Breaking Down Michigan Football’s tight ends post spring

Now that we are in the midst of a very long offseason and the NFL Draft is over, it is time to look at a surprising deep group for the Michigan football team. We have just looked at the wide-receiver room; we will look at the big boys at the end.

While the two best position groups for the reigning Big Ten champions may be the quarterback and wide receivers, tight end will not be lacking.

The returning tight ends will include Erick All, Luke Schoonmaker, Louis Hansen, Joel Honigford, Matthew Hibner, and Carter Selzer. While some Michigan football fans may not know some of these names by heart, they play a significant role in the run game.

Michigan football’s big-name guys at TE

Erick All is a name to watch for all Michigan football fans this upcoming season. The red-shirt senior ranked second on the team in receptions (38) and receiving yards (437) and added two touchdowns.

He performed the most in East Lansing with 10 catches for 98 yards where it looked like he was getting open every play, and no one can forget his game-winning 47-yard touchdown against Penn State. These two performances will be the standard for All, especially if McNamara is the quarterback, as he likes to get All the ball.

All is not the only guy, though; Luke Schoonmaker had a solid year this past season, also tallying 165 yards and three touchdowns.

While we can look at receiving stats for tight ends all day, they do not measure the whole meaning of being a tight end. This past season Michigan’s obvious claim to fame was the run game, and the offensive line deserves a lot of credit, so do guys like Honigford and Selzer setting the edge.

There is also reason to get excited about the newcomer Colston Loveland too. Loveland was a former receiver who transitioned into a 6’5 230, pound 4-star tight end out of Idaho. Loveland has good hands and has set receiving records at Gooding High School with 91 receptions in a season and 19 in one game.

Hansen is another young name to watch; although he has not cracked into the receiving game yet, he has done the dirty work on the line.

The new tight ends coach for Michigan football, Grant Newsome, has talked glowingly about the two starting tight ends of All and Schoonmaker, Brandon Brown of Wolverine Digest reports. 

"“Our expectations are that Schoony and Erick should compete against each other to be the best tight ends in the country. I think you want every guy in the building to have that expectation, but I think that the reality of it is we have two really, really talented guys at the top of that room, and then obviously other talented guys below them. They are guys who have a chance to be really, really special.”"

This group will be special next year in both facets of the game, and you should expect a lot out of them as they expect out of themselves.