Michigan Football: Devin Gardner Needs to Be a Major Contributor in 2012

Michigan football has large shoes to fill after an 11-2 season in 2011. While Denard Robinson is poised for a big year, he can't do it all by himself—especially on an offense that's relatively thin on skill position talent.

Enter Devin Gardner.

The 6'4", 205-pound quarterback turned heads as one of the top dual-threat QB prospects in his recruiting class, and he's got all-world athleticism.

But that recruiting class was three years ago. Gardner is now a junior, still stuck (far) behind Denard Robinson in the quarterback depth chart. Even with the spot reps he gets during games, that's not a good use of Gardner's talents.

Now, Michigan coaches are firmly aware of this problem, and they evidently tried Gardner at receiver this spring. He played quarterback at the spring game, and he wasn't very good, but coaches have insisted that Gardner hasn't moved to wideout. Not yet, anyway. It's hard to imagine Alabama planning to face Gardner as a quarterback, though.

So, here's the deal: Devin Gardner needs to be on that field next year. He needs to be a hybrid WR/QB—in that order. If Denard Robinson is healthy, Gardner should be split out wide. If Robinson needs a breather or is dinged up, Gardner should be the next under center. Heck, Russell Bellomy is just about as serviceable at QB as Gardner if Michigan coaches don't want Gardner pulling double duty.

The talent is there for Gardner as a receiver. Here he is in camp while still in high school (NSFW audio alert: Jay-Z doing his swear words):

There's even talk of Gardner instantly being "Michigan's best receiver," which was the hot rumor from Michigan's spring practice.

But if that were the case, Michigan's being oddly noncommittal about it. Sure, spring-practice secrecy can be important, but these coaches have loved to talk about the players and their progressions this year. Witness the transcripts of Al Borges and Greg Mattison, courtesy of MGOblog. This isn't exactly a Bill Belichick operation.

AnnArbor.com asked whether or not Gardner will reach 15 catches on the season, and the voting's basically split in half (one columnist took the "over," one took the "under" and as of 4:00 PM CT, poll responders have chosen "under" by a 52-48 count).

That's not good enough.

Michigan's woefully thin at wide receiver this year, and even if Gardner's not the best wideout on the team (as low a hurdle as that is to clear), he's got to be good enough to be on the field just due to his athleticism.

And if he's on the field, he should be getting at least three targets a game from Robinson—and you would hope that that translates into at least 20 catches. What we'd really like to see is two or three times that, but that's likely a year away. 

This is a good move for Michigan from a personnel standpoint, and it would behoove Gardner to embrace it. It's also critical for the team's offensive success next year that such a move works out.