Michigan Football: Coach’s Corner — Blake Countess — Cornerbacks — Wolverine’s Spring Football — GBMWolverine Evaluations
Posted at 5:30am — 6/26/2012
Michigan Football: Coach’s Corner — Blake Countess — Cornerbacks — Wolverine’s Spring Football — GBMWolverine Evaluations
GBMWolverine Football Spring Evaluations: Position-by-Position — Player Profile.
GBMWolverine readers: Here is a brief overview of Blake Countess 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 (Cornerbacks) we will not evaluate #38 Al Backey. 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: #17 Tony Anderson and #29 Troy Woolfolk.
Coming in for 2012 (Team #133) on scholarship: Terry Richardson.
Commit for 2013 (Team #134) on scholarship: Jourdan Lewis, Gareon Conley, and Channing Stribling.
Blake Countess
Height: 5’10
Weight: 176
Number: 18
Position: Cornerback
Year: Sophomore
City/State: Owings Mills, Maryland
High School: Our Lady of Good Counsel
High School Coach: Bob Milloy
At the current time, the GBMWolverine staff holds the opinion that Blake is the most talented and complete cornerback on the team.
He plays with the type of swagger all the great ones have, and that is something we really like to see in a cornerback. Cornerback is not a position for the timid, and cockiness is better than humility. A corner is on an island and must aggressively defend said island. Corners first must believe they are the best, practice and learn to become the best, and have the benefit of having a short memory and put past defeats and struggles in the rear view mirror.
Blake combines excellent movement skills with sound physical play, which is always a great thing with cornerbacks. Also he possesses the best feet and make-up speed on the team, strengths that came in very handy as a true freshman last season.
The 2012 (133) team needs Blake to keep on progressing and not hit the sophomore slump like some have in the past. Blake needs to achieve great impact and will have an opportunity since in many, or most, situations he will likely be matched up against the opponent’s best receiver each and every week.
With the limited playing time the defensive line has acquired going into the upcoming season, the defensive backs, as a whole, are going to have to step up their game and not rely on the defensive line to bail them out with hard pressure that causes quarterbacks to act earlier than wanted.
Countess is a player Coach Greg Mattison can build around and formulate a scheme/attack to create more pressure on the opponents. Coach hopes he can rely on his defensive backs as a unit of strength a little more this season compared to last season. Taking a chance like this is risky, but may be a needed one not knowing how good the defensive line will be this season. We will get a pretty good idea the very first game against Alabama because we believe Coach Mattison and the defensive coaching staff will have to throw the entire defense at the big and physical Tide.
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Written by GBMWolverine Staff
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