Previously: Last year’s profiles. S Damani Dent, S/Nk Zeke Berry, S/HSP Keon Sabb.

Brentwood, TN – 6’2”, 185
[Marc-Grégor Campredon]		247:                    3.55*	3*, 87, NR overall #61 CB, #24 TN
		Rivals:                    3.68*	3*, 5.7, NR overall #47 CB, #17 TN
		ESPN:                    3.53*	3*, 78, #343 SE #79 CB, #25 TN
		On3:                    3.52*	3*, 87, NR overall #53 CB, #20 TN
		Composite:                    3.74*	3*, 0.8742, #603 ovr #53 CB, #20 TN
		Other Suitors	Aub, WA, Tenn, UF, UK, BC, VT
		YMRMFSPA	Jeremy Clark
Previously On MGoBlog	Hello post by me.
Notes	Twitter. Early enrollee.
Film:
Senior film; suggested title: 6 minutes of receivers from the whiniest state in the union begging for PI:   vs D'Andre Martin. Junior film. Hudl page.

Oh no, we did not just insult all long and tall cornerbacks just because Don Brown's attempt to recruit a class of them yielded starters Vincent Gray and Gemon Green. For the kids whose football interest came online after the 2018 class, there was a time, back when all the Harbaugh jokes were still being written, when canceling was just something that happened to fade merchant receivers when they played Michigan. Strapping lads like Stribling and Clark explored the deepest reaches of the sideline. From Tom Curtis to Gemon Green, the gallant goliath cornerbacks of Michigan have long protected their enemies from contact with oblong spheroid projectiles in much the same way that Gary Gray here did not.

Pollard wasn't so much a guy that Michigan identified they wanted as a guy that Michigan fans demanded they go get after we all watched him and teammate Junior Colson take on IMG and J.J. McCarthy. In case you missed it, Pollard was the guy no-no'ing all the five-stars.

3 star CB Myles Pollard getting his called on ESPNU! @me1espollard @RavenwoodFB #GEICOShowcase pic.twitter.com/NKN9KipcoY

— NIBC (@NIBCOfficial) September 26, 2020

The receiver getting sorry'd there was Jacorey Brooks, a 2021 Bama 5-star signing, who drew Pollard all game and was held to 36 yards on three catches on something like (going from memory here) 9(?) targets.

Shortly before that Sam Webb had gone down to look at Colson, and returned singing panegyrics for the corner in the next class. Between the IMG game and 2020's ignoble end, Sam had everyone on board except Michigan, probably because Zordich/Brown knew they were out the door, possibly because they under orders never to touch anything that looked like the Sims+Faustin+Gray+Double-Greens class again.

That immediately changed with the hire of Mo Linguist, certified Tennessee recruiting magician. Agent Will Johnson was dispatched to court his fellow 2022 CB like a five-star, as Michigan frantically worked to catch the rest of Pollard's now impressive suite of suitors: Oklahoma, Washington, FSU, Oregon, and "Bama" having joined Kentucky, Virginia Tech, PSU, and BC.

When Linguist left to become head coach of Buffalo there was only guy Michigan could have hired to rescue, let alone improve their chances with Pollard, that being his main contact at Kentucky Steve Clinkscale. By June it seemed likely, but we sweated out trips to Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Auburn before uncorking the champaign at Sam's.

Pollard enrolled early, so we got to see him in spring. In fact you already saw a photo of it in this profile. It was that play when converted linebacker Kalel Mullings turned the corner on a corner.

Maybe Mullings is really fast? [Marc-Grégor Campredon]

That's a one-play sample that may not mean what you think, but it's also the reason the twitchy, heady, physical playmaker who's taller than most of the guys he'll be covering wasn't ranked like a Will Johnson. Of course, it was a spring game, not The Game. Like the school who ultimately caught him, Pollard's a guy who might fall behind, might even stumble, flail, grasp around, but just when you think he's toast, he finds something nobody else has. And then there he is.

[After THE JUMP: I swear up and down that it's not 2018]

---------------------

Hard to buy clothes for.

