Thursday Morning Brews: The long run

Happy Thursday, folks. Welcome to Morning Brews. This morning we have a football focus, including some... perhaps inadvisable comments made by Nebraska’s athletic director. We also have a breakdown of former Michigan players in the NHL playoffs.

As usual, there is a song referenced in this morning’s article. There are at least two clues. They may be words, phrases, or photos, and may reference lyrics, the artist, or the album. If you think you know this morning’s song, fire away down in the comments.

Let’s get to it:

Michigan well-represented in NHL playoffs. The Wolverines had 21 alumni and former players record at least one appearance during the 2017-2018 NHL season. Of those 21, 11 are—or were, as the case may be—playing in the NHL playoffs. All of those players and their performances thus far are detailed in the link above.

Donovan Peoples Jones settling in as punt returner. The Detroit News’ Nick Baumgardner says, “Peoples-Jones’ year of learning featured plenty of peaks and valleys, but as the year went on, it was clear why the Wolverines entrusted their five-star freshman with one of the more challenging spots on the field.” For the full take, check out the link.

Nebraska AD says Jim Harbaugh and Urban Meyer are running scared. Yeeesh. The guy hires Scott Frost and apparently thinks they will run with the big dogs in year one. For the record, his full quote is, “You’ve got Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh thinking, ‘We better put a little more into that Nebraska game coming up.’ And that’s the way we want it. They’re running a little bit scared right now.” He later tried to walk the comment back a bit.

QB recruits a couple years on. This one doesn’t have much to do with Michigan, but it’s an interesting article from Bud Elliott over at the SB Nation CFB site. He takes a look at who will be the 2018 NFL Draft class of QBs, but through the lense of how they graded out as high school prospects. “Player development” is one of the buzzwords in college coaching right now, so it’s interesting to see what recruiting analysts thought of these players before they set foot on their respective campuses.

I’m just seeing this, but according to PFF Michigan led the nation in lowest missed tackle percentage - that is, missed tackles as a share of total tackle attempts. Michigan was the best by a decent margin. The Wolverines had a missed tackle percentage of 10.5% while the next closest teams were Ohio State and Arkansas at 11.2%. Notably, Alabama led the nation in defense according to S&P+ in the 2017-2018 season but I don’t see them included in this list.

Spring practice is in the books and the team celebrated with a #Dude picture. Among the highlights here are Shea Patterson hanging out on the left side of the group and Rashan Gary looking like he’s gonna hurt someone before the night is through in the center.