Blake Corum was arguably the best running back in Michigan football history during his four seasons in Ann Arbor. The 5-foot-8 running back from Marshall, Virginia, ran for 3,737 yards and a program-best 58 touchdowns in his career as a Wolverine.
Corum scored a rushing touchdown in all 15 of Michigan's games last season, and he found the end zone multiple times in the Wolverines' final seven games.
Now, though, Corum is in the NFL, and it will be up to Donovan Edwards and Kalel Mullings, the presumed one-two punch, to pick up the slack.
Edwards, of course, is experienced and has made a big enough name for himself to warrant being placed on the front cover of the new College Football 25 video game.
But Mullings has taken a bit of a different path.
The current Michigan running back was recruited as a linebacker coming out of high school. At 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds, Mullings was rated as the 92nd overall player in the high school class of 2020, and there were only seven linebackers ranked higher than him in the class.
Mullings played the 2020 and 2021 seasons as a linebacker before splitting time between offense and defense in 2022. Ahead of the 2023 season, Mullings made the permanent switch to running back.
The fifth-year senior met with reporters on Wednesday to discuss how fall camp is going as a full-time running back.
"Camps in the past for me have been obviously different," Mullings said. "Just playing defense, and one year going back and forth — it's been, I don't want to say easier, but less going on. Just being able to settle in and focus on one position and just focus on getting better at that one, sole position. So that's definitely been just a little bit less off my plate."
For Mullings, it's comforting knowing that Michigan has the linebacker position taken care of, with Jaishawn Barham and Ernest Hausmann leading the way.
"It's been exciting. It's been fun," Mullings said. "In all honesty, I haven't really gotten, I would say, maybe not a full camp, but like a full camp of just knowing, 'Okay, I'm just a back.'"
Interestingly, Mullings added that his prior experience on the defensive side of the ball has helped him become a smarter running back.
"I definitely think being able to see and understand defenses, the fronts, where the blitzes are coming from, different things like that — part of that comes from playing defense, so I know what I'm looking at maybe a little bit better."
"So I think those have been my biggest strides: is being able to identify what the defense may potentially be doing, where a blitz is coming from, where guys might be dropping to, things like that."
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