Scouting Report: 4* OG Marquan McCall

Strengths: Tremendous strength and size, flexibility, short-area quickness, and hustle, plus plenty of football smarts and good technique.

Weaknesses: Not a world-class chef, no taste for Art Deco.

Marquan McCall, one of the top prospects in the state of Michigan, was on hand for the spring game yesterday. We’ll see how his visit impacts his recruitment, but this is still a recruitment in its full swing, with a lot of laps to go.

But, from what I’ve seen on film, he’s a prospect worth pursuing with everything Michigan has.

McCall is not the overall #1 prospect in the state for nothing. He’s a two-way player - a deadly interior pass rusher on defense and a perfect offensive guard prospect on offense. Unfortunately, he suffered an ACL tear early in his junior season, but that is healing up nicely.

“It’s perfect, I’m healing quick, the doctors say things are going fine,” said McCall a couple months ago. “I’m doing a lot of stretching. I hope to start running soon. I don’t feel any pain so I should be ready for the season, just taking things slow.”

McCall provided an update on his recruiting.

“I always wanted to play football for a Big Ten school, really just play college football, so to have all these offers is a blessing,” McCall said. “I’m taking it (recruiting process) slow, just want to experience things because it’s such a blessing, and you only get one time at this.”

McCall says he likes Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh and MSU coach Mark Dantonio.

“Coach Harbaugh is an excellent coach and Michigan’s loaded this year,” McCall said. Coach Drevno (offensive coordinator Tim Drevno) is really cool too.

“Coach Dantonio is a great coach too, and he’s got a lot of great players over there. I took a visit to both schools last summer.”

I’ll be excited to see what McCall can do when he takes the field again this year, but I’m also worried about the possibility of more injuries - he plays all out, all the time, chasing down everything he can and always staying in the play. Hopefully he can do that without getting into too many piles of bodies, although he seems to cause a lot of them.

Among elite prospects, you get used to seeing McCall’s size and speed. It’s still rare, but you see it. However, McCall blends that with the kind of motor that Harbaugh surely loves, advanced technique for his age and great instincts for sniffing out the ball and making plays on defense.

So yeah, he’s pretty good.

Player that he could turn into: Michael Onwenu. Onwenu is a bit bigger (who isn’t?), but McCall is a pretty solid 6’4”, 320 pounds in his own right.

I’m not convinced that McCall is destined for the offensive line, but I would love to have the dilemma of wondering whether he’ll be manning the fort on our offensive line or our defensive line. He could be an All-American at both.