2024 Recruiting: Andrew Sprague (2024)

Previously: 2023's profiles. K Dominic Zvada (Tr), S Jacob Oden, S Wesley Walker (Tr), S Jaden Mangham(Tr), CB Aamir Hall (Tr), CB Ricky Johnson (Tr), CB Jeremiah Lowe, CB Jo'Ziah Edmond, LB Jaishawn Barham (Tr),

, LB Cole Sullivan, OLB Mason Curtis, DE Lugard Edokpayi, DE Devon Baxter, DE Dominic Nichols, DT Ted Hammond, DT Owen Wafle, DT/OL Manuel Beigel, NT Deyvid Palepale, C Jake Guarnera, OG Luke Hamilton, OG Ben Roebuck, OG Josh Priebe (Tr), OT/OG Blake Frazier

Notre Dame didn't even make it fun this time. The two scouting giants of college football found the basketball dude who becomes a prototypical offensive tackle by fall, of course, but the school Joe Moore played for was going through an offensive line coach transition, and Michigan was coming off back-to-back Joe Moore Awards. Sprague's only question when he committed was "you're keeping Sherrone right?"

That means no detailed Prister scouting reports. No Tom Loy declarations that the Catholic school kid who likes academics surely will go Irish when they come calling. Even Alabama was withholding an offer until Sprague reciprocated interest. Sure Missouri called to inform the kid from Kansas City that they're relevant now, Nebraska called him "precious," and Oklahoma tried to take a late swing. USC even made things a little interesting. But Michigan's top OL target of the cycle committed to Michigan without the resistance you'd expect from an event like that. Of course he wasn't ranked that highly yet. EJ at Sprague's commitment last summer:

Nobody's seen him in person yet; I think once he competes at maybe some high level camps this off season then you could see him really rise up those rankings.

Sprague hit camps indeed, and despite still regaining weight from hoops season and working through a shoulder injury, he shot up into the top-100s of various services, as 6'8" basketball-playin dudes are wont. Then they noticed. Lorenz:

he's a guy that big programs were taking to swing at even up until like [Signing Day] Notre Dame kind of had this whole strategy of because they knew they were going to lose their legendary coach the NFL. So they waited till they got a new o-coach to try to go after him. I think that Alabama kind of came in late [and threw the bag at him].

Notre Dame's weird strategy of waiting until Harry Hiestand left to offer didn't give them the boost they thought it would. Matt Rhule and others tried to negative recruit off Signgate. Alabama did their thing. Michigan then went on to retire Saban in the Rose Bowl, win the natty, and name Sprague's favorite coach head coach.

I could get used to this.

[After THE JUMP: Jake Long dunks on people.mov.]

BA BA BA BASKETBALL. One of the reasons Sprague wasn't on everybody's radars earlier was under weight from playing basketball, according to Brice. When they did realize what they were looking at, everyone included the basketball at the top of the scouting report. Trieu only needed four words to get there.

Prototype tackle frame. Basketball player who showed really good coordination and ability on the court as a sophom*ore.

…and made a comp to Spencer Brown, the tight end/basketball convert who blew up with the Bills this year. When 247's Gabe Brooks moved Sprague into their top-60 the hoops were in sentence two after the size.

… A 6-foot-8, 295-pounder, Sprague also plays basketball, which certainly enhances his body control and overall athleticism. Additionally, the Kansas City (Mo.) Rockhurst standout owns experience on both sides of the ball on the gridiron, a frequently shared trait among drafted linemen.

On3's Charles Power made it to word fourteen.

interesting prospect, a guy who’s a kind of a very tall, high-cut basketball player with very good feet.

Our signing day podcast made a player comp (to a tackle who played basketball) before saying it.

Brian: What you want from him is you want a prototype left tackle; you want Jake Long; you want a guy who is just erasing pass rushers on on the edge and he's got that potential.

Lorenz: Well good news just like Jake Long he plays basketball and he's crazy athletic. … He really is that prototypical tackle and might be you know the first tackle taken in the draft when it when all said and done. He has that kind of athleticism. They're obviously going to to put some weight on him and have him you know spend some time in the program but if you're looking for the kind of guy that's going to hit as a Jake Long, they haven't really recruited one in a while and I think this is the closest they've had.

Now you've done it guys.

When you say Jake Long's name three times he dunks on you.

Charles Power named Sprague along with Frazier and Marshall as the three offensive players in the class he was highest on, and again it was because of how well he performs at other sports.

…interesting prospect, a guy who’s a kind of a very tall, high-cut basketball player with very good feet.

Kevin Sinclair described a "basketball player who morphed into a four-star tackle," before getting into an interview with Sprague's head coach, who also led with hoops the many times a Michigan or ND or local site came by. Mizzou and Oklahoma recruiting reporters, and Sprague himself talked hardwood or said that's what the coaches talked about. This tells us a couple of things:

1. He's new enough to football that they still think of him as a basketball player.
2. The basketball athleticism translates.

How much football can he football now? Quite a bit? Many of the takes are from his junior year, when Sprague was well on his way to becoming a football player first. Power thought he might require just…

a year or two to continue to get bigger and stronger just from a functional standpoint. But I got to see him in person in January and I came away pretty impressed and I think as a developmental type of offensive lineman fits what they like there.

