Rising redshirt junior safety R.J. Moten is transferring out of Michigan.
I gave Moten a TTB Rating of 68 when he committed in July of 2019 (LINK) and compared him to former Wolverine Josh Furman, who finished his career at Oklahoma State. Moten was also a high-level baseball prospect but decided to pursue football instead.
Moten played in just one game in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. Altogether, he played in 29 career games, including five starts in 2021 and ten more in 2022. He managed 65 tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss, 1.5 sacks, 4 pass breakups, and 1 interception during his career. So Michigan is essentially losing a starter, even though Makari Paige kind of usurped the starting safety job toward the end of 2022. When Michigan was missing some linebacker depth toward the end of 2022, the coaching staff practiced Moten at linebacker during bowl prep for the TCU game, thinking he might be able to play in case of emergency.
Moten is the tenth member of the class of 2020 to depart, and the second of the day, along with wide receiver A.J. Henning (LINK). Michigan also landed an amazingly alliterative trio of safety/linebacker hybrids in 2020 with Moten, Jordan Morant, and William Mohan, and all three have now transferred (Morant to Duke/Mississippi State, Mohan to Tennessee before being dismissed).
Presumably, the two safety starters are now Rod Moore and Makari Paige, with Keon Sabb and Zeke Berry also looking like promising players for the future.
Silver lining might be that the coaching staff feels good enough about CB to not shuffle around the DB personnel to keep Moten around. Could have slide Moore to nickel and Sainristil to CB to open a spot for him but obviously they chose not to do that.
ReplyDeleteI thought Moten was pretty good and was surprised to see him go from such a huge role to not playing at all in the Fiesta.
decent player who did some good things with fairly early PT. unfortunately he could not put it all together, suffering frequent concentration & technique lapses. tough to earn staff trust at safety while missing every other open field tackle, dropping picks, busting coverages, etc. seems like a nice kid though so hopefully he enjoys his next stop
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