Michigan Wolverines football defensive end Aidan Hutchinson continues to rack up accolades ahead of what is expected to be his final season in Ann Arbor, with the latest being his inclusion on ESPN.com analyst Todd McShay's rankings of the top 50 NFL Draft prospects for 2022. He was named a second-team preseason All-American by Sporting News and third-team by Athlon.
The Plymouth, Mich., native was a third-team All-Big Ten honoree in 2019 after racking up 68 tackles, 10.5 tackles for loss, 4.5 sacks, six pass breakups, four quarterback hurries, and two forced fumbles. He had the chance to make the jump to the NFL after 2020, a season that he saw get cut short — the team only played six games and he competed in just three, with a foot injury holding him out of the remainder of the campaign.
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A team captain, Hutchinson — a full participant in fall camp after sitting out much of the drill work in the spring — is healthy and ready to go for the 2021 season.
Now, McShay believes he's one of the top edge rushers for next year's draft class. He ranked No. 40 overall on McShay's rankings, the seventh-rated defensive end or outside linebacker, behind Oregon's Kayvon Thibodeaux (4th), Oklahoma's Nik Bonitto (12th), South Carolina's Kingsley Enagbare (16th), Georgia's Adam Anderson (23rd), Ohio State's Zach Harrison (33rd), Iowa State's Will McDonald IV (36th).
"Hutchinson was in the Day 2 conversation last fall before fracturing his right leg in November and opting for another year at Michigan," McShay wrote. "He plays a powerful game and is truly relentless in pursuit. Hutchinson also has fast eyes and locates the ball really well. He played only three games in 2020 before getting hurt and didn't fill the stat sheet, but he posted 4.5 sacks, 10.0 tackles for loss and 68 tackles in 13 games back in 2019."
Hutchinson was the eighth overall pick to the New York Giants in McShay's early 2022 mock draft that he released in May.
This offseason, Hutchinson and many of Michigan's other defensive ends transitioned to more of an outside linebacker / edge rusher role. His primary responsibility will still be to set the edge and get to the quarterback, but he'll drop in coverage at times and be asked to move around the box pre- and post-snap more than he ever has before.
He believes his new role will not only help his own defense out as they begin playing in first-year coordinator Mike Macdonald's system, but it'll help him when he does make the jump to the pros. He's one of several Michigan players to laud the scheme Macdonald — who joined the program from the Baltimore Ravens — has brought in.
"This change of defense has made me just that much more versatile," Hutchinson told Jon Jansen on last week's episode of the 'In The Trenches' podcast. "I’m learning so many different techniques that I hadn’t even known existed before this.
"I think I have a unique perspective, changing defenses and changing all these techniques, because when I get to that next level and they put me in a defense, I believe I would’ve seen it before, I would’ve done the techniques before.
"When I get to the next level, I’ll be able to recognize whatever defense it is or whatever technique that they’re asking me to do."
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