to 1990s "pro style" football heavily reliant on the run game but to me is first and foremost about heavy utilization of TEs as blockers in the run game.
Near constant use of 2 TEs is core Harbaugh. I firmly believe that if Harbaugh had intended to stay at Michigan he would have hit the Portal hard to find a starting In-Line TE (in the Schoonmacher/Barner mold) plus at least one other guy (probably a veteran pulled up from lower levels) to be a blocking TE (in the Honigford mode).
But Harbaugh is gone and Moore is here and Moore seems much more interested in putting 6OL on the field. That's something that was very rare before Moore was here (think back to 2015 or 2016 - you almost never saw it) to being an expectation for every game. Perhaps the answer lies there -- no more Harbaugh football, it's time to SMASH. But can we do that a hundreds of times a season? Can this gimmick work when everyone has time to prepare a counter?
It's going to be fun to see what happens. For all the talk about QB and RB and WR, and for all the turnover that's happening on the OL, the number one most interesting thing for our 2024 offense in my opinion is what Moore decides to do about TE deployment opposite Loveland. Klein should be a huge part of that and I hope he is ready.
Personally, I am not all that optimistic. I think we are going to see a big drop off in run game effectiveness without a real TE. Loveland is awesome and I'd feel fine if he was flexed out to WR full time, but I see the blocking dropoff from Barner to Klein being enormous and that creating issues for the run game. More Bredeson and more 6th OL can mitigate the damage but it's a tell that you're going to run, and if paired with run-first QB that's a worrisome situation. More 3 WR sets are also an answer but that's not exactly a deep or proven room either, so again all signs point to Klein.
The more optimistic take is that Loveland and Klein are big enough to approximate an In-Line TE whenever they need to. They are not much smaller than Sean McKeon after all and Schoonmacher and All were more flex TEs than in-line TEs early in their careers also. They developed into what they became and it's not like Michigan is putting 220 pound guys out there, they are just incrementally smaller.
It's the collective situation (no above the 240s in the room, just 1 proven player, need to replace 700 snaps) with Klein (an unproven FLEX TE from Germany) as pretty much the only answer that seems like a big risk for the 2024 team.
Finally, it's not fair to compare Kelin to Julius Welshof just because they are both from Germany, but I'm doing it anyway. Welshof was also a freak athlete that Michigan hoped to turn into a quality DL but it never happened for him and they ended up going to the Portal instead. Hopefully things work better here. I'm optimistic on that front.
DeleteEND ESSAY
"We have NO in-line TEs to replace AJ Barner."
DeleteNot even one of the backup offensive linemen?
No - when Honigford moved to TE, Harbaugh had him drop 50 pounds. That hasn't happened with anyone on the roster, though it would be a good idea for next year.
DeleteI agree that TE depth is thin. I also think that Moore is going to run Smash football this season. ( Part of me wish Michigan would run the Army offense and see how far it can go. ) Having said that I am not sure the result will be more disastrous for Michigan if we lose Loveland. Sure the drop off from Loveland to Klein/Bredeson will be steep. But in a Smash Football, I do not think it is going to matter that much. The cohesion of the OL will be a much bigger factor than the health of Loveland. In addition, Edwards is a way bigger receiving threat than Corum. He can/will provide the receiving threat that a Tight End normally produce.
ReplyDeleteSMASH works best if you can threaten the pass. The versatility is valuable (as you note with Edwards). It's also why some folks discount a QB who can run (assuming he can't pass, and thus will limit the run game).
DeleteFWIW, I agree that OL cohesion is a bigger factor than whatever happens at TE.
Lmao, "doom"
ReplyDeleteI am a positive guy. Klein is like Kelvin Winslow only faster.
ReplyDelete