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8A — Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
O’Korn ready for action after sitting out 2015
Now eligible,
Houston transfer
hopes to make
on-field impact
By JACOB GASE
Daily Sports Editor
John O’Korn hasn’t played
in a football game since Nov.
28, 2014, but his year away may
have been the most important
one of his career.
The
redshirt
junior
quarterback arrived at Michigan
last fall after a tumultuous
career
at
Houston
that
ultimately led to his transfer.
O’Korn won the starting job as
a freshman and threw for 3,117
yards and 28 touchdowns, but
he lost his spot to converted
receiver Greg Ward Jr. after just
five games the next year.
“It was just a (comfort)
thing,” O’Korn said. “I kind of
felt out of place there at times.
Part of that’s my fault, and
part of that is just the nature of
playing in a spread offense as a
pro-style quarterback. I think
that’s the number-one thing,
just (comfort) — I think this
system fits me a lot better and
allows me to be the best player
I can be.”
Of course, O’Korn wasn’t
able to get back on the field
right away. Per NCAA transfer
eligibility rules, he had to sit out
the 2015 season. But now, with
the Wolverines in the heat of
spring camp, O’Korn is finally
a factor again as he competes
with redshirt sophomore Wilton
Speight and redshirt junior
Shane Morris for the starting
job.
He didn’t just sit idly on the
sidelines for a year, though.
Working as a member of the
scout team all season, O’Korn
was an extremely active practice
player, and he was present in
just as many meetings and drills
as a starter would have been.
After six months of inactivity
since he lost the job at Houston,
O’Korn’s role in the fall was a
welcome return to normalcy.
“Any time you spend time
away
from
the
game,
you
appreciate it more,” O’Korn
said. “I started to miss the little
things that I didn’t really realize
I would miss — chalk talk,
drawing up plays, watching film
hours on end in a dark room by
yourself.”
It wasn’t long before O’Korn
started to feel settled in at
Michigan. And even though he
found himself surrounded by
a decorated coaching staff —
including a quarterback guru
of a head coach in Harbaugh
— O’Korn’s biggest resource
ended up being his roommate:
2015 starting quarterback Jake
Rudock.
In many ways, Rudock and
O’Korn have parallel stories.
Rudock was also a starter at
his former school, Iowa, before
unceremoniously losing his job
and departing as a transfer.
Rudock, too, began his career
with the Wolverines embroiled
in
a
preseason
quarterback
competition,
which
he
ultimately won before going on
to throw for 3,017 yards — the
second-highest
single-season
total in Michigan history.
The two quarterbacks even
went to the same high school,
St. Thomas Aquinas in Fort
Lauderdale, Fla.
In his time as the starter,
Rudock gained a reputation as
a quiet leader who rarely made
crucial mistakes. As O’Korn
tried
to
acclimate
to
his new team,
he
quickly
realized
that
his roommate
was setting the
perfect model
to follow.
“With Jake,
he’s not really
the type that’s
gonna
say
a
whole lot,” O’Korn said. “But just
watching him, how he operates,
how he prepares for games, how
seriously he takes everything —
the minute details, everything
is so important — just watching
him was really good. I could
sit here and talk all day about
things I learned from watching
Jake.”
A
few
months
later,
Rudock — who
flew
under
the radar for
much of his
collegiate
career
—
is
preparing for
a
potential
career in the
NFL.
And
O’Korn, no longer relegated
to
the
sidelines,
might
be
on his way to becoming his
roommate’s successor. A pro-
style
quarterback
with
the
ability to use his feet to get out
of trouble, he brings a unique
skill set that will certainly have
him in the mix.
To win the job, though, he’ll
have to beat out two other
quarterbacks who have already
played meaningful snaps for the
Wolverines.
O’Korn,
Speight
and Morris are very different
players,
and
Harbaugh
has
said the player who separates
himself from the others will
have done so by limiting his big
mistakes.
O’Korn has had a year of
preparation to figure out how to
do that. And if he continues to
follow the Rudock model, he’ll
be taking the field on Sept. 3
for the first time in nearly two
years.
AMANDA ALLEN/Daily
John O’Korn sat out last season after transferring from Houston and is now in a three-way quarterback competition.
“This system
allows me to be
the best player I
can be. ”
Speight determined to stay
in starting QB conversation
By JAKE LOURIM
Managing Sports Editor
Throughout last summer —
and, really, well into last fall —
Wilton Speight felt overlooked.
Then a redshirt freshman for the
Michigan football team, he was a
solid third on the depth chart at
quarterback.
There was Jake Rudock, a
graduate transfer brought in from
Iowa to be an immediate solution.
And there was Shane Morris,
a former four-star recruit who
had been touted as the starter-
in-waiting for his whole career.
Morris seized the job coming out
of spring camp, and Rudock took
hold of it during fall camp. That
left little attention for Speight.
He would talk to his parents
about feeling left out. They told
him not to worry about it, so he
didn’t. He came into the season
knowing what he was capable of.
Slowly, he began to edge his
way into the conversation. Morris
planned on redshirting if he
wasn’t starting, so Speight took
the “mop-up duty” at the end of
blowout wins. He used that to
gain the trust of the coaching
staff.
But on Halloween, Speight was
no longer an afterthought — he
couldn’t be. With Rudock injured,
he came in and led a game-
winning touchdown drive to help
the Wolverines to a 29-26 victory
at Minnesota. He then returned to
his No. 2 spot on the depth chart
and waited for his opportunity,
newly confident and no longer
overlooked.
“It
would
give
anybody
confidence, to be able to go into a
game like that and make an impact
and eventually win the game,”
Speight said. “To carry that with
you, not that you’re living in the
past, but you know you can do it
going forward.”
Now it’s a new season, with
Rudock
gone
and
Houston
transfer John O’Korn into the
mix. But Speight denies that
he’s back to square one in the
competition this time around.
“With all respect, I was going
to approach it with the mindset
of, ‘I’ve got to build off of the
spot I left off in the Minnesota
game or the bowl practices,’ ”
Speight said. “I wasn’t going to go
down to wherever (the coaches)
expected us to, because I just
wanted to stay up there and keep
working.”
Speight may not be overlooked
anymore,
but
he
is
still
unheralded. He acknowledges
Morris has the strongest arm,
O’Korn the quickest feet. But
he knew after he finished the
season last year and went through
bowl practices that he’d be in the
mix. The team treated the bowl
practices as an audition for spring
camp, reiterating that at every
turn.
For the first two weeks of spring
practice, all the quarterbacks took
equal reps. Then, they began to
separate themselves.
Speight said that throughout
spring camp, the coaches tracked
how each quarterback did moving
the ball down the field in drills.
“Just looking at the stats,
I guess that’s where I kind of
distance myself,” he said.
Saturday at Ford Field in
Detroit, Speight was the first
quarterback to take snaps with
the first team at open practice.
Tuesday, he said that has been the
case in other recent practices, too.
“Coach follows a pattern, and
unless you mess it up, it pretty
much stays the same,” Speight
said. “The practice before that,
I did what I needed to do, and
before that, and before that. I
pretty much knew that was going
to happen.”
But he also knows what being
first — especially by the slimmest
of margins — means. He has, after
all, been on the other end.
“It means there’s people at my
feet and they’re wanting to take
the spot I’m in,” Speight said. “If I
don’t keep doing what I have to do
and keep working my ass off, then
they’re going to fill me in.
“Because you’re replaceable
at anything you do in life. That’s
all it really means — I’m getting
the job done, but someone else is
trying to do it better.”
AMANDA ALLEN/Daily
Wilton Speight took the first QB reps at the team’s open practice on Saturday.