The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Wednesday, September 30, 2020 — 19

Undersized and overlooked, Ronnie 

Bell set to anchor young receiver corps

Ronnie 
Bell 
had 
been 

exiled from campus amid the 
pandemic. Gyms were closed. 
So were local football fields. 
But the junior wide receiver 
had to find a way to train. So 
on his second day home, his 
dad came up with the ultimate 
workout. 

That’s how Bell ended up 

pushing a Chevy Tahoe around 
his neighborhood, racing his 
16-year-old twin brothers who 
pushed a Lexus about half the 
size.

Bell’s story has been repeated 

ad 
nauseam. 
Originally 

committed to play basketball 
at Missouri State, Bell received 
a late offer from Michigan 
in 2017 and stepped into a 
starting role his sophomore 
year. Once an afterthought on 
a unit that included Donovan 
Peoples-Jones, Nico Collins 
and Tarik Black, Bell finished 
the 2019 season with a team-
best 758 receiving yards. 

Peoples-Jones 
and 
Black 

are gone now. Collins likely 
is, too, with Michigan coach 
Jim Harbaugh saying on a 
WTKA appearance Monday 
that he hasn’t submitted a 
waiver request. Bell is the 
most 
experienced 
receiver 

left. Still, he’s a bit under the 
radar. During a Zoom media 
session Thursday, Bell spent 
roughly the first half of the 

call answering questions about 
teammates before he was asked 
about himself. But Bell knows 
he’s the anchor of this unit, and 
when the season starts Oct. 24, 
it will be his turn to step into 
the spotlight.

“I realized it more, especially 

with all those guys gone now, 
I’m lowkey kinda old,” Bell 
said. “And for all the younger 
guys, every day in practice 
I just wanna show them the 
effort it takes, whether that’s 
when you get the ball or not 
or you’re out there blocking on 
the edge, I just wanna show all 
the guys the intensity that we 
gotta play with.”

Bell’s best quality as a 

player is his ability to get 
open and evade contact, but 
he’s struggled with drops — 
never more apparent than last 
year, when he let the potential 
game-tying touchdown at Penn 
State slip through his fingers. 
That’s something Bell’s been 
working on in practice, putting 
more emphasis on taking care 
of the ball. He’s worked on his 
strength, thanks to the Tahoe. 
And especially, he’s worked on 
his speed.

When Bell watches film, 

he sees himself making plays 
and is hungry to make more. 
He practices hard, setting the 
standard for everyone around 
him. He’s prepared to move 
outside the slot more and play 
any position if that’s what the 
team needs.

“Just being able to have a guy 

that’s played a ton of football, 
he understands things, and 
Ronnie’s motivated,” offensive 
coordinator Josh Gattis said 
Wednesday. “Even though a 
lot of people view a success 
for Ronnie last year, Ronnie 
believed, and he knows that 
last year, it was just scratching 
the 
surface. 
There 
were 

opportunities to be even better, 
so now it’s about how he can 
take his game from one year 
and develop it the next year 
and make it even better.”

Undersized for a receiver 

at just six feet tall, Bell knows 
that what he lacks in height, he 
must make up for in skill. As 
the leader of a receiver room 
that also includes 5-foot-9 
Giles Jackson and 5-foot-10 
Mike Sainristil, Bell knows the 
intensity they’ll have to bring 
with the “tall guys” gone.

Bell was never supposed to 

be the guy leading the receivers 
his junior year. He’s not Collins 
and he acknowledges as much. 
But he’s starting to find his 
footing as a leader, and now, on 
the precipice of stepping into 
the spotlight, he may just be 
the right guy for the job.

“He has a tremendous work 

ethic, I’d say,” Jackson said on 
Sept. 17. “He definitely brings 
all the juice to the receiver 
room. He’s super fun to be 
around, I’d say he’s the jokester 
of the group by far. He’s super 
fun to be around. He always 
brings energy to practice, he 
brings us with him.”

ARIA GERSON
Daily Sports Writer

MILES MACKLIN/Daily

Junior wide receiver Ronnie Bell is taking on a leadership role within the Wolverines’ offense. 

