Michigan among the final six schools for transfer portal WR Kyle Ford
The Michigan Wolverines are in the final six schools for UCLA wide receiver Kyle Ford, according to JGPVisuals on X, formerly known as Twitter. Other schools in consideration are Florida, Wake Forest, USC, South Carolina and Ohio State.
Ford, a four-star recruit and the No. 34 player in the country in the 2019 recruiting class (On3 Industry Ranking), has one year of eligibility remaining, which would be his sixth at the collegiate level. According to On3’s transfer portal rankings, Ford is the eighth-best wide receiver and a three-star prospect. He entered the portal as a graduate transfer on March 15.
Potential visits and a timetable for a decision are unknown at this point.
Last season at UCLA, Ford (6-3, 220) hauled in 22 receptions for 236 yards and a touchdown, averaging 10.7 yards per catch. He appeared in 12 games with two starts (Coastal Carolina, USC) and caught multiple passes in five games.
Ford spent the first four seasons of his career at USC, where he had 40 receptions for 637 yards and five touchdowns. He played in 24 career games at USC with two starts.
Michigan has a sneaky need at wide receiver heading into the 2024 season. It currently has five scholarship players at the position in senior Peyton O’Leary, junior Tyler Morris, and sophomores Fredrick Moore, Semaj Morgan and Kendrick Bell. Two more reinforcements are on the way this summer in I’Marion Stewart and Channing Goodwin, a pair of true freshmen.
Michigan needs a bigger-bodied receiver on the outside to round out its corps, so Ford fits the profile. U-M has confidence in Morris, Morgan and Moore as its big three, but proven depth is needed to round out the room.
“We got a lot of younger guys — me, Fred, Semaj, Peyton — who hadn’t played a whole lot,” Morris said during a spring ball press conference. “As a room as a whole, we’re expecting everybody to step up, everybody to step into their new roles and be their best selves.
“I’ve been telling the guys, ‘We don’t got [Roman Wilson], we don’t got [Cornelius Johnson], but that don’t gotta be a bad thing. It’s our chance to go do something.’ Just every day coming out understanding that we, as a group, individually, we haven’t done a whole lot yet — and this is a year that we can show what we can do.”
Michigan wraps up spring ball this weekend with a split-squad exhibition at the Big House.