Trieu thought Sprague filled in his junior year and "can still continue to work on his footwork and general explosiveness. Mike Farrell had some coaching points that might apply to most college sophom*ores.

Adequate hand placement and punch strength allow for savvy DLs to remove his hands leading to him lunge blocking. Adequate angle and combo blocker, overruns his angles and targets due to adequate angle awareness and hand placement. … need to refine his use of hands and processing to be trusted against SEC Pass Rushers. Starter by his 3rd season and has the upside for All-Conference when buying into the technical nuances of the position.

I take his "SEC pass rushers" there to mean an intermediate step between a high school All-America game and the Big Ten, since at the time Farrell wrote this the latest draft didn't have an SEC edge until the 3rd round.

Anyway EJ thought Sprague "more polished than Roebuck and a lot more athletic than Roebuck," which is saying something since Roebuck started four years for one of the best HS o-line coaches in the country.

Translation. EJ Holland's said he looks "like a dancing bear in space" when getting to the second level: "He was putting linebackers in the dirt, safeties in the dirt." I was impressed by how often he was reaching dudes.

…quite a few of them are reach blocks, pulls, and screens. The ability to drive the high school equivalent of me into the turf isn't nearly as impressive as (about 3:00 in the junior highlights) crossing the face of a linebacker trying to get outside. Sprague can move.

Mike Farrell was with me on the quickness.

Good set quickness out of jump and 45 degree sets, looks to make immediate contact with good hand timing allowing for leveraged position at contact. … Very good acceleration and timing on reach blocks, able to get his hat across and uses very good lateral agility to mirror DL toward the sideline. Very good drive and base blocks using very good initial quickness .... Very good on pull, lead and open field blocks.

KSU/local area scout Ryan Wallace was one of the first to see Sprague and it didn't take long (this from a game in September 2022):

Beyond his God given measurements, it's the athleticism at his size that is quick to catch your eye. Not only does he have great length, making him difficult to avoid or get around, he can move and bend with smaller, shifty pass-rushers. … he's less pure size and more of a true football talent than one might presume. He even filled in on several occasions as a defensive tackle, flexing his fundamentals and versatility.

Zach Libby has a paywalled article($) with a lot of details from the April 2023 UC camp, but the gist…

For a player of his size, Sprague was easily at that top tier when it came to seasoned conditioning. … Sprague’s bend from the waist and the longevity of his fitness once the whistle was blown no question ended up being his most impressive quality from the camp.

…and confirmed his thoughts when he saw Sprague live last year.

doesn’t have mobility issues despite weighing 290 pounds. He bends well and played in a three-point stance for most of the game, so he’s flexible. He has the speed to get out in the open field, whether on sweeps, screens, or pulls. He always looked to get pad level, even though the defensive end who played across from him was a foot shorter than him. … movement at his size was good to see. Regularly in the first half, the Blue Springs defensive line would pinch inside, sometimes two gaps over, but Sprague would get his body around to wall up the pass rush. He also has a proper kick step to stop a blitzing defender coming around the outside just behind the line of scrimmage.

Cameron Anderson (who was Colston Loveland's coach) ended up coaching the West squad for All-America week and thought Sprague stood out.

“I’m really, really pleased with him,” Anderson said. “He’s a big, tall kid. He’s really long. A lot of kids that are like that are very clunky and can’t move, but he moves really, really well.

Farrell said "knee bend" a lot.

huge frame with very good lower body strength and knee bend … Good anchor against the bull rush using very good knee bend to sink in and absorb contact … uses his very good acceleration, knee bend and agility to get good angles while moving in a leveraged position.

which brings us to…

THE GREAT KNEE BEND DEBATE

Knee bend and ankle flection—so say a million recruiting articles—are important for linemen, tackles especially, because it's one of those traits that's hard to develop further. The more you bend, the more surface area of your feet is touching the ground, and the more of your weight is distributed over those feet, giving you greater power and control when blocking. Farrell just said Sprague has this three times. Then he said this:

Adequate hand placement and punch strength allow for savvy DLs to remove his hands leading to him lunge blocking.

…which sounds to me like Farrell thinks Sprague just needs to work on his technique. Lucas Reimink also contradicted himself on this point, but oppositely.

He doesn’t bend at the knees consistently, instead bending at the waist at times when run blocking.

but….

On inside zones, he uses his solid pad level to match the defender and lets his good physical strength take over.

Touch the Banner thought Sprague had some "questionable initial footwork," and mentioned bend but not in the nice way.

First step in pass pro is so slow that some edge rushers may get into his body before his first step gets in the ground . . . Tends to open up and give rushers his chest . . . Initial stance is too high and straight-legged. Needs to keep butt lower with more bend in knees

Then we have Sprague's coach qualifying the bends:

"He's very intelligent, and he's athletic," Donohoe said. "He starts on the basketball team. That's what people like. And he bends well for a 6-foot-8 guy, which everybody wants.

