The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Wednesday, October 7, 2020 — 19

With three weeks until opener, 

offensive line hoping to find stability

Offensive line, by nature, is 

a position rooted in contact. So 
this fall, when Michigan had to 
practice without pads until last 
Wednesday, it was perhaps the 
position group hardest hit.

A year ago, the Wolverines 

would have been well equipped 
to handle such adversity. Their 
offensive line was returning 
four starters from a unit that 
had gelled down the stretch in 
a 10-3 season.

This year, not so much. All 

four of those returning starters 
are gone. Even Jalen Mayfield 
— the only returning member 
of last year’s starting five — was 
away from the team training for 
the NFL Draft before reversing 
his decision when the Big Ten 
reinstated its season.

As such, Michigan is left 

with an inexperienced line that 
has never played together at a 
time when continuity is more 
important than ever.

According 
to 
redshirt 

sophomore Ryan Hayes, the 
starting unit as of Sept. 3 
was himself at left tackle; 
either senior Chuck Filiaga 
or redshirt freshman Trevor 
Keegan at left guard; fifth-
year senior Andrew Vastardis 
at 
center; 
redshirt 
junior 

Andrew Stueber at right guard 
and redshirt freshman Karsen 
Barnhart at right tackle. Two 
weeks later, Mayfield’s return 

vaulted him into the starting 
right tackle spot.

“These guys are going into 

their third and fourth years 
in the program,” offensive 
coordinator 
Josh 
Gattis 

said this month, eschewing 
requisite preseason confidence. 
“They’re 
not 
your 
typical 

freshmen or first-year players 
that you’re looking to replace 
a lot of your offensive linemen 
with.”

Still, only Mayfield, Stueber 

and Hayes have started a single 
college game — a daunting 
proposition 
regardless 
of 

preparation time. And now, 
missing 
so 
much 
contact 

practice only adds to the 
uncertainty.

The 
least 
experienced 

members 
— 
like 
Keegan, 

Barnhart, freshman Zak Zinter 
and redshirt freshman Trente 
Jones — haven’t been able to 
catch up to the physicality 
of college football. Even the 
returners 
have 
only 
been 

able to build their chemistry 
in contact-less drills, a far 
cry 
from 
game 
situations, 

where the offensive line will 
be required to protect a new 
starting quarterback from 300-
pound pass rushers.

So without being able to 

build 
up 
the 
Wolverines’ 

physical 
aptitude, 
offensive 

line coach Ed Warinner has 
focused on the mental game 
in hopes that the physical side 
will follow.

“The biggest problem with 

an offensive line is learning on 
the fly,” Stueber said. “You may 
get a base look but then when 
it starts changing, that’s when 
an offensive line can truly fall 
apart.

“If you don’t understand the 

concept of the defense, who 
needs to be blocked, where 
the run is aimed — where the 
aiming point is — then it can 
really fall apart. But now that 
we have the mental aspect of 
the game locked down, when 
the picture changes on the fly, 
we can quickly adapt to that 
and I think that’s a big aspect 
that offensive linemen struggle 
to grasp.”

Still, 
there 
are 
a 
few 

technical pointers Warinner 
has been able to instill in his 
team. Without being able to 
fine-tune his players’ power 
and balance — two skills 
reliant on game-like reps — he’s 
focused on their first few steps, 
eyes and hand placement.

Couple that with the mental 

aspect and Stueber believes 
the Wolverines are uniquely 
prepared 
to 
turn 
pad-less 

practices into success on the 
field.

“I feel like as far as the 

mental side of the O-line, like I 
said, I think we’re pretty much 
there,” Stueber said. “We have 
a whole understanding of the 
offense, a whole understanding 
of how it can change and how 
we can adapt to it. I just think 
the next piece is the physical 
side.”

THEO MACKIE

Managing Sports Editor

ALEC COHEN/Daily

The Wolverines will enter their season and full-pad practices with an inexperienced offensive line.

Meet Marlin Klein, Michigan’s

unlikely 2022 commit

It doesn’t make much sense that 

Marlin Klein would be here, even 
under normal circumstances. Not 
many talented, athletic Europeans 
drop everything and move to 
America to play American football. 
Fewer get college offers. Fewer still 
deal with a pandemic that upends 
the entire process.

Klein, a high school junior, 

became Michigan’s third class of 
2022 commitment on Sept. 22. The 
announcement drew little fanfare. 
The tight end has three stars to his 
name and no one on the Wolverines’ 
coaching staff has seen him play. 
He got on their radar when his 
coach at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee 
School in Georgia, Joe Sturdivant, 
edited a highlight video to better 
show off his abilities. He wanted 
coaches to see him running.

“Sometimes you get those big 

guys, they don’t see how fast you 
are,” Sturdivant said. “So I just put 
the first one of him catching it and 
taking off and accelerating. Making 
a couple big time catches over the 
shoulder. What I would want to see 
when I was recruiting.”

