Fifth-year seniors Khalid Hill and Henry Poggi have seen most of the action at fullback for Michigan so far this season, but freshman Ben Mason has seen a little bit of time as well (mostly on special teams).
The Wolverines obviously have a bye this weekend, but if it was up to Mason that wouldn’t be the case.
“If I had to pick, we’d be playing,” he said. “We don’t have this weekend off, though, because we’ll be practicing. It’ll be good to psychologically and physically recover, but it’d also be good to be playing football — the more football you play, the better you get at it.”
Mason has a Jim Harbaugh-esque love for the sport, and some have even deemed the two men as similar.
In fact, this past summer Harbaugh referred to Mason as someone “you’d have been proud to have fathered.”
Many view Harbaugh as being a bit “different,” and Mason has started to receive that same viewpoint as well.
“Yeah, I think I’m a different guy,” he said proudly. “You have to be different to play fullback. There aren’t a lot of guys who are willingly to put their body out there the way a fullback has to. I think all of us are just willing to work.
“We have some great upperclassmen leadership in our unit — [fifth-year senior] Ty Isaac, Khalid, Poggi, [junior] Karan [Higdon] and even some of the younger guys as well. It’s a good thing to have all that in the running backs room.”
Mason said the identity of the offense is similar to that of the fullbacks’ mindset.
“We’re a smash mouth football team and we want to run the ball downhill,” he said. “We’re an aggressive group, but we’re also very athletic as well. I’m right where I want to be — I’m not afraid of anything … ever.”
Someone else on the team who has gained the reputation of being a bit quirky and outgoing is redshirt junior defensive end Chase Winovich.
“We’re good friends,” Mason said. “I wouldn’t say he’s nutty — he’s just very enthusiastic about what he does. He shows it by running all over the place on the field and by making plays all the time. I think we’re similar in some ways, but we’re a lot different too.”
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