What a Warren-less defense looks like

As everyone now knows, Donovan Warren said that he is "heavily" leaning toward going pro. With the departure of Stevie Brown and Brandon Graham due to graduation, the loss of Warren would mean Michigan loses the three best players off of it's terrible defense from 2009. Ugh. But what does this really mean for the defense going forward?

For much of the year, I wasn't nearly as high on Warren as many around the Michigan blogosphere were. He was a good corner and undeniably our best player in the secondary, but he was never able to truly shut receivers down. Teams threw at Warren less than at other corners, but I think that's as much a function of Michigan's other corners being terribly inept as opposed to brilliance on Warren's behalf. So while Warren's departure--if he decides to go--will have an impact on the defense, I don't think it'll be nearly as catastrophic as some might feel.

But without Warren, Michigan is tossed back into the Horrifying Depth Chart-ness that they inhabited this past year. You can probably expect the corner depth chart to look something like this:

	Left Cornerback	Right Cornerback
1st string	Justin Turner	Troy Woolfolk
2nd string	Cullen Christian	J.T. Floyd
3rd string	Teric Jones	Courtney Avery
4th string	Terrence Talbot	James Rogers

So the depth there doesn't look completely hopeless, but how many of those players would you actually want to see on the field? Three? Pray there are no injuries. Given Rodriguez's decision to redshirt Turner, it's my guess that, at least early in the season, Woolfolk stays at corner and they try to redshirt Cullen. This does however, mean a few other things for the secondary, namely, more Kovacs at safety (and not linebacker, his obvious position) and an unproven Vlad Emilien playing deep. Michigan has Marvin Robinson coming in the 2010 class, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Kovacs move to linebacker and Robinson take over sometime in the Big Ten schedule.

	Free Safety	Strong Safety
1st string	Vlad Emilien	Jordan Kovacs
2nd string	Mike Williams	Marvin Robinson
3rd string	Carvin Johnson (expect redshirt)	Jared Van Slyke

We've seen worse looking depth charts than that, but it's still kind of OMG THEY'RE ALL FRESHMAN AND WALKONS involved.

The upshot is this: Warren is going to be a loss, but probably not a significant one. The secondary gets a little younger and a little less experienced than they otherwise would've been. That's about it. Warren wasn't an interception machine last year (he led the team with four for the entire season), and his production started to dwindle as the season went on. Woolfolk will likely take over as the most effective corner--he was nearing it toward the end of 2009--and Michigan will just have to roll the dice with the young'uns. It's going to be very touch and go early, but if some of these young, guru-approved recruits start to pan out early, the loss of Warren will be minimal.