A basic look at Michigan's football roster shows an experienced roster riddled with returning starters and other team leaders. Running back is no exception, but there are two vastly different ways to frame the position.
You could say the Wolverines boast a two-time leading rusher and unquestioned starter. He's the No. 1 ahead of last season's backup as well as a previous highly touted prospect and an incoming 4-star recruit. Michigan is stacked with talent.
On the other hand, you could choose a pessimistic route.
De'Veon Smith's season-high mark is an unspectacular 753 yards. Drake Johnson managed just 271 yards last year, while Ty Isaac fell off the travel squad and still hasn't sniffed his 4-star potential. Kareem Walker enrolled early, but high expectations for true freshmen often go unmet.
Deciding which outlook is more correct doesn't matter. What's clear, however, is that the Wolverines can improve immensely at running back, yet there's no guarantee it happens in 2016.
Michigan's offense will not change from being a run-focused attack. That's a staple of head coach Jim Harbaugh's philosophy.
But last season, the offense mustered just 4.2 yards per first-down carry, which ranked 96th of 128 Football Bowl Subdivision teams.
Smith was even less effective. He gained just 397 yards on 105 attempts, averaging a meager 3.8 yards on the initial down. Plus, according to B/R research, 139 of Smith's 180 season carries—77.2 percent—gained five yards or fewer.
Nevertheless, Harbaugh said during spring practice the senior is currently the starter.
Perhaps Smith has taken significant strides in his development. After watching Harbaugh take what most analysts considered a 7-5 team to a 10-3 record, that possibility cannot be discarded so easily.
Then again, blind hope isn't smart, either. Situational usage certainly had a small effect on Smith, but he tallied a mere 28 total first downs in 2015.
Comparatively, Johnson moved the chains nearly half as many times (13) in less than three times the carries (54). He also recorded 10 gains of 10-plus yards compared to 15 for Smith.
So does that make the other senior a better option? Maybe. But after working back from his second torn left ACL, Johnson was run over by a forklift. Harbaugh said the accident "would have killed a lesser man," per Mark Snyder of the Detroit Free Press.
Lumping a freak incident with recurring knee issues to call Johnson injury-prone is unfair. Still, the redshirt senior must recover from a scary mishap and hasn't held a significant role for an entire season while at full strength.
That's a stark contrast to Isaac, who was available for all of 2015 but slipped out of the rotation anyway. To his credit, instead of grumbling, Isaac went to work.
"I had to calm down, relax, understand there were things I needed to work on," Isaac said, according to ESPN.com's Dan Murphy. "It's not like it was going to be the end of the world for me. I still have opportunities."
Isaac looked like a new and improved back during the spring game, twice displaying a previously unseen burst of speed on gains of 30 and 29 yards while running for a scrimmage-best 78 yards.
But putting stock in a spring game performance is equally as dangerous as expecting greatness immediately.
Walker—the No. 4 running back of the 2016 class—arrived on campus in January. He registered three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons and a pair of 1,500-yard outputs in high school. Walker hopes that success will continue right away.
"I came here to be great," he said on signing day, per Nick Baumgardner of MLive.com. "I didn't come here to sit the bench."
Although the opportunity is apparent, Walker will probably serve as an occasional rotational piece this season—especially considering the way Harbaugh views Smith.
The biggest wild card of this situation, though, could be the offensive line. Four starters return, and projected left tackle Grant Newsome impressed the coaches enough as a true freshman to not only avoid a redshirt but earn meaningful reps.
After inserting Newsome against Michigan State, Harbaugh lauded the tackle. According to Josh Henschke of Scout, the coach said:
He's physically mature than most, mentally very sharp moreso than most. He's a battler, he's tough. He doesn't take a backseat since he's been here. He gives no quarter, takes no quarter. I like that about him, all those things. I know he's going to be really good and he's ready now, you get better at football by playing football.
Plus, the unit as a whole improved considerably between the 2015 regular-season finale and 2016 Citrus Bowl. Prior to this season's opener against Hawaii, position coach Tim Drevno will have completed two more monthlong sessions that further develop his players.
Maybe Michigan's O-line dominated the offseason and this is the year Harbaugh's philosophy becomes apparent. Besides, the running backs should avoid a collective negative label. Behind a decent blocking unit, the Wolverines would put together a couple of excellent games.
As excitement builds, however, expectations rise—sometimes to unfair or unattainable levels. Last year, the offensive line was a mediocre run-blocking group. The Wolverines aren't simply looking to improve on a borderline-great campaign; no, their proverbial bar needs to hit "acceptable" and "solid" before flirting with "great."
Anticipating much better than average results from Michigan on the ground in 2016 is likely based more on hope than actual previous performance.
Yet Harbaugh and Co. shattered expectations last year. Perhaps the backfield is another major, unexpected success story. Heading into the season, there's no definitive conclusion either way.
All recruiting information via 247Sports. Stats from cfbstats.com or B/R research. Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Follow Bleacher Report CFB Writer David Kenyon on Twitter @Kenyon19_BR.
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