Donovan Edwards: Offensive line has been 'phenomenal' during practices
During its run of recent success over the past three years, Michigan football has prided itself on having one of the best offensive line units in college football from 2021 through 2023.
Coming into this season, the Wolverines will look quite a bit different up front from last year's national championship team with a slew of talent off to the NFL.
In 2024, fifth-year senior Myles Hinton, who played meaningful reps on last year's team after transferring from Stanford, is back.
At guard, the Wolverines dipped into the portal and brought in grad transfer Josh Priebe from Northwestern to help fill a need up front.
Beyond that, the Wolverines will likely be turning to some offensive linemen who have spent a lot of time in the program —such as Greg Crippen, Giovanni El-Hadi and Andrew Gentry, but who have generally had to wait their turn behind other talented big men coming through the program.
One of the players on Michigan's team who has had an up close look at the offensive line during spring practices is senior running back Donovan Edwards, who will look to those guys to help open holes up in the running game this fall.
At Big Ten Media Days in Indianapolis on Thursday, Edwards said the offensive line has performed at a high level during practices and have been a great group to be around overall.
"They've been phenomenal," Edwards said. "We have a tremendous group of guys. Besides them even being football players, they're tremendous human beings. They're just awesome to interact with and work with. And they're hard working, they're gritty. I think for them, they all feel they have a lot to prove as individuals and as a team."
Edwards said each time the running backs break a big run, he and the other backs are going to make sure they credit the offensive line knowing the work they put in.
"Just believe that every big run that I get or that all the other running backs get, we're going to say 'the offensive line did it, not me,'" said Edwards.
This year's offensive line unit will have big shoes to fill after the group won the Joe Moore Award in 2021 and 2022 and was again a finalist for the award in 2023, but from Edwards' vantage point, things are going just fine with the group so far.
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