Michigan Football Prediction: Most Improved Player Will Be Lavert Hill

As a young cornerback who’s likely going to get a lot of playing time this season, Lavert Hill could become Michigan football’s most improved player.

As I spent some time thinking about who Michigan football‘s most improved player in 2017 might be, I got to reminiscing about this same discussion last year. Because, as it turns out, you could have picked practically anyone on last season’s team and at least you wouldn’t have whiffed.

But with the Wolverines only returning a handful of starters, this is even more of a guessing game than usual.

So after much thought, and a coin flip, I’ve landed on sophomore cornerback Lavert Hill as Michigan’s most improved player in the season to come. I have a couple reasons for this, and hopefully they’re reasonable enough that you won’t pick them apart in the comments section and tell me I’m an idiot.

Not that that happens…

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First off, Hill, the younger brother of former Wolverine Delano Hill, so far seems to be a safe(ish) pick to get one of the vacant corner spots. Nobody is going to ask him to be Jourdan Lewis or Channing Stribling right away, but that’s definitely a feasible target for him.

Hill played in nine games at cornerback last season as a true freshman. In a normal season that would qualify someone as being what we call “inexperienced,” but if all things are relative, Hill is actually something like a fourth-year junior in the Michigan secondary.

Hill only tallied two tackles in his inaugural season, but he did break up a pass against Hawaii.

This leads me into my second point.

That experience gained last season wasn’t just limited to the scrubs. Hill got time at quarterback in three of the Wolverines’ most down-to-the-wire games, against Iowa, Ohio State and Florida State. He’s experienced the big moments firsthand and, to that extent, has a leg up on many other sophomore corners around college football.

Not that it’ll catch him off guard, but defensive coordinator Don Brown likes to dial up the pressure. He did tell BTN Live that the defense is expanding the playbook this season, so maybe that’ll lead to less one-on-one responsibilities for cornerbacks, something Michigan thrived off of last year.

But even if the playbook does expand, and some pressure does get relieved, Brown isn’t changing his entire defensive philosophy.

I bring that up to say Hill is going to have a lot of time to either sink or swim, and he can certainly do both from one week—one play—to the next.

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The Wolverines are in desperate need of corners who can hold their own out there, especially after the defense had the luxury of shutdown players like Lewis and Stribling last season. As I already said, nobody is expecting those same kinds of returns from Hill, but he’s going to be a natural fit in one of those vacancies. From there, he just has to defend receivers.

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