Name: Kraig Correll
Height: 6'4"
Weight: 311 lbs.
High school: Easton (PA) Blair Academy
Position: Offensive guard
Class: Fifth year senior
Jersey number: #54
Last year: I ranked Correll #91 and said he would be a backup offensive guard (LINK). He played in one game.
TTB Rating: N/A
Correll was a fairly highly touted walk-on a few years ago. Now that he's been on campus for four seasons, that has turned into exactly one game played. The truth is that Michigan's offensive line (and offensive line recruiting) has been pretty good, so they haven't needed to reach deep down the depth chart to try to find other contributors.
Correll is unlikely to move up the depth chart too much in 2022. Even with a small offensive line class in 2022, Michigan should have a pretty solid two-deep. But it's certainly nice to have a stout fifth year senior on the scout team to give decent reps to the guys who are higher on the depth chart.
Prediction: Backup offensive guard
The players on the offensive line are all Ed Warinner recruits. I hope Sherrone Moore is as good a recruiter as Ed Warinner was. In about 2 years we will know.
ReplyDeleteI think offensive line recruiting is more about development than recruiting. We've seen poor OL coaches turn good recruits into mediocre/bad players, and we've seen good OL coaches take mismatched parts and turn them into solid offensive lines.
DeleteMoore is too new to be sure of anything and it's hard to disentangle what credit goes to him and Warriner. Certainly, Warriner helped build up most of the guys that starred on last year's OL.
DeleteHowever, there's not much reason to doubt Moore's ability here IMO. A few things to consider:
There's been nothing but praise for his recruiting. In the past he was a primary recruiter on Keegan and Barnhart (note that they're still around while higher rated guys like Rumler and Carpenter who were primary Warriner guys have moved on). He also landed Gentry - a guy the previous crews worked pretty hard to get as well. He was also critical in landing Oluwatami - who pretty much could have played wherever he wanted.
The leap the OL made last year was pretty remarkable and Moore has to get some credit for that. I tend to agree with Thunder that development is more important than just collecting talent. I'd get more specific and say that continuity is critical. I think Warriner was very good at the former and awful in latter.
Now obviously we were going to lose Stueber and Vastardis after 2021 but Moore has done a good job holding onto backups and positioning them for success going forward. Once they got Oluwatimi I half expected Crippen or Anderson to bounce but they seem to be all in. That will pay off in 2023. And it would not have been a shock to see Barnhart, Keegan, or Jones depart either but they are here getting snaps and battling for the open spots that have popped up. All 3 will be critical in 2022, I would guess.
On the surface Moore seems to be thriving. 2022 might even be stronger than 2021 on the OL. We have depth, we have talent, and yeah we have no idea what 2024 looks like or what some of these young recruits might look like down the road but we do have a positive trajectory. That can change fast but with the way things are going so far it seems like we should be more worried that Moore is off being a head coach somewhere than the Michigan OL falling off like it did under Hoke.
I'd also add this -- the teams that Warriner departed seem to do fine without him.
LANK