Michigan Football is Losing Some Great Players Right Now

Transfers happen in college sports all the time, and especially so in college football. Kids now are all super star, four or five star recruits out of high school, and if they don't start as a freshman or sophomore, they usually pack up and go. For the most part, this has no effect on me. It happens, fans have to deal with it, and some kids go on to be great and others are not so lucky.

My team, Michigan, has been dealing with a lot of attrition lately. In fact, ever since Jim Harbaugh took over, it seems more and more kids are transferring each year. But, I get it. Wilton Speight left for UCLA as a grad transfer because Harbaugh and Michigan moved on from him. There have been a number of running backs that have left because Michigan always has such a deep pool of talent at the position, and when a kid doesn't see the field for a year, he is going to want to go somewhere where he knows he will get to play. Tyrone Wheatley, when he was on staff, got his son to sign with Michigan, he was a top flight tight end, but he barely saw the field in his freshman year, and he opted to go play for a 1-AA school instead. And so far this offseason they have had a good amount of kids deciding to leave. All of them have made sense to me. Alex Van Summeren was going to be passed on the depth chart by one of the stud linebackers they just got to sign with them. Some of the O lineman that left, they were not seeing the field, or they felt like it wasn't the best spot for them. Dylan McCaffery opted out of the 2020 season, and then decided he was going to leave when Joe Milton and Cade McNamara surpassed him on the depth chart at QB. All of these made sense to me, and I expected as much.

Yet two transfers recently have left me a bit shook. I have thought about them more than I would like to admit. I have been thinking about why they left. I have been questioning their decisions. The two players are Zach Charbonnet and Joe Milton. Zach Charbonnet was a prized running back in the 2018 class. He was going to be the running back of the future. He was the next great Michigan back. He lived up to the hype for most of his freshman season. He saw the field plenty, starting as a true freshman. If it weren't for him, Army would have beaten them in Ann Arbor. Charbonnet went on to break the freshman rushing touchdown record, and he put up over 700 yards on the ground. He did deal with injuries and missed time, but he seemed like the feature back. Then this most recent season happened, and he just seemed like a forgotten player. He had a great 70 yard rushing touchdown in their season opener at Minnesota, and then he was a ghost. Blake Corum was getting more touches. Chris Evans was being used in situations that Charbonnet handled last season. And Hassan Haskins, who I am a big fan of, just seemed to put a stranglehold on the feature back spot after putting together solid games in 3 straight weeks. When Haskins showed his skills, I immediately thought that this was it for Charbonnet. I guess the staff did too because they barely used him. He got less than five touches a game after that. He was starting to miss games with injuries and other random things popping up. When he would get in a game, he was seemingly used as a blocking back. I was stumped. I thought maybe he was really hurt, but I think that was some odd wishful thinking on my part. When the season ended, I felt like it was a matter of days before he entered the transfer portal. It took a bit longer than that, about a month, but sure enough he was in the portal, and about a week later, he was committed to UCLA. That made sense to me because he is from California, he wanted to be close to home I assumed and he was most likely told he was going to be the starter from day one. I think he is going to be a humongous get for the Bruins, and that he could very well lead the Pac 12 in rushing next season. I am going to miss him being a Wolverine, but at least I have Haskins and Corum and now Donovan Edwards to lean on as "the next great Michigan back".

The Joe Milton transfer news, which dropped today, really bummed me out. My dad has been a fan of his since day one. He turned me on to him very early on. We are not ones to watch recruiting videos, but we were sucked in to some of his. He is very big, very fast and has one hell of an arm. He is also very raw. But I like that in a QB. You can mold someone like that. And he seemed to be a very coachable player. He showed flashes in his freshman year, splitting backup duties with Dylan McCaffery. He would come in and get nice ground gains. And then I saw his arm, and boy was I hooked. He had an absolute canon. I also went to a game with my dad his freshman year, and watching him warmup was a thing of beauty. With a flick of his wrist, the ball would fly. He was also so much bigger than McCaffery, and the starter at the time, Shea Patterson. My dad and I were both floored at how big he was in person. In his second year he was still splitting backup stuff with McCaffery. But when McCaffery broke his collarbone in the Wisconsin game, Milton was the sole backup. And he showed even more flashes. He came in in the second half of the Rutgers game that year and absolutely dominated. He was throwing dimes and making good reads and running the ball like a true dual threat QB. This was when I made up my mind that he was the QB of the future for the Wolverines. And that paid off last offseason when he won the starting job. And then he came out and played great in the Minnesota game. I was sold. Even when he struggled, I still saw things in him that I didn't in McCaffery or McNamara or Shea Patterson or this incoming five star kid, JJ McCarthy. Milton is bigger than all of them. He isn't as fast as McCaffery, but he was more willing to sit in the pocket and wait, not just abandoning the play to run. But when he did run, he is so big, he was hard to take down and he would gain yards. He has a much stronger arm than Patterson. People may saw he was inaccurate and wild with his throws. I disagree. I do not think the receivers were/are at his level. He has a pro arm. He is so much more exciting than McNamara. McNamara is a fine QB, but he doesn't bring any excitement. He is like a better Brandon Peters. And we do not know anything about McCarthy yet. He may be the next Trevor Lawrence. Or, he could be the next Tate Martell. That is why I am so wary of starting a freshman QB, especially at Michigan. I was on board of another year of Milton. I even said during this last season that he was going to have great moments, and not so great moments. Unfortunately, the fans only noticed the bad stuff, and they trolled this kid online. That is so wrong. But now that he is transferring, I feel like the staff is also just giving up on him. They don't want to work with him. They have this shiny new five star and Cade McNamara, who is a fine QB, just oh so boring. Milton is going to end up somewhere, and he is going to shine. I have to assume he will do what Charbonnet did, and go back home and play in Florida somewhere. Wherever he ends up, that team, is getting a great QB, with skills that cannot be taught, and he is going to thrive. I actually think he would fit in well at UCF, now that they have hired Gus Malhzahn. I just wish Michigan would have worked with him more, and gave him an actual chance to build on last year, and get better. They could have had him for another two or three years.

As I said, transfers happen all the time, but these two hurt, and I think Michigan fans that badmouthed these two kids online will have to eat crow when they go on and blow up with their new teams. What a bummer to be a Michigan football fan today.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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