‘Lights out’ Joe Milton impressing in 

Michigan camp

Ronnie Bell got back to Ann 

Arbor in April, when the place 
was still a ghost town — students 
at home, school all online, the 
rims off all the basketball nets 
and everyone under quarantine. 
Joe Milton was one of Bell’s only 
teammates also in the area at the 
time. So naturally, they found 
places to work, Milton throwing 
to Bell in preparation of a season 
neither could know the status of.

It would be two more months 

before the Michigan football 
team was allowed back into 
its building, and three months 
after that before the Big Ten 
announced that there would, in 
fact, be a season to play. On the 
same day as that announcement, 
it was reported that quarterback 
Dylan McCaffrey would opt 
out and transfer and receiver 
Nico Collins had signed with an 
NFL agent. That means Milton, 
in all likelihood, will be the 
quarterback and Bell his top 
target.

“This is the best I’ve ever seen 

Joe,” Bell said Thursday on a 
Zoom call with reporters. “Joe 
got here a semester before me, 
but I’ve been around Joe just as 
much as anybody and he’s just 
lights out right now.”

Out of the gamesmanship that 

governs college football even in 
2020, Michigan hasn’t yet named 
a starting quarterback for Oct. 
24, and offensive coordinator 

Josh Gattis said Wednesday 
that it won’t name any starters 
at 
all. 
Redshirt 
sophomore 

quarterback Cade McNamara 
has gotten requisite praise. The 
job, though, is Milton’s in status 
if not yet in name.

“Joe’s got special talent,” 

Gattis said. “He’s a quarterback 
that’s blessed with a tremendous 
skill-set, obviously with an arm 
and accuracy. He has every 
throw in the bag plus the extra 
club that you don’t need to carry 
all the time.”

Milton’s arm has been the 

stuff of folktales since he arrived 
in Ann Arbor in January 2018. 
Gattis said Wednesday that 
Milton has reached 70 yards 
about three times with pinpoint 
accuracy. 

As far as declarations of arm 

strength go, it’s one of the more 
conservative estimates Milton 
has received since arriving at 
Michigan. As far as accuracy, it’s 
notable. 

“That was one of the things 

we have talked about as far as 
taking RPMs off, knowing how 
to give a catchable ball,” Gattis 
said. “Accuracy as far as ball 
placement was never an issue, 
sometimes the issue had been 
in the past was whether or not 
those receivers could catch it 
that fast. He’s done a really good 
job in improving in that, but still 
maintaining his power in his 
arm.”

Milton’s success or failure 

will not be based on talent. It 
will come down to fundamentals 

— pocket presence, reading 
a defense and accuracy — all 
three of which Gattis gave him 
glowing reviews on. 

It’s hard to parse exactly 

what that means in non-game 
situations when padded practice 
won’t even start for another 
week. Certainly it’s encouraging. 
So were all the proclamations of 
Speed in Space that marked the 
beginning of 2019. In reality, it 
took Michigan six weeks to look 
comfortable in Gattis’s offense, 
by which time it had already lost 
twice.

And yet, it’s impossible to 

discount words like this from 
Gattis: “Every day out there, 
he makes some type of wow 
play. Those wow plays are 
not just wow plays in college 
football, they’d be wow plays on 
Sundays.”

When the Wolverines lost 

Shea Patterson, their flawed but 
firmly entrenched starter for 
the last two years, Gattis said it 
was a little scary to stare down 
the unknown. A quarterback 
competition 
between 
Milton 

and McCaffrey would have 
dominated the spring and likely 
fall camp. Instead, Michigan is 
holding its first padded practice 
three weeks before kickoff and 
Milton is the presumed starter.

Gattis is perfectly happy with 

that.

“We feel great about Joe and 

we feel great about Cade,” he 
said. “Either one of those guys 
can go out and lead our team and 
our offense.”

ALEC COHEN/Daily

Joe Milton and Ronnie Bell both returned to Ann Arbor in April, allowing Michigan’s presumptive starting 
quarterback and his top wideout to train together all summer.