All the profiles lead with the main ingredient:

• 247 (Clint Brewster): "Long levered cornerback with legit height and wingspan. Uses his length to his advantage…"
• Rivals (Tim Sullivan): "He's a long, lean cornerback."
• On3 (Tim Verghese): "The Ravenwood cornerback is long, twitchy with great instincts."
• Michigan Insider (Sam Webb): "I mean, he's 6-2, maybe 6-2.5, 175. He's gonna play his college ball in the 190s. So, he has some strength and explosiveness that's going to be added to his frame."
• The Wolverine (EJ Holland): "The first time I saw him he was just a raw, tall, lanky prospect that had some upside, to now he’s more of a complete corner. He’s still got that upside, but he’s really refined his game technically. He’s every bit of 6-2. He’s extremely long."
• Touch the Banner (Magnus): "Pollard is on the taller end of cornerbacks."
• His coach : "I’ve got to tell you about another kid of mine. This kid Myles Pollard. He's a 6-2.5, 175-pound corner."
• His trainer (Daryl Graham): "Well, I think one thing, for Myles’ length and size."
• His position coach (Steve Clinkscale): "Myles is coming into his own, too. He’s starting to use that body and cover better."

ESPN, the fire-and-forget service, lists him as 6'1"/180, which I don't know where they got that from because Pollard was already listed 6'2"/185 on his sophomore (2019) high school roster, which often forms the basis for these services. 247 and On3 also use 6'2"/185, which Rivals has him at 180. Meanwhile we've got Pollard's trainer over here saying the kid's bigger than an NFL-measured:

“Then I’ve also got him working with (former NFL defensive back) Alan Ball,” Graham later added. That's helping him out tremendously because Alan was a long corner. Pretty much the same stature and size, except Myles is bigger.”

Ball's Illinois career predates our photography but I remember him at Illinois, and he was legitimately 6'2". He was also a track star in Detroit before that. Whatever's real, Pollard's a beanpole. Tim used to work here so he gets to describe what that looks like in football:

Pollard was the top recruit in this game, and showed why. He's a long, lean cornerback - the type that the Virginia Tech coaching staff really likes (explaining why they offered, though they ultimately missed out on him when he picked Michigan).

He uses his long frame well, and appeared to be a better overall athlete - one of the books on him is "decently fast, but not a burner" - than his reputation holds at this point. … He's a very skinny guy with a narrow waist, and will have to bulk up a bit to succeed at the next level.

Twitch

If you're already picturing the kind of stick who can't transition from his back pedal without dad noises, rest assured that Pollard is more in the Ben St-Juste vein of dude who can turn around faster than Mom when a sweet voice from the lawn asks "What's this?" Grandpa Helmholdt, who's seen the entire catalog of Big Ten tin men in his day, addressed your fears directly:

Tall cornerbacks tend to be stiff and have trouble flipping their hips and being smooth in their turns, but when I first saw Pollard live more than a year ago, his fluidity was one of his best characteristics.

24/7's Son of a Coach credited Pollard with "twitchy feet and tight moving change of direction. "24/7's Midwest analyst Allan Trieu caught him at a camp in Southeast Michigan and praised the hippy swivels, albeit with the Keon Sabb caveat:

"showed he could transition and change directions at his size."

Sam Webb called Pollard "extremely fluid" and suggested he could sink his hips and explode in and out of cuts or breaks like a "cat-quick" 5-10 guy. TTB also unqualified it with a "despite his height" when crediting Pollard with quick feet, smooth backpedal, and the ability to flip his hips. Pollard's trainer put "very good feet and hips" after size when listing Myles's strengths, then mentioned they're working on his lower body strength, quickness and speed.

Which is a thing.

Speed is a thing.

Just one thing. While the trainer claims Pollard is "about a mid 4.4. to 4.5 guy," even the positive game takes seem to be screaming FAAAAAAAAKE. Going just on what people said about them as recruits (as far as I can recall), in the pantheon of 6'1"+ Michigan cornerbacks I think you have to put Pollard on the slower end:

Before you argue about my Very Scientific™ chart thank me for sparing you some names off Never Forget.

Magnus listed it as one of two concerns:

One is a lack of blazing speed, though I think his length will make up for some of that. The other is that on occasion in man coverage, he will guess wrong, opening up his hips a little bit early. I think that can be overcome with more training and film work.

Tim scouted a game last season and tried to put a good face on it at first:

"He may not be a pure blazer, but he glides across the field with those long legs and arrives faster than you might expect."

but…

He will get beat at the line occasionally, and that's where you can really see that he doesn't have the pure speed to be a truly elite prospect. He works hard to get back in-phase, but an LCA receiver got on top of him at one point, and Pollard couldn't quite catch up.

