Michigan Football: 3 takeaways from Wolverines practice at Ford Field

The Michigan football team had an open practice at Ford Field in Detroit and these are the key takeaways from Jim Harbaugh’s Wolverine team.

With anticipation leading up to Michigan’s night-time spring game, fans and media members were able to watch the Wolverines in action during a practice at Detroit’s Ford Field which featured standard position drills as well as 7-on-7, and 11-on-11 drills.

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In viewing the practice on Saturday, I gathered a couple of observations that should interest both Wolverine fans and their enemies.

Night and day on the offensive lines

One thing many have noticed for a while and that I saw once again on Saturday is the difference in production from Michigan’s 1st and 2nd string offensive lines. The bottom line is that it’s not really close at all. The gap in on-field of the second stringers compared to their first string counterparts is pretty substantial.

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Protection seemed to be where the current backups struggled the most. Michigan’s starting defensive linemen had the easiest of times in quickly getting to the quarterback. It seemed as if the quarterback was forced to end up scrambling for his life almost every other play.

The good news is that both sets of linemen have youth and veterans among themselves. Tim Drevno, who serves as offensive coordinator and offensive line coach, will likely be putting extra emphasis on protecting the quarterback and footwork fundamentals.

Don Brown is just plain awesome

When Don Brown was first hired as Michigan football’s new defensive coordinator questions arose on how he would produce as well as how well he could recruit.

Being that Brown’s previous stop was at Boston College, it was fairly understandable to have concerns about his recruiting ability. Since then, Brown helped Michigan close with a Top-10 recruiting class and has become loved by the Michigan fan base.

Along with his really cool “Dude of the Day” awards, Brown has been noted as having Harbaugh-like enthusiasm on the practice field. Brown lets his players know when a great play on defense is done and when a mistake was made.

Heck, Brown lets just about anyone within a hundred yard distance know what’s up. It seems that Harbaugh has hit another home run with the hire of Don Brown. Wolverine fans just hope their defense doesn’t skip a beat.

The starting QB spot is still up for grabs

In what came as a more than slight surprise for just about all Michigan fans, it seems that Wilton Speight, who served as the team’s backup last season, was ahead of Houston transfer John O’Korn and junior Shane Morris.

This entire off-season John O’Korn has been all the rage among fans and was presumed to be the heavy favorite to take the starting job this coming season, so many were perplexed to see Speight ahead of him. Based on this past practice, it seems that Speight has improved, a lot. Every time the public has gotten to see him this off-season, the talented redshirt sophomore has looked better than he did last season.

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In regards to O’Korn, he still looks like he may very well end up as the starting quarterback, but he’s no longer the outright favorite for the job.

O’Korn had an amazing freshman season at Houston, but transferred after being benched his sophomore year and since then has basically been selected as the hypothetical heir to the starting QB job left behind by Jake Rudock. Now it’s clear the junior quarterback will have to fight to get the right to start in Harbaugh’s offense.

Speight along with junior Morris looked sporadic at many times. One moment they each looked quite sharp and the next they looked as if they had no idea what they were doing. After seeing Morris multiple times now, it’s clear that he’s running third in the race to be the starter and from the way things look, he’ll likely stay in that position.

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If I had to bet money, I’d still end up picking O’Korn. Once he begins to look calm and comfortable, he looks like the clear best quarterback of the three. O’Korn just seems to have the potential to be a great fit in Harbaugh’s system. His ability to be a mobile quarterback and consistently deliver the deep ball is impressive and in this writer’s opinion, is enough to win out.