By the time Michigan tight 

ends 
coach 
Sherrone 
Moore 

reached out, Klein was back at 
home near Cologne, Germany due 
to the pandemic. The two built a 
relationship that culminated in 
the closest thing to a visit currently 
allowed under NCAA rules — Klein 
came up to Ann Arbor and walked 
around campus himself, seeing 
the outside of some buildings and 
getting lunch with tight end Luke 
Schoonmaker and defensive end 
Julius Welschof. Following the 
visit, Klein, who said he speaks 

with Moore two or three times a 
week, committed.

His 
reasoning 
for 
picking 

Michigan, though, goes beyond 
that. When he started watching the 
game, the Wolverines were one of 
the few teams he knew. 

“It was always Michigan, it’s the 

Big House, big stadium,” Klein said. 
“It was kinda like the only team my 
parents really knew about.”

So, here he is.
Klein’s parents have supported 

him in this endeavor, one that — 
as of now — looks like it will pay 
off in a college scholarship. It’s 
only been three years since Klein 
attended his first football practice. 
He had played soccer for eight 
years, usually in goal because of his 
height (he now stands 6-foot-7) and 
quickness, then played basketball 
for two. That opened the door to 
American sports. One day, Klein 
went to his local football club, the 
Cologne Crocodiles, and started 
playing for them.

“I just really spent a lot of 

time getting to know the game of 
football, on my weekend, during 
my free time,” Klein said. “That 
made it a lot easier. It was just so 
different from all the other sports 
I’ve played before, but I really got it 
quickly, I would say, just because I 
really wanted to play football.”

Within a year or two, he was 

the best prospect in his class in all 
of Germany. That drew the eye of 
Bjorn Werner.

Werner, a German-born former 

defensive end for Florida State and 
the Indianapolis Colts from 2013-
15, started an organization called 
Gridiron Imports after his playing 
career ended. The goal is to find 
European talent, get them to high 
school in the U.S. and, hopefully, 
Division I and the NFL. He met 

Klein at a camp in Cologne and sent 
out his tape.

“They really saw talent and all 

the coaches talked to my parents,” 
Klein said. “They just supported 
me because they knew I want to do 
this. And I feel like that’s my future 
and that’s what I want to do for the 
next years.”

By September 2019, he was 

touching down in Georgia. In 
Germany, 
he’d 
taken 
English 

classes, but now he had to learn the 
language fluently and live on his 
own at a boarding school.

“All my friends, my family, 

everything’s 
back 
home 
in 

Germany,” Klein said. “... So it was 
really hard, but I just had to take 
this step, just to get to where I’m at 
right now.”

Four games into his high school 

career, he already had an offer 
from Arizona State. The list grew 
from there, culminating in the 
commitment to Michigan. 

In the two years between now 

and stepping on campus, Klein will 
need to fill out his frame and gain 
blocking ability to match his 6-foot-
7 height.

“I think teams are really 

counting on him to be blocking 
tight end that can separate and 
run 
routes,” 
Sturdivant 
said. 

“Especially 
for 
coach 
(Jim) 

Harbaugh, he’s a 12 personnel, 11 
personnel guy, You gotta be able to 
block.”

Klein is matter of fact about the 

whole process. He went through it 
because he wants to play football 
against 
the 
best 
competition 

possible, he says, and this was the 
way to take it as far as he could. 

“That’s why I came here and 

that’s who I want to play against,” 
Klein said. “So I got used to it. And 
I’ve handled it pretty good, I think.”

ETHAN SEARS

Managing Sports Editor

A

s I wrapped up a 
Zoom interview with 
Benjamin Becker on 
Friday, it occured to 

me how odd this must all be for 
him. We’d just finished watching a 
36-year-old Andre Agassi in tears 
after Becker 
had beaten 
him at the 
2006 U.S. 
Open, in the 
last match 
of his career. 
Becker, now 
an assistant 
coach for the 
Michigan 
men’s tennis 
team, agreed 
to watch some of the match over 
Zoom and talk about a moment 
that is more defining and more 
significant for his opponent than 
for himself. 

Unless you follow the ATP Tour 

closely, Becker’s name won’t stand 
out. He played professionally for 
12 years, climbing as high as the 
top 40 and winning one title, the 
2009 Ordina Open — a 250-point 
grass court tournament on grass 
held in Rosmalen, a town in the 
Netherlands’ North Brabant prov-
ince. So, since that fateful day in 
2006, Becker has been asked about 
that Agassi match. When you 
end a Hall of Famer’s career, the 
moment can overshadow your own 
accomplishments.

“Sometimes it is annoying that 

you always get kind of, everybody 
looks at this match and always 
talks to you about that match and 
also compares you to that match 
and expects something,” Becker 
said. “... During my career, to be 
honest, it was getting annoying 
because everybody would just talk 
to you about it and it’s all they ask. 
But now afterwards, now I can sit 
down and talk about it a little bit 

more as well and get to enjoy the 
match.”

