Remember When Blake Corum Froze Top Linebacker Prospect?
First things first, this is not meant to disparage Iowa linebacker Jack Campbell. The 6-5, 246-pounder was an incredible player at Iowa and will likely have a long, fruitful career in the NFL. Campbell won the Butkus Award last year and was a semifinalist the year before. He piled up 305 tackles during his four years in Iowa City and brought home piles of awards while wearing the black and gold. In fact, his honors section on his profile is pages and pages long. To put it bluntly, the dude was a stud for the Hawkeyes.
Because of that, many see him as the top inside linebacker prospect in the upcoming NFL Draft. NFL on CBS producer and NFL Draft researcher Ben Fennell recently tweeted out a clip of Campbell covering Purdue's Charlie Jones, who Michigan fans know well from last year's Big Ten title game, and called him the best MLB in this class.
The clip is definitely impressive as the 250-pound Campbell sticks with the much smaller and much shiftier Jones pretty well in the open field. However, when the Wolverines traveled to Iowa City last year, Campbell wasn't quite able to stick with one of Michigan's shiftier players — Blake Corum.
Campbell's job on the above play is to come up, fill the hole and make a stop so that the Hawkeyes can live to play another down. Instead, Corum hit him with an inside-out juke, and Campbell didn't get within three feet of Michigan's star tailback.
Corum, plus Donovan Edwards, make up the best running back duo in the Big Ten and maybe the entire country. Plays like this happen each week for Corum and we all saw what Edwards can do against the most talented roster on Michigan's schedule last year. With those two, along with a more experienced and more confident JJ McCarthy, and a potentially better offensive line, look out...again.
