65 days until Michigan football: One more year with Zak Zinter

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.

Senior running back Blake Corum shocked the college football world by returning for his senior season at Michigan. Corum finished seventh in Heisman Trophy voting after racking up 1,463 rushing yards and 18 touchdowns on the ground even with missing parts of two games and two entire contests at the end of the year.

Running backs in his position just don’t return to college, especially after a season-ending knee injury like the one he suffered shows how fragile a ball-carrier’s career is. Corum isn’t the typical running back, though.

Rightfully, Corum stole many of the headlines for Michigan players set to return, but he wasn’t the only one. In part, the Champions Circle collective‘s ‘one more year fund’ — allowing fans to donate toward returning players — gave veteran Michigan players a path to come back and still profit.

Senior right guard Zak Zinter is one who could have gone to the NFL and would’ve likely been a top-100 pick. “Unfinished business” was part of his motivation in making the “tough” decision that “could have gone either way,” Zinter said earlier this offseason.

Having Corum, graduate wideout Cornelius Johnson, graduate linebacker Michael Barrett, graduate nickel back Mike Sainristil and others back is great — but short of Corum, Zinter is perhaps the most impactful player among the bunch who decided to return (and he might be the top draft prospect among all of them, including Corum).

The way Michigan has won its back-to-back Big Ten championships in 2021 and 2022 has been behind two Joe Moore Award winning offensive lines, and now having three starters, including Zinter, still on the roster this season gives them a chance to pick right up where they left off, with minimal drop-off. Corum and junior running back Donovan Edwards are incredible, but make no mistake — the men up front make them look even better than they are, and they’d be the first ones to admit it (in fact, they have talked about it a number of times).

Zinter has been praised ever since arriving on campus. He was more “ready” than most freshman on the offensive line, and earned four starts at right guard as a result. He did so even after being sent home due to the pandemic before getting any spring practices in, setting he and his classmates back. But despite that, he fared well and made everybody — fans, teammates, coaches — excited about the future.

Heading into his sophomore season, former Michigan offensive coordinator Josh Gattis called the 6-6, 315-pounder perhaps the Wolverines’ best player on his side of the ball.

“Zak, we absolutely love,” Gattis said during fall camp in 2021. “In fact, I’ll tell you, Zak could potentially be our best offensive player. Oftentimes people don’t talk about who’s your best offensive player as a lineman. Everyone thinks it’s always gotta be a skill guy. But that’s how highly we think of Zak Zinter in this building. In fact, I think our players would think the same of him.”

He was that then, and still is now.

Zinter has the nasty streak needed from an offensive lineman, especially a guard, but has been one of the most athletic players up front since arriving in 2020. His technique has been honed in through hard work and development from offensive line coach and coordinator Sherrone Moore.

.@zak_zinter is coming back for his senior season. Could’ve been a high draft pick. Gonna be nasty in 2023. #GoBlue @NowOnAirr pic.twitter.com/8ikxmEKqn6

— Clayton Sayfie (@CSayf23) January 18, 2023

Here are some key stats for Zinter from last season:

• Ranked ninth among Big Ten guards with a 74.9 PFF run-blocking grade

• Allowed only 9 pressures and 2 sacks in pass protection. Those 2 sacks allowed ranked tied for the fifth least in the Big Ten among the 26 guards that played 500-plus offensive snaps (Zinter ranked third among guards in the conference with 918 snaps).

• The Michigan lineman’s 77.2 pass-blocking grade checked in sixth among Big Ten guards with 500-plus offensive snaps.

Michigan’s culture on the offensive line

Zinter, graduate left guard Trevor Keegan — another major piece of Michigan’s offensive line and an underrated player who chose to return — and other veterans have helped establish a strong culture along the offensive line that’s gone to another level in the past two seasons. There may be some frustration from some behind them on the depth chart that Keegan and Zinter decided to run it back in 2023, but nobody has departed the program despite the transfer portal being increasingly prominent by the year.

“I think just what we built. The culture that’s in the room; they all want to be a part of it,” Moore said on the In The Trenches podcast this offseason. “They don’t really want to leave. That’s really a credit to the players and what they’ve done and the standard they’re all holding themselves to. And the guys see that, and they know that if they go somewhere else, they might not be held to that same standard, and they might not feel the same way.

“Everybody loves winning championships, and everybody loves beating those teams that we know we gotta beat, and they love being a part of that. But more importantly, I think it’s what the guys have done as a whole and the culture in the room.”

Zinter astutely noted on his recent episode of ‘Those Who Stay’ that the Joe Moore Award committee probably won’t give Michigan a third straight honor, but that’s their goal anyway. Award or not, this is going to be another great offensive line.

Michigan football countdown to kickoff

66 days | 67 days | 68 days | 69 days | 70 days | 71 days | 72 days | 73 days | 74 days | 75 days | 76 days | 77 days | 78 days | 79 days | 80 days | 81 days | 82 days | 83 days | 84 days | 85 days | 86 days | 87 days | 88 days | 89 days | 90 days | 91 days | 92 days | 93 days | 94 days | 95 days | 96 days | 97 days | 98 days | 99 days | 100 days