I enquired about the incongruence and TTB answered:

https://x.com/TouchTheBanner/status/1644404365820665862

That was based on junior film though; in the season countdown Magnus said he thought Sprague "got noticeably better as a senior." He also gave a comp to Taylor Lewan though, so don't think Magnus is sour on this pickup.

A TOO BIG ONE? Note the hedging however; you can see a lot of "for his size" qualifiers above, which can just mean Sprague is not Semaj Morgan (duh) but probably mean he's not a Long/Lewan level freaky freak. This was also the gist when Sam Webb and friends were discussing 2025 target Andrew Babalola, who is a freaky-freak.

Steve Lorenz: "I got one, although not rankings wise, but I was going to say to me [Babalola]'s the closest thing to Grant Newsome that they've had since they've had Grant. … As far as caliber wise though, I don't know. It's been a while since they've landed a guy who's ranked this highly. I think they'd argue that Andrew Sprague should have been ranked somewhere a bit closer maybe than he is, but even then, I don't know. This would be a big one."

Sam also said Babalola is on another level from Sprague athletically when we were discussing the former on WTKA in July. The implication for Sprague is that he may be Jake Long-like but isn't going to erase everybody.

So says 247's Gabe Brooks, who got to see Sprague in the Army Bowl against the nation's best edge-benders.

already plays with encouraging anchoring ability and functional strength and still possesses immense frame potential at 6-7+, 287 with good length. A lightning-quick edge rusher—such as Noah Carter (Washington)—gives Sprague some trouble outside because of the pad level and redirecting quickness, but Sprague’s frame and general movement ability suggest a very high pass-pro ceiling.

It was still good enough to be a finalist for OL of the year.

Speaking of the God given measurements, Sprague is humongorious biglargehuge in all the ways: Hands, length, frame, etc. He was listed well over 6'7" and up to 290 at the AA Bowl last January. This also translates. Reimink can do the honors, since everyone said it.

In zone schemes, his length is a real issue for DL that try to run the line with him on outside zones. He does a good job of getting his hands on their chest quickly and with his very good length, he locks his arms and turns the defender quickly making a big hole for a ball carrier to run through. … He uses his really good length to lock out defenders who try to get into his pads with a bull-rush, stonewalling them quickly.

Reimink also said as much, then went further and further and further.

Weaknesses

Pad Level
Agility
Pass Blocking Quickness

… his marginal foot speed is a limiting factor to his effectiveness as a puller. … When he faces quicker and more athletic DL types at the next level, he’ll have to get moving quicker when pulling to ensure he can get to the block on time. … In the pass game, Sprague’s only solid agility is a limiting factor to how quickly he gets off the ball and into his pass set. The elite speed-rushers at the next level will be able to get a step on him off the edge simply because he takes a tad long to get into his pass set than you’d prefer.

Reimink thought the latter "could be improved upon with better footwork" or S&C, but then came back to the "only solid" agility on screens. This seems like a bit of a stretch; Sprague doesn't move like a small forward because he's 6'8"/290; if he did we'd be getting Dusty May up in here. Reimink also contradicts himself on this point, with superfluous apostrophes to make it extra irritating.

He really punishes LB’s and DB’s on the second level, constantly pancaking defenders smaller than him.

How can he be pancaking them if he can't get to them Lucas? This is also directly refuted by Holland:

something that really catches my attention when looking at him on film is when he gets to that second level or his team throws a screen pass and he has to go in space and block a linebacker.

Also after the AA Bowl 247 national scout Cooper Petagna said if you leave the qualifier in then you have a sample of one.

Size-withstanding, Sprague’s athletic ability for someone of his nature is best categorized as unique.

MEAN STRONG MUDERBEAR. It's probably a good thing that Sprague isn't able to track down ever Sainristil-shaped object on the Missouri-Kansas border, because some of them might have died. According to everyone, Sprague is a big physical road grader, and a very willing run blocker with some nasty to him who finishes his blocks and plays with aggression, and knows how to use his brute strength to his advantage, pummeling the competition and has the lower body strength to move even heavier DLs off the spot then finish through the whistle consistently because once he is latched onto an opponent, they rarely break free.

At the time Sprague committed Michigan had Hamilton and Roebuck in the class, and Holland thought Sprague was just like them in embodying the "smash" mentality set by Sherrone Moore.

BUT SMART BEAR. Also like Hamilton and Roebuck, Sprague gets a lot of praise for his intelligence: academically, in the way he picked up football, and in the decisions he makes when he's in the thick of it. Said head coach Kelly Donohue:

You only have to tell him one time. One time! Like I said, he picks stuff up really well.

…and Donohue talking to another site:

He’s very smart. We threw him into the wolves as a sophom*ore, but he was ready for it.

In the game he saw Zach Libby claimed Sprague…

doesn’t make mistakes, is well-versed in overall technique and excels in his role as the blindside blocker.

Farrell credited Sprague with good vision to key his assignment, Reimink with good mental processing speed,

…quickly recognizing what the defense is doing and making the proper adjustment on time. On inside zones … does a good job keeping his head up to be aware of second level defenders that he needs to take on should they try to fill his gap. … He is smart, and knows when to get off