ETHAN SEARS

Managing Sports Editor

O

n Wednesday 
afternoon, when 
offensive coordi-
nator Josh Gattis 

spoke with local reporters on 
a Zoom call, the second ques-
tion he faced was about how 
his offense 
would 
improve in 
year two. 
The third 
was about 
managing 
expecta-
tions. The 
fourth was 
about junior 
quarterback 
Joe Milton. The fifth was 
about the offensive line.

In other words, it was nor-

mal. 

Well, it was on Zoom. And 

it was in September, four 

weeks after the season was 
scheduled to start. But if you 
closed your calendar and 
pretended you were in Schem-
bechler Hall, it felt as close to 
normal as 2020 is capable of 
providing.

And after the last six 

months, that’s a beautiful 
thing.

Take it from Gattis, who 

said, “Obviously there’s a 
lot of excitement around the 
building.” Receiver Giles 
Jackson agreed that excite-
ment was the first emotion 
anyone felt when football 
returned. Or, as linebacker 
Josh Ross put it, “It’s just a 
blessing we get to play this 
fall.” 

I’m not here to tell you that 

fans have to feel the same 
way. This season won’t be 
entirely normal even if the Big 

Ten gets through nine games 
without problems. College 
football, more than any other 
sport, is based on tradition 
and the energy that a game 
day brings to a community. 
None of that will be the same 
in 2020.

Fans will still miss tailgat-

ing and making the weekly 
pilgrimage to Michigan Stadi-
um. They’ll miss being a part 
of the biggest crowd watching 
a football game anywhere in 
America today and belting out 
Mr. Brightside at the end of 
the third quarter.

But if you don’t think it’ll be 

fun, look at this past Saturday.

At noon, you were flipping 

between a pair of ranked 
matchups before No. 3 Okla-
homa blew a 28-7 lead to Kan-
sas State. A few hours later, 
Texas recovered an onside 

kick to come back from 15 
down with three minutes left. 
The defending champs, LSU, 
lost to unranked Mississippi 
State. Speaking of Mississippi 
State, K.J. Costello threw for 
623 yards.

In other words, it was awe-

some. More importantly, 
it felt as close to normal as 
anyone could hope for. In a 
handful of hours, the College 
Football Playoff picture was 
upended, new Heisman favor-
ites emerged and the talking 
points were endless.

For a few hours, fans in the 

SEC, Big 12 and ACC didn’t 
have to think about the pan-
demic or being stuck at home 
for the seventh month in a 
row. They got to watch foot-
ball and savor a fall Saturday 
as it was meant to be.

The Big Ten isn’t quite 

there yet. While those con-
ferences have all faced 
pandemic-related problems in 
their returns to play, the Big 
Ten opted to prioritize player 
safety, postponing the season 
until it could mandate daily 
COVID-19 testing.

That means Michigan and 

its conference foes still have 
to wait a few weeks for their 
turn at a football Saturday. 
But when Oct. 24 arrives, it 
also means they’ll be more 
likely to finish the season 
and avoid pandemic talking 
points.

There will be fewer ques-

tions about quarantines and 
more about offensive schemes. 
Josh Gattis will be able to say 
more things like, “(Joe Mil-
ton) has every throw in the 
bag plus the extra club that 
you don’t need to carry all 

the time” and less like, “On 
some of these platforms, the 
film can become a little bit 
choppy based on your internet 
strength,” which was a real 
problem Michigan had to deal 
with when he last spoke with 
media in May.

So when you start to roll 

your eyes at coach speak or 
unnecessary Twitter contro-
versies, remember what that 
felt like. Remember how close 
we were to not having a sea-
son at all.

And then savor what we 

have, even if it’s only 2020’s 
version of normal.

Mackie can be reached at 
tmackie@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @theo_mackie.

This football season won’t be normal. Enjoy it anyway.

THEO
MACKIE

NATALIE STEPHENS/Daily

A shortened, conference-only Michigan football season beginning at the end of October may seem strange on the surface, but as far as 2020 goes, it is about as close as you could get to normalcy. 

