Michigan landed transfer linebacker Max Alford from BYU. Alford is the nephew of Michigan running backs coach Tony Alford.
Max is a 6'1", 230 lb. linebacker who played at Utah State from 2022-2024 before transferring to BYU for the 2025 season. He has played in 28 total games in his career, including five starts, and he played in ten games for BYU last season. While playing for the Cougars, he played 142 defensive snaps and 96 special teams snaps, totaling 21 tackles, 2 tackles for loss, 1 sack, and 1 quarterback hurry.
Coming out of Park City (UT) Park City, he was a 3-star, the #145 running back, and #1979 overall in the class of 2022. Going back to film of his high school days, it was pretty clear that he was not going to stick at running back in college. He was kind of just an upright, straight-line runner, but he ran with a linebacker's mentality.
Michigan needed help out of the transfer portal in this class, and Alford is at least a body who can help with special teams play and in the linebacker room. He's coming from the same school as defensive coordinator Jay Hill, so he should have a leg up mentally and may be able to help the other linebackers transition to the new defensive scheme, too. Whether he plays a big role defensively or not depends on a lot of other unknowns, such as Michigan State transfer Aisea Moa and North Dakota State transfer Nate Staehling. The Wolverines lost their top four inside linebackers from a year ago, including Cole Sullivan (Oklahoma), Ernest Hausmann (graduation/retirement), Jimmy Rolder (NFL draft), and Jaishawn Barham (graduation/NFL draft).
Nice add to the roster. Raises the floor a bit due to age and experience in the scheme. BYU was a pretty good defense and Alford was earning snaps there so that's something.
ReplyDeleteI think Thunder touched on the key point here -- " may be able to help the other linebackers transition to the new defensive scheme". If nothing else, this should be valuable in practice particularly before the season starts.
We need better
ReplyDeleteToo harsh? Probably, but we were dangerously soft in the middle of the front7
We need better, but we may not, in the short term, be able to acquire better. Why that is, exactly, we don't know. This is related to why Cole Sullivan left: he was trending to be a starter and key element of the LB room, yet he left for Oklahoma. Was it just money? Was it scheme? Was it a personal dislike for the incoming coaching staff? Was it a sense of betrayal at the turnover in coaches from who he committed to?
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