One Michigan football coach is having a heck of an offseason - Detroit Free Press

Rainer Sabin Detroit Free Press

Published 6:00 AM EDT May 8, 2020

There is a sense of accomplishment, Ed Warinner concedes.

Four players picked from the same offensive line in one year?

Since 1994, when the NFL draft was trimmed to seven rounds, only six other college programs could boast of that feat.

[ Michigan football's Jim Harbaugh pens open letter to NCAA: Change eligibility rules ]

As Warinner watched the selections of Cesar Ruiz, Ben Bredeson, Michael Onwenu and Jon Runyan Jr. unfold over a three-day period last month, he was understandably satisfied.

“It makes you feel good,” he told the Free Press. “It makes you feel like you’re doing the right thing. Productivity is the loudest advertiser of what you are doing.”

So, these days, Michigan football’s garrulous offensive line coach doesn’t need to say much. His value is obvious to outsiders. In the two years he's spent in Ann Arbor, he has become an integral member of Jim Harbaugh’s staff. Over that same period, the blocking front he has supervised has transformed from one of the program’s greatest weaknesses into one of its chief strengths, as the recent NFL draft success demonstrated.

“He came in with a different attitude, an aggressive attitude to make us better,” Ruiz said in February.

Warinner’s impact has been substantial enough to reverberated all the way down to the high school ranks, where he has made his mark luring top prospects to Michigan. In the past 14 months, three four-star offensive linemen in the 2021 class have committed to the Wolverines, and consequently Warinner now sits at No. 17 in the 247Sports.com’s recruiter rankings.

“He’s experienced and he’s coached a lot of pros and he’s been around a lot of winning football, so that is going to resonate,” said Steve Wiltfong, the website’s director of recruiting. “He can point to a strong resume of things he’s done.”

This offseason alone would provide some nice bullet points.

But Warinner isn’t resting on his laurels.

Instead, he’s fretting about what lies ahead. The five-man unit he presides over is undergoing a makeover in the middle of a pandemic, which has made his job particularly difficult. With incumbent starter Jalen Mayfield at right tackle, four positions are up for grabs and the interior roles will be filled by players who have little college experience.

Adding to the challenges was the cancellation of spring practice, which prevented Warinner from performing on-field instruction – a critical component to a line’s development, he said.

“The number one thing in football, in my opinion, is reps,” he explained. “You get good by reps — not by talking, not by watching.”

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Yet, that is the essence of coaching in the virtual world. Over the last seven weeks, Warinner has held meetings via Zoom, the videoconferencing platform. To ensure his pupils understand what he’s teaching them, he has quizzed them by submitting written questions and play diagrams through email and text.

Warinner believes they grasp the material. But he doesn’t know for sure. The non-verbal cues he could decipher in-person — whether they indicated uncertainty or puzzlement — are not as apparent through a computer screen. Besides, he said, “There is a big difference between answering questions on tests versus doing it in the heat of battle full speed ahead with proper technique.”

He then sighed.

“I think we’re doing as well as we can do,” he said. “How good that is, how well that is bringing along four new everyday starters is hard to say.”

If Warinner doesn’t know, then it’s a good bet nobody really does.

He’s been doing this for 36 years while working for some of the sport’s bluebloods — Notre Dame, Ohio State and now Michigan.

Even when things were normal, Warinner said the lines he’s coached didn’t congeal until the third or fourth game.

“I am hoping that we get that time to get them ready,” he said. “It has been a challenge.”

For everyone in Warinner’s profession, it’s been an offseason unlike any other. But all things considered, the man overseeing over Michigan’s offensive line is faring as well as anyone and better than most.

Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @RainerSabin. Read more on the Michigan Wolverines, Michigan State Spartans and sign up for our Big Ten newsletter. 

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