The match itself, a 7-5, 7-6, 4-6, 

7-5 win for Becker, is more com-
petitive than Agassi describes in 
his book, “Open.” After devoting 
the opening pages to a five-setter 
against Marcos Baghdatis in the 
second round and the physical 
debilitations he was suffering at 
the time, Agassi gives this one just 
a few cursory paragraphs. “Becker 
takes me out in four sets. I can 
feel the tape of the finish line snap 
cleanly across my chest,” Agassi 
writes.

It’s quite a good summary of 

Agassi’s standing as a beloved 
20-year veteran. So imagine 
Becker, an up-and-comer of 25 to 
Agassi’s 36, walking into a packed 
Arthur Ashe Stadium to face one of 
the game’s all time greats in front 
of a crowd that is rooting against 
him. Almost immediately, Becker 
was facing break point at 0-40, 

needing Agassi to make a mistake 
to stay on serve. And somehow, the 
game’s great returner did just that, 
hitting a forehand into the net.

 
“I didn’t play aggressive at all,” 

Becker said. “I was very passive. I 
knew how much, how important 
this is. How much of an impact 
this can have. I feel like once I 
saved the first break point, I kind 
of had confidence I could come 
back in the game, and so this was 
a big opportunity for him that he 
didn’t take advantage at all.”

On-screen, Agassi reacts to the 

miss visibly. “He knew it right 
away,” Becker says. “... He missed 
the big chance.”

The match rolls on to a sec-

ond set tiebreak and Becker has 
already lost a point on serve. He 
goes down 6-4 and nets a fore-
hand.

“You can tell, I wasn’t loose 

enough in my arms,” Becker says. 

He’s vastly overestimating my abil-
ity to glean from a pixelated video. 
“I didn’t go to the ball enough. Just 
moving parallel to the baseline and 
miss it in the net, which is obvious 
that I was a little bit too tight in my 
forearm and too nervous.”

I ask if he can make that diag-

nosis in real time. “Yes,” he says. 
“You feel it.”

There’s something to be said 

here for the level of ability it takes 
to have even a relatively pedestrian 
professional tennis career — this 
fourth round appearance at the 
2006 U.S. Open was his best ever 
at a major and he was never ranked 
higher than 35th in the world. 
That resume is easy to overlook. In 
reality, it takes incredible skill to 
get that far. 

He says his serve was a weak-

ness in juniors, but here it’s a 
weapon. He’s throwing one of 
the great returners of all time 
off his game, winning 13 straight 

points on serve during the first set. 
By the time we get to the fourth 
set, with Becker facing a fifth 
down 5-4, he’s telling me how 
tired he was, cramping up in the 
August sun. On the screen, Agassi 
is hunched over and barely moving 
— he had collapsed walking to his 
car after his second round match 
— and they’re still playing through.

Becker watches his own second 

serve just hit the line. He’s down 
set point. After a few ground-
strokes, Agassi sails a forehand 
out. 

“I got really lucky,” he says. 

“You can see I’m not moving at all. 
... He was kinda surprised by my 
mishit and just doesn’t move to the 
ball at all and just frames it as well. 
I got really lucky on this point for 
sure.”

On screen, it looks like Agassi 

has missed his chance. In the pres-
ent, Becker is talking about how he 
didn’t want to call out the trainer 

for cramps or show weakness. He 
comes back to win the game and 
tie the set at five, then decides to 
go for it. To that point, he’d been 
conserving energy on Agassi’s 
service games, but now he gets 
handed a point to make it 15-0.

 “You have more in you than you 

think,” Becker says, describing his 
mindset. “You can do more. I know 
you’re trying to be a little bit con-
servative if you have energy on his 
service games, but now is the time 
to make a push.”

He wins the game and serves 

out the match. The crowd gives 
Agassi an ovation. The younger 
Becker is shuffled off screen. Now, 
despite recalling exactly how he 
mishit a forehand in the second 
set of this match, Becker doesn’t 
remember this part especially 
well.

“I don’t know what we said 

at the net,” Becker says. “I don’t 
know what happened after. I 
remember the interview, just bare-
ly. I remember they kind of told 
me to leave and go into the tunnel, 
just to kind of give him room for 
his speech and then I came back to 
sign some autographs. I remember 
this part, but it’s all more of a blur.”

Soon after, Becker lost to Andy 

Roddick, an eventual finalist in 
the tournament that year and its 
champion in 2003. A few months 
ago, he watched back the whole 
match for the first time when a 
German TV station asked him 
to participate for Agassi’s 50th 
birthday. He wasn’t irked by the 
request.

“I learned a lot from the match 

to be honest,” he said. “But I enjoy 
(it) way more now than I did dur-
ing my career.”

Sears can be reached at 

searseth@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @ethan_sears.

Looking back at Benjamin Becker’s most memorable moment

ETHAN
SEARS

COURTESY OF MICHIGAN PHOTOGRAPHY

In 2006, assistant men’s tennis coach Benjamin Becker defeated Andre Agassi in four sets at the U.S. Open. 

FILE PHOTO/Daily

Michigan tight ends coach Sherrone Moore worked to secure Marlin Klein’s commitment to Michigan.

