Michigan Football: Coach’s Corner — Erik Gunderson — Offensive Line — Wolverine’s Spring Football — GBMWolverine Evaluations

Posted at 6:00am — 6/7/2012

Michigan Football: Coach’s Corner — Erik Gunderson — Offensive Line — Wolverine’s Spring Football — GBMWolverine Evaluations

GBMWolverine Football Spring Evaluations: Position-by-Position — Player Profile.

GBMWolverine readers: Here is a brief overview of Erik Gunderson and GBMWolverine’s analysis concerning his progress this spring in our opinion.

Note: We will not evaluate every player on the team and with this position group (Offensive Line) we will not evaluate #61 Graham Glasgow and #70 Kristian Mateus. If you would like to chat about this player bring them up on the message board or send us an e-mail request.

Reminder: Also noted that we didn’t attend every practice and realize things happen during those fifteen practices, but our evaluations are based on what we seen first hand and in our opinion and not what we hear like just about every other site out there that relies on second, third hand information to make their evaluations of the players during the spring.

Losing from 2011 (Team #132) on scholarship: David Molk, Rocko Khoury, and Mark Huyge.

Coming in for 2012 (Team #133) on scholarship: Kyle Kalis, Blake Bars, Erik Magnuson, Ben Braden, and A.J. Williams (TE/OL).

Commit for 2013 (Team #134) on scholarship: Patrick Kugler, Logan Tuley-Tillman, David Dawson, Chris Fox, and Kyle Bosch.

Erik Gunderson
Height: 6’8
Weight: 312
Number: 69
Position: Offensive Tackle
Year: Red-shirt Junior
City/State: Milan, Michigan
High School: Milan
High School Coach: Steve Robb

Erik can certainly be described as a big body and this spring he showed surprising play from a walk-on football player at Michigan. His presence is something that is needed at Michigan with the current depth and talent level on the offensive line. It will take a few years to build the numbers back up, but once the mission is accomplished, Michigan will be back to its traditional status of having some of the better offensive linemen around.

A successful walk-on offensive lineman that provides depth is very valuable for several reasons. Obviously if anybody get injured the coaches can rely on him to competently fill in. Also, sufficient numbers are needed for maximum practice efficiency. He makes for a very good scout team player taking on the first group defense during the season to prepare them for an opponent. Coaches do not want the first team defense just to roll over the scout team, the starters need to work hard and put in the time and effort it will take to succeed against quality opponents. In turn, the coaches can always tell the starters that if they think the scout team is good, just wait until the first game against Alabama and the Tide’s offensive linemen. That should provide some motivational drive and cause the entire team work a little harder.

Erik does not have great feet or strength, but he is a walk-on. He has good size and continues to improve as we have noticed over the past couple of years watching him at practices. Erik always competes and gives 100% and does whatever is asked of him, like most walk-ons’ do at this level as they want to be a contributing part of the team and help the team as much as possible.

Regardless, as earlier stated, Erik provides needed depth, especially considering how big body recruiting went under the former staff where it seemed like offensive linemen were not a high priority even though the numbers were very low and the quality was certainly not in the superior category. Erik will serve as a good practice player and a back up with at least reasonable capability until the cavalry arrives the next few years.

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Written by GBMWolverine Staff

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