Michigan Football: Coach’s Corner — Chris Bryant — Offensive Line — Wolverine’s Spring Football — GBMWolverine Evaluations

Posted at 6:00am — 6/11/2012

Michigan Football: Coach’s Corner — Chris Bryant — 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 Chris Bryant 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.

Chris Bryant
Height: 6’4
Weight: 341
Number: 58
Position: Offensive Guard
Year: Red-shirt Freshman
City/State: Chicago, Illinois
High School: Simeon
High School Coach: Dante Culbreath

Bryant was highly recruited and he has as much, or maybe even more, potential as any of the interior linemen on the current spring roster.

He may have been the biggest disappointment this spring as far as the offensive linemen group. Don’t get us wrong he did all right, but we were really expecting him to be better this spring and seriously compete with Elliot Mealer for the left guard position.

What we ended up viewing was a walk-on doing quite well, taking over the back-up spot, ahead of Bryant, for now. This reality may be something Chris needs for motivation to work harder this summer and be much better prepared this fall.

He is still a large guy, one who could lose some pounds and get into better shape, but he does look better than he did last season. One thing that still surprises us even today is that he was even recruited by the former staff, especially when the emphasis was for smaller, quicker, active offensive linemen. Chris Bryant is a much better fit in Coach Funk and Coach Borges’ offensive scheme.

Chris has some strengths: he has great size and is surprisingly nimble for player of this size. When you see him up close he is a big man that is thick. He has worked hard to lose some weight and put some necessary good weight in the right places as well. Chris is still a work in progress and needs to continue his work and not give in, even though he is not slated as a starter.

Chris was the best drive blocker on the team this spring in our opinion, but his pass protection still needs work and he still needs to refine some of the basic fundamentals.

Chris is one to keep a close eye on this summer and early fall and see how he does. If he does well you could see some of the freshman that are coming in red-shirt, but if he doesn’t do well you will probably see those freshman either play, or at the very least be in the two deep. Being a true freshman on the two deep either means that a player is really good or the roster isn’t very talented, and right now in our opinion it is a combination of both.

But remember this: one injury could shuffle the entire depth chart like a deck of cards.

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Written by GBMWolverine Staff

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