Michigan football's new star could win a major award

If a player is to win a postseason award, that tends to mean something went incredibly right for the team. And for Michigan football, it will need all the help it can get in Kyle Whittingham's first year, given how daunting the schedule appears to be.

ESPN went through its projected top 25 and tried to figure out if each team had one player to win one major postseason award, who, and what would it be? Though quarterback Bryce Underwood had predicted he would eventually win the Heisman Trophy last offseason, that was certainly not ESPN's prediction. But, who and what it chose isn't terribly off the mark.

Though not necessarily spoken of much in and around Ann Arbor, former Utah edge rusher John Henry Daley appears to be getting a lot of offseason hype from national outlets. Perhaps the quiet of those locally comes due to his rehabilitation of his ruptured Achilles still ongoing (he's set to return to full activity on June 1). But ESPN thinks if anyone at Michigan were to win an award, it would be Daley for the best edge rusher performance.

DE John Henry Daley, Ted Hendricks Award (best defensive end)

Daley came to Ann Arbor with coach Kyle Whittingham from Utah, giving the Wolverines an elite pass rusher. Daley tied for seventh nationally last year with 11.5 sacks, and the underlying numbers reinforce his prowess rushing the quarterback. He was fourth with an edge pressure rate of 19.6%, and his average time to first pressure was 2.65 seconds, just a tick behind Miami star defensive end (2.63), who was the 15th pick in last month's NFL draft. If Daley continues putting up big numbers at his new school, he could become Michigan's first Hendricks Award winner since in 2021. --