Michigan football: Are Cole Cabana and Benjamin Hall the next great tandem at RB?
Michigan football has arguably the best running back tandem in the country in Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards. After the 2023 season, however, one or both could be moving on from the program to pursue their professional careers.
The upcoming season is a “win at all costs” type of year, but it is never too early to stop and think about lineages and the future. On this week’s Monday live show, The Wolverine’s Clayton Sayfie and Anthony Broome discussed whether Michigan already has its tandem of the future on the roster.
Freshmen Cole Cabana and Benjamin Hall could work their way into cracking the lineup or finding a role as early as this season. Cabana told Sayfie last week at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland he thinks he can team up with Hall to keep U-M’s strong run game rolling into the future.
“Cole Cabana is similar to Donovan Edwards in how they’ll use him,” Sayfie said on the show this week. “I think he’s gonna play in the slot. They’re going to use him there and they’re using him as a running back. Ben Hall is just more of a traditional running back and I thought he looked really good in the spring game.
“He was one of the most impressive guys out there, so I could see that. Cole said that he feels like they’re kind of that next wave of Michigan running backs as kind of a tandem there. And I could see that happening down the road. They have a long way to go to turn out to be a duo like Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards, and nobody should expect them to be that.
Those are way too high of expectations, but the fact that they’re shooting for it, I think is a really good sign. They both have different skill sets like Blake and Donovan that can complement each other and they both could play on the field together at the same time. So I think it’s a pretty apt comparison.”
Cabana was a four-star recruit and the No. 201 player in the 2023 class, while Hall came out as a three-star prospect and the No. 1041 prospect in the nation, via the On3 Industry Ranking.
“The way that they keep building these offensive lines, both through augmenting the roster through the transfer portal and then with what the offensive line recruiting has looked like of late, they’re gonna put themselves in a position to keep kind of doing this two-headed monster thing at running back,” Broome said.
“If [both Corum and Edwards] leave, I think you’re in good shape moving forward with guys like Cabana and Hall. Don’t forget about CJ Stokes too. That’s a guy that showed some juice last year. You’ve got Jordan Marshall coming in in next year’s recruiting class, too.
“Cole Cabana looks like he could be a guy that has some sort of role as early as this year. Benjamin Hall, I don’t know if he has a role this season, but he looks like a guy that you’re not going to soil yourself at the thought of having to put him into a game this year for a couple of carries.”
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