That play was a PBU, fwiw, but badly thrown by a bad QB, Tim explained. Helmholdt was also cautioned, suggesting Pollard "will need to stay mindful of his keeping his speed up to stay on the outside during his career," before coming back to the competitive nature. His coach, via Webb, shared Pollard "has good speed and fluidity at that size." Webb's own opinion addressed the speed directly:

So he's not a guy that's gonna burn up a track. He's not a 10.5 100-meter guy. You put him on a stopwatch on a football field. He probably runs you a 4.5. But he's 6-2.5, he has really good quickness, he can stick with receivers in and out of breaks and he can close a lot of ground with his wingspan.”

These are all hedged comments to differentiate Pollard from Will Johnson's level. Still, if they're saying it…

Can you substitute it with compete?

That nature is brought up *all the time* with Pollard. Here's his dad (talking to Webb):

[Myles] is a true competitor. The higher the stakes, the more you're going to get out of him. I've seen it time and time again. Ever since he's been playing sports, anytime there’s supposed to be a game or someone is expected to dominate him, he always reverses the tables.”

Brewster credited Pollard with a "quick trigger on the ball with awareness and route intelligence," but the whole back end of the scout was about turning on the want-to:

Works hard to stay in-phase with good catchup speed. Very competitive in jump ball situations. Raised his level of play against good competition.

That could be interpreted as backhanded. Helmholdt was at the same camp as Trieu, and managed to sound disappointed when viewing Pollard in a non-game setting:

I have seen Pollard perform better in the past, but when you talk total physical tools, there may not have been a better cornerback prospect in attendance. His performance was solid, but in a group as talented as the one I saw Saturday, there were others who just had better nights.

In another article Helmholdt referenced the IMG game when claiming Pollard "has the competitive fire needed to man an island on the boundaries of a defense." Notably his two big plays in the spring game--stopping Mulling on the "strategic fumble" and raking out an endzone pass to Cornelius Johnson on 4th down" were in high-leverage moments.

But he'll throw it around.

Any vestigial desire to compare Pollard to Channing Stribling dies at run stopping. Stribling was less than mediocre; one reason Michigan ran so much man coverage in 2014-2016 was to remove one of the worst run defenders in recent memory from the equation. Pollard—as the video demonstrates—projects to be one of the best.

Trieu called him a "big, physical prospect." Verghese claimed "Pollard also isn’t shy to lower his shoulder and make plays against the run." Brewster called it "aggressive demeanor and physical style" along with "the desire to make big plays as a run stopper." Helmholdt called him an "outstanding open-field tackler who hits like a safety." His told Sam Michigan is getting "a playmaker, he's physical, he's a ball hawk." Magnus's full quote on the quick feet bit related earlier actually was leading to a remark about run defense:

Despite his height, he has really quick feet and an ability to plant his foot and change direction quickly. That helps him come up and stop the run or tackle on short completions, even if he happens not to be in great position. … He is also a physical run-stopper, can deliver an occasional big hit.

The spring game saw him give up the edge to Kalel Mullings, but Pollard was also the cornerback who flagged the big back down well short of the goal line on the "strategic fumble" that Cornelius Johnson picked up and ran in. Mullings was down, so full points to Pollard on that one.

Tim noted the lack of thicc could become an issue versus the run:

His lack of overall mass was exposed on a couple occasions when LCA threw screens to his side: stalk-blocking absolutely erased him from the play once, and on another occasion he was easily driven to the sideline. Ravenwood switched up its bubble-screen coverage later in the game (sending the safety over the top while Pollard fired on the slot) to avoid that remaining an issue.

That's just what you get with corners, though. He's not Marlin Jackson.

Like how physical? Because sometimes that's not allowed?

Mixed in among the receivers crying for pass interference calls were more than a couple instances of pass interference. This might be referenced in the nods to Pollard's game needing some refinement, but I know tugs from tugs, and Pollard's were the kind (when you're in phase with the receiver) they usually let go, and never looked panicky.

Tim said Pollard "relishes getting his hands on opposing receivers," but his jam technique on the film seems to be a work in progress. His trainer explains Pollard transitioned from receiver after his freshman year, hence not being on anybody's radars when Colson was running up the top 50. Tim:

Pollard's technique outside of jamming situations is sort of a tweener: he's not doing a pure backpedal (though at times he showed the foot quickness to perform that technique, a rarity for players with legs as long as his), but nor is he doing the shuffle-style coverage. He seems to have the ability to do both, but honing them at the next level will be important to execute everything a college system will ask of him.

