63 days until Michigan football: Kenneth Grant is an X-factor on the defensive line
There’s much anticipation heading into the Michigan Wolverines football season, and TheWolverine.com is counting down the days until the Sept. 2 opener against East Carolina. We’ll discuss current Michigan events, the upcoming season and/or take a look at a significant number that correlates with how many days remain until kickoff, whether it be a player’s jersey number, a year, a date, a score, etc.
“Mazi [Smith] is obsessed with stopping the run,” Michigan sophomore defensive tackle Mason Graham, Smith’s likely replacement in the starting lineup as U-M’s nose tackle, told us while chuckling in June.
Smith — a first-round pick to the Dallas Cowboys — was a captain last season, and his mentality rubbed off on his teammates, especially then-freshmen Graham and Kenneth Grant, another who will help fill the void Smith leaves behind.
Smith loved stopping the run so much that it actually made him a less-appealing NFL Draft prospect. After drafting him, the Cowboys — who struggled against the run last season, making Smith a perfect fit for the organization — said they want to improve his pass rush.
Michigan’s run defense really kept the Wolverines playing on a script they were comfortable with. Don’t let opponents bleed out yardage in the run game, force them into 3rd-and-long situations and tee off with the pass rush and/or dial up creative blitzes when needed. Smith, a 6-3, 337-pounder, took up multiple blockers on many plays, allowing Michigan to stop the run while not having to load the box.
That’s now up to Graham, Grant, senior defensive tackle Kris Jenkins, junior Rayshaun Benny and others this season. Jenkins has proven to be great at it, with his 40 run-play tackles leading the nation’s interior defensive lineman last season.
Graham also had a significant role on Michigan’s defensive line, with 18 run-play tackles, but doing it on an every-down basis and in the Wolverines’ most frequently used front, with just two down linemen, will be much more of a challenge. He was 295 pounds last month and wants to get up to 305-310 by the time fall camp opens August 1. That’s still not quite Smith size, though Graham does have more quickness.
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That’s why Grant’s emergence is going to be key for Michigan this fall. He’s only played 63 run-play snaps, making 3 tackles in those situations, and most of his playing time came late in games that the Wolverines already had wrapped up. Graham may be the main man at nose tackle, but Grant has to be ready too.
Michigan defensive coordinator Jesse Minter is confident that Graham will fare just fine.
“I think Kenneth Grant’s gonna be a name everyone is gonna know about,” Minter said on the In The Trenches podcast this spring. “He’s a monster in the middle and has a chance to be a really dominant type of player here.”
Perhaps an even bigger sign that Grant is coming along is that he was the No. 1 pick in Michigan’s spring game draft. It’s important to note that he was taken first in large part because he was one of the players set to take part in the entire game, but he was one of many in the same boat and still earned the honor.
Michigan football countdown to kickoff
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