Rayshaun Benny describes Michigan mentality in 2025: 'A lot of meat left on the bone'

The Michigan Wolverines are losing some foundational players in the trenches with defensive tackles Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant off to the NFL. That means an enhanced opportunity for graduate Rayshaun Benny, who now gets to lead the interior trench rotation heading into his fifth and final season in Ann Arbor.

Now fully healthy and with a clear path to starting status, Benny feels a springboard into the 2025 campaign.

“ I’m not recovering from an injury,” Benny told Jon Jansen on the In The Trenches podcast, via Michigan Athletics. “This was like the first off-season I had to be able to train and get better. Really just trying to maximize this year. I don’t have any more eligibility, so trying to max out and do what I can to go first round.”

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Playing behind Graham and Grant was a blessing for the Michigan defensive tackle, who said he picked up plenty from the first-round linemen and had plenty of fun being part of the rotation.

 ”Well, for me, I ain’t gonna lie. It was great,” Benny said. “It’s kind of funny how it worked out. Mason and I played together, like we rotated together. My sophomore year, my junior year, KG and I rotated together. My senior year, we were all in there together. So it was just cool to be able to know that the whole unit out there was about to dominate any o-line.

 ”It was fun. I was able to learn a lot from them. We all just gave each other coaching points and I was just able to see a dominant unit for years. So it was just good to put my eyes on it so I know what it looks like and I know what people should expect from me.”

Benny is now the elder statesman in the room compared to his peers and is looking forward to being looked at as a leader in the group.

 ”It feels good knowing that, because I was that guy before I was the young guy,” Benny said of being a leader. “And I know what it feels like to look up to somebody and look for them for how I should do this or what I should do here. So it just feels good being an older guy, knowing that I got people looking up to me.

“It puts a chip on my shoulder.”

Benny suffered a leg injury in the Rose Bowl win over Alabama on Jan. 1, 2024, which knocked him out of the rest of the College Football Playoff run and set him back heading into the offseason.

 ”I’ve had a similar injury, kind of the same thing where you land on the ground and you’re like, okay, my season’s probably over. I knew it was over. I had never broke a bone. Just didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like, but I was pretty confident that I broke something. I just knew something wasn’t right. I lost all like lower movement. Everything was just weak down low. I kind of just knew from there.”

Coming back from the injury was a challenge, and Benny had to knock some rust off early in the year. Once he hit his stride, he felt like himself again in the Michigan defense.

“It took about really into the season,” Benny said. “I really didn’t start feeling comfortable until a few weeks into the season, I started feeling better and started getting more moving and feeling myself again. But that process was long. I was just happy that I had the right people in my corner and go through it with me. They supported me. They were able to work with me. Like if stuff was going on with my body, they were able to help me. I probably didn’t fully recover, though, until about September.”

Benny and Michigan got out to a rough start in 2024, but rallied late and then capped off the season with a 19-13 win over Alabama despite being shorthanded on defense due to NFL Draft opt-outs. That game has served as a springboard into 2025.

“ It gave us a lot of hope,” Benny said. “It was a lot of young guys. A lot of people didn’t have quite the opportunity I had to play as much last season, so I think it was real good for them to have that experience and get that confidence boost going against a good offensive line and the team, Alabama itself, and then they had their whole starting offensive line.

“I think it was real good for everybody to get that confidence boost going into next season with everybody being so young. We were out there having fun.”

Now, the key is sustaining that level of success throughout a season.

“ The fact that we’ve seen a lot of us play together versus Alabama, that was a real good confidence boost,” Benny said. “And then we added other pieces through the portal or just guys as incoming freshmen.

“It’s just exciting because it’s a lot of meat left on the bone. We kind of caught our groove at the end of last season, so just trying to carry that on and then see how far we could take it this year.”