Why didn't he move up the rankings?

It's a good question. When Pollard committed in July 2021 he was maybe the most pursued 3-star in the country. Lorenz at the time confirmed all of those schools' offers (save Bama's, probably) were committable. That included programs like Washington, Auburn, and Virginia Tech with a strong recent history of finding underrated corners. Jeff Hafley at Boston College was another. And so is Clinkscale, who had Kentucky on Pollard before anybody, and had Michigan reevaluating a few other long-tall Sallies when he arrived.

The most reasonable response is the senior film did not show the kind of development promised by the flash of national interest after the junior film came in. While competitors took late shots at Michigan's other corners—remember late panics with Will Johnson and Kody Jones?—the only post-commit blip with Pollard was a free visit to Auburn that recruiting reporters could barely summon the effort to dramatize. The Bama "offer" that appeared serious in the summer of 2020 ended

Notably, Rivals was the only site at that time to have Pollard listed as a 4-star. Considering the offers, and the tenor of Michigan's mad pursuit over 2021, I was expecting the other sites to move him up. Instead he remained a 3-star (not what we call a 3.5* either), and Rivals joined the others with a late ranking. Rivals is the site that's traditionally been the stickiest about changing star levels, so dropping Pollard a category was likely to have been deliberate, as opposed to a slipping of rankings that happened to pass a boundary. Their top-40 cornerbacks in the class are 4-stars; Pollard's drop was from 34th to 47th.

It says more that they left Pollard behind Jaeden Gould, the long-and-tall CB from New Jersey that Michigan conspicuously wouldn't allow to commit, whom Penn State summarily dropped, and who ultimately settled on Nebraska over Boston College. On the other hand, ND-bound Benjamin Morrison, my 2nd favorite CB nationally, is 29th, so it might just mean the class with a COVID junior year was hard to rank when your (and 24/7's) former founder is starting up a competitor (On3) and raiding your staff.

For what it's worth, the Michigan sites, including dour ol' Magnus, were still calling Pollard underrated by Signing Day.

Etc. Nickname is Coach. Wrote an article for the local player explaining why he was leaving Whine Country and I didn't know this:

There are weekly meetings with Michigan’s most successful alumni real estate professionals and a solid mentoring program to help you build a network that would take years to develop on my own.

Why Jeremy Clark? Stribling is our holotype for the Don Brown-era long and lengthy cornerbacks but he was more of a Morgan Trent—great speed, questionable swivel—while I put Pollard in the opposite box. Jeremy Clark was a 6'4" Richard Shermanesque freak, while Pollard is the 6'2.5" version of that guy who blows you away with athleticism (not just for his size) and height. Clark was starting over Stribling in 2016 before his injury, which came just a few snaps into the season too late to get him a medical redshirt, and too early in his renaissance as a cornerback for the NFL to gamble on his recovery.

Another comp could be Benjamin St-Juste, who completed an All-Big Ten career at Minnesota after Michigan thought his injury wouldn't heal. The injury sapped his top speed, but BSJ blew people away with his agility at camps, he had a knack for showing up in big games, and more or less dominated Big Ten West receivers.

I thought of going with Will Johnson's dad based on some old Daily clippings, but honestly if I can only remember Deon as the guy they threw at because they couldn't throw at Ty Law, the comparison is probably only valuable for Dr. Sap and a few others.

Guru Reliability: High-ish. Big school, and they all took a look several times. Their remarks are at odds with their rankings, but that's easy enough to explain since speed is the #1 thing they care about. If Rivals ended up higher overall, their decision to knock him down to 3 stars when he was a 4-star before is more ominous than 24/7's re-rank.

Variance: Low. Seems a very good corner prospect with a baked-in drawback.

Ceiling: Moderate-plus. Eventually some team is going to have a multiple 4.3 guys and you can't keep up.

General Excitement Level: Moderate-plus-plus. Good Big Ten starter, "but Ohio State" still looms. Notched up because at that point Pollard may just compete their face off.

Projection: Michigan clearly recruited the 2022 class with the intention of stocking the depth chart for the present and near future. Projecting when means picking through all the variables at cornerback one year after the position produced the Panicometer and a few months after a just-converted receiver immediately assumed the #2 spot. Gun to my head, Pollard is one of those three to five by next year. After that he'll play boundary, erase big receivers, pick up a few more flags than normal, and maybe stash him away when Ohio State rolls in with their merchant death squad.