Special Teams Could Be The Strongest Unit On Michigan's 2020 Team

Ever since Michigan crunched the numbers on how many yards were lost on punt returns by not fair catching often enough during the Jabrill Peppers years, U-M has focused closely on the fine details of special teams.

Specifically, Jim Harbaugh has made it mandatory to use Michigan's best players in the most advantageous situations during the often overlooked special teams play. That again appears to be the case this fall as Jay Harbaugh oversees the unit which could actually be stronger from top to bottom than U-M's offense or defense.

From a kicking perspective, the Wolverines return two battle-tested competitors in Jake Moody and Quinn Nordin. While the latter is praised for his big leg and the former for his consistency, both players have had their moments over the past couple seasons.

Specifically, Moody has connected on 16/20 field goals for an 80% clip and Nordin was good for 40/53, which is a 75.47%. Now, Nordin's long is a 57-yard bomb that he cracked against Alabama in the Citrus Bowl, whereas Moody's longest successful field goal was of the 48-yard variety.

Now coming into the 2020 season, Harbaugh is confident in both players even if there is no clear favorite as of yet.

"Quinn, certainly we love the way that he finished last year," Harbaugh said. "We love the way he's been practicing, so that's a position where, just like all the other ones, you're going to put the guy out there that gives you the best chance to win. More than likely, history would say that it would be Quinn, but we've still got a lot of time in terms of kicking in competitive situations and moving the ball in practice and letting those guys both kick, so we'll play the guy that we feel like is going to give us the better shot. We love everything about both of them. It's a blessing to have two guys that you feel confident with in terms of their ability, and we all love the fact that Quinn's done it on some big stages and he's got the experience and poise of a veteran. Moody does too, so it's really a good situation overall, and we'll let the competition play out."

Harbaugh stressed that the winner of that competition will likely be the player who is most consistent during live-ball situations during fall camp. The thought process is if a kicker can connect on field goals during scrimmages and live-ball opportunities, he's more likely to do the same in a game format, especially since there won't be much of a crowd presence this season.

On the punting front, Michigan is faced with a similar dilemma of who to start with Will Hart and Brad Robbins vying to win the starting punter position.

"It's funny, this is like a script or something," Harbaugh said. "It's darn near like the kicking competition. We feel blessed to have multiple guys that have game reps, that are good players. They have poise. They have a lot of ability. It's interesting because they're both different guys, and they kick a little bit different ball. They have different strengths, and they're competing like crazy."

Over the years, though, the two players have been used in completely different frormats. Hart has been more of a field-flipping punter that has a long leg and can rip off some booming punts. That's why he's only put 20% of his 107 punts inside the 20 but has a career-long of 65 yards. Robbins, on the other hand, specializes in ball placement and has left their opposing team with a drive starting inside their 20-yard line 29% of the time on only 68 career punts with his long at the 58-yard distance.

"They get a lot of reps with the whole punt return team and everything is charted and it's really, really tight right now," Harbaugh said. "We grade them very strictly on a criteria of how long does it take to get the punt off, where are you putting it location-wise, what's the hang, what's the distance. So, [I] really could just say I'm thrilled with how they've both responded because they're making it a hard decision, which is the same as on the kicking front."

For both the punting and kicking units, Michigan has two very legitimate options that could exit fall camp on the top of the depth chart, but it is more than likely that all four players will be used in different positions throughout the 2020 season.

Do you think the special teams unit can be the strongest aspect of Michigan's team? If not, which would be? Let us know!

Add us as a preferred source on Google