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| Blake Countess |
CB Blake Countess: 75%
CB Greg Brown: 11%
CB Raymon Taylor: 6%
CB Delonte Hollowell: 3%
FS Tamani Carter: 2%
I accidentally let this post go by the wayside back in August, but the results are interesting, if only confirmation of what we already knew.
It turns out that 75% of voters were right - Countess had the biggest impact. He developed into a starter and perhaps the best cover corner on the team.
Greg Brown barely played before deciding to leave the team. Taylor played early in the season when Troy Woolfolk was hurt, but saw very little time down the stretch. Hollowell burned his redshirt late in the season just to run down the field on special teams. And Carter redshirted.
The correct answer would have been Countess - Hollowell - Taylor - Brown - Carter, but the voters did a pretty good job for what was known. Greg Brown screwed up the voting by leaving mid-season, but it happens. Maybe we should re-think how advantageous it is for kids to enroll early; many of the recent early enrollees have struggled just as much as the average freshman.
Thanks for digging that up. Care to speculate on why the staff would bother pushing Hollowell out there so late in the game (for, presumably, so little)?
ReplyDeleteAlso, how do you see the careers of Taylor and Hollowell unfolding at UMich? Obviously the play of Richardson and (if all goes well) a couple of other last-minute recruits could have m
@ Anonymous 10:28 a.m.
ReplyDeleteBrady Hoke answered that question in a late-season press conference (after the Illinois game, perhaps?) and mentioned that Hollowell was practicing too well to keep off the field. He's apparently a special teams demon, kind of like a Darnell Hood or an Anton Campbell. Hopefully Hollowell's ceiling is higher than those of Hood or Campbell, who never ascended to anything more than special teamers. But a couple years ago, Teric Jones's redshirt was burned in part because (rumor has it) the coaches realized he would never be a full-time contributor, so they might as well get him on the field a bit and not have to worry about giving him a fifth year.
I don't know which way Hollowell will go. I was not impressed with him when he came out of high school, but I was impressed with his special teams coverage this year. Like I said, hopefully he can do more than just contribute on special teams.
Taylor is an interesting recruit. I compared him to James Rogers when he came out of high school, and so far his career has been Rogers-like. If you remember, Rogers played sparingly as a cornerback as a freshman in 2007; then he bounced around from CB to WR to CB before being the default starting CB as a senior in 2010. Personally, I think Rogers was a decent player who happened to get buried for whatever reason, and I think Taylor's career will reach a similar ceiling - a decent spot starter or backup at CB or FS, but not much more.