Kirk Campbell on a potential 'first round pick' at OL, style of offense he’ll employ
Michigan has won three straight Big Ten championships and a national title by getting back to Jim Harbaugh’s roots — good, physical football and running when possible, running some more if it was successful. Sherrone Moore quickly bought in with the “Smash!” philosophy and brought first-year offensive coordinator and second-year quarterbacks coach Kirk Campbell along with him, using great offensive line play and ball control to win titles.
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That likely won’t change much this year, no matter who is playing quarterback. Michigan has quarterbacks with different strengths, but they’ll want to run the ball, regardless.
“I think complementary football plays into identify of a program. We know who we are,” Campbell said. “We’re the University of Michigan. We know how we want to play football; we know how we want to win football games. That’s not going to change at all, and that’s obviously instilled by the head coach. However Coach Moore wants to do that, that’s how we’ll go about that.
“But right now, we’re going to be complementary. We’re going to make sure we don’t put the defense in bad situation and the defense isn’t going to put us in bad situations and special teams, as well. To be a great coordinator, you’ve got to be able to adapt to your players. What do they do best? If Davis Warren was the guy, he’s going to do stuff different than Jayden Denegal or Alex Orji would do. If Jack Tuttle was the guy, they’re going to be different. The offense is going to be unique to their skillset, but also complementary to what other players on the team do well.”
And if they can’t push teams around like they have, then they’re going to have to adjust. There’s no guarantee, of course, when you’re replacing five starters on the offensive line, but Sherrone Moore’s history of developing great lines should help, even with first-year line coach Grant Newsome leading the group.
One in particular has a chance to be special, Campbell said.
“Last year we were able to run the ball right downhill on people. We were really good on the offensive line,” Campbell continued. “How’s that going to be this year? We don’t know. Are we going to be a downhill team, or are we going to be more gap scheme oriented … that will still be dictated. But we’re going to play to our players’ skillset. We’re not going to pigeonhole us into square peg, round hole.
“The guy right now I’m super excited about is Myles Hinton. I think last year early in the season he displayed a lot of potential. We moved him around. Right now he’s at left tackle, I think we’ll have a staple there if he continues to prove that. The sky’s the limit for him. If he goes out there and pushes himself, achieve what he wants to achieve, he has the opportunity to be a first round pick, I believe.
Northwestern transfer Josh Priebe, too, “plays like Zak Zinter” per our analyst Doug Skene, and should make an impact.
“We’re looking at him inside right now. Right now, he’s a guard,” Campbell said. “f we can try to cross train him a bit to snap in an emergency, that would be great. Obviously, we’ve got Greg Crippen in there, as well, but he’s high character, high academic, so we’re excited to have a guy like that in the program. He’s going to be thrust in there early to see what we can get out of him.”
And the rest of the linemen heading into spring. There’s a lot of talent on offense — it’s just a matter of putting it together, and Campbell is confident they will.
