Michigan Football: Coach’s Corner — Antonio Poole — Linebackers — Wolverine’s Spring Football — GBMWolverine Evaluations
Posted at 5:30am — 7/16/2012
Michigan Football: Coach’s Corner — Antonio Poole — Linebackers — Wolverine’s Spring Football — GBMWolverine Evaluations
GBMWolverine Football Spring Evaluations: Position-by-Position — Player Profile.
GBMWolverine readers: Here is a brief overview of Antonio Poole 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 (Linebackers) we will not evaluate #27 Al Mike Jones because we didn’t get a good read on him this spring. 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: #34 Isaiah Bell who left the team, #42 J.B. Fitzgerald, #51 Marell Evans, and #58 Brandon Herron. #94 Jordan Paskorz has moved to tight end and #97 Brennen Beyer to defensive end.
Coming in for 2012 (Team #133) on scholarship: #35 Joe Bolden and #49 Kaleb Ringer (already on campus for spring football), Royce Jenkins-Stone and James Ross.
Commit for 2013 (Team #134) on scholarship: Michael McCray and Ben Gedeon.
Antonio Poole
Height: 6’2
Weight: 212
Number: 40
Position: Linebacker
Year: Red-shirt Freshman
City/State: Cincinnati, Ohio
High School: Winton Woods
High School Coach: Andre Parker
Antonio Poole is another Michigan linebacker hailing from Ohio. He demonstrated good speed as a high school player and red-shirted last year to gain strength and size.
At times Antonio showed a high level of skill this spring.
He will definitely hit you and shows good instincts this past spring at practices.
At other times he was outmatched by bigger, more physical linemen, which could be a problem when facing teams like Alabama and Michigan State this year. His status is unknown due to a muscle tear that is typically a slow healing injury.
Still we think Antonio has a shot to be a contributor down the road and if available can help on special teams this season. He needs to obviously get bigger and stronger to be able to handle the big, nasty offensive linemen at this level. He is not a classic, read, hit, react, and tackle type of guy at this time. Instead his strength is probably speed on blitzes and side-to-side pursuit.
Antonio can help upgrade the special teams, an area that has been lacking in athletic ability, speed, and hitting somebody the last four years. Special teams is an area where bringing in athletic players can bolster your team and eventually can be a true indicator of recruiting success. Having a deep athletic roster translates to better success for special teams. Better ingredients yield better results, and we are not talking pizza.
Let us hope Antonio’s injury situation turns for the better.
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Written by GBMWolverine Staff
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