My take on what's next after the devastating Seth McLaughlin news:
- The offensive line is not only our weakest position group but also our most shallow in terms of serviceable depth. Losing Josh Simmons was a hammer blow,.. losing Seth McLaughlin might be the death knell for national championship aspirations.
- Moving Hinzmann to Center seems like the obvious move - he has a lot of experience there and was a starter (an underperforming one) there all last season.
- The question is what to do with Donovan Jackson, given that he can play both LG and LT. Is the line better with Austin Siereveld at LG or with Zen Michaelski at LT?
- Michaelski is just now returning from injury so I question whether he's ready to be trusted at LT in a game of this magnitude - but Siereveld has been pretty bad (according to the PFF advanced stats) when he's played this season.
- Either way, McLaughlin has been massive all season for (1) making coverage calls on the line and (2) run blocking - as a 5th year senior with a ton of experience, he does a lot of little things that don't get noticed by casual fans and I suspect that we're likely to see a less effective run game and some serious lapses in pocket protection this week.
- Remember, too, that Michigan has perhaps the 2 BEST defensive tackles in all of college football in Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant. A few weeks ago they would've been going up against McLaughlin, Donovan, and Tegra. Now it's possible that they're going up against Hinzmann, Siereveld, and Tegra. That's a massive drop in quality and raises serious questions about whether we will be able to effectively run the ball between the tackles on November 30th.
- I suspect that Will Howard's legs are going to be huge the next two weeks - I expect to see a lot more QB roll outs, RPOs, and JT Barrett style QB options attacking DEs in order to slow down the rush and get the QB to the boundary and away from the interior DL. Howard is very capable in those situations so I think that could be pretty effective as a way to counter these injuries. We may also see a lot more max protection looks with the RB/TE staying in as a blocker to protect the pocket, leaving us down a route runner. That means our receivers' ability to create separation will become more important.
Obviously there's not much we can do except trust that the coaching staff will put the team in the best position to succeed,.. but losing 2 of your 3 best offensive linemen for the season from an already weak/shallow unit is never a recipe for consistent success. Everything is still possible for this team but the margin for error just dropped again.