WATCH: Aidan Hutchinson records first NFL sack vs Washington Commanders
Detroit Lions fans only had to wait two weeks to see No. 2 overall pick Aidan Hutchinson do what he did best at Michigan – record sacks.
Washington Commanders quarterback Carson Wentz’s pump fake didn’t fool Hutchinson, who stayed with the former Colts quarterback as the pocket collapsed and recorded the hit before Wentz could get back to the line of scrimmage.
The sack is what is expected to be the first of many for the pass-rushing specialist. At Michigan, Hutchinson broke the Wolverines single-season sack record with 14 to go along with 16.5 tackles for loss.
Aidan Hutchinson reveals the weirdest thing he saw Jim Harbaugh do at Michigan
Jim Harbaugh has proven time and again to be one of the oddest figures in college football — from referring to chickens as “nervous birds” to his prescribed get-healthy regimen of steak, milk and pushups to literally sleeping over at a recruit’s home — and former Michigan star Aidan Hutchinson just added a new detail to the list.
In an interview on The Dan Patrick Show, the namesake host asked Hutchinson the weirdest thing he saw or heard from Harbaugh. It took the edge rusher a moment, but he eventually sussed out one of Harbaugh’s more notable routines.
“You know, I think” Hutchinson said, pausing, “I think every day when we were going out to practice, I wouldn’t call this strange — well you can take it how you want it — but, every day when we’d go out to practice, he would be doing his little pre-practice lifts. He was always going really hard in the squat rack. And some days he would actually have his shirt off in the weight room. As all the guys are getting ready to go out there, you see Coach Harbaugh kinda with his shirt off and his khakis on and his cleats, just ripping out some squats in the weight room. So, I think consistently seeing those things, and then that’s normal to me now, just because I was around it for so long. So I think those are just kind of the day-in-the-life things that you get.”
CLICK HERE to subscribe for FREE to the On3 YouTube channel
It’s quite the image, though not one we have to entirely reach for. There is of course the (in)famous photo of Harbaugh, early in his Michigan tenure, playing in a shirts-on-skins game at a recruiting camp. He was on the skins team, in case you forgot.
Neither is the image of the Michigan head coach doing squats, either. He was photographed on a recruiting trip this offseason getting low in a pair of blue slacks and a dress shirt — and with what appears to be at least 135 pounds on the bar.
Patrick asked Hutchinson if his current coach with the Detroit Lions, Dan Campbell, would be spotted doing such a thing as lifting shirtless before practice.
“Coach Campbell. It’s different. I don’t know if I could see Coach Campbell doing that. Coach Campbell will rip out some down-ups with the boys,” Hutchinson said, referencing a moment from HBO’s “Hard Knocks” where the Lions coach joined a workout in practice, “but I don’t know if I see him shirt off, squatting in the weight room. He’s pretty humble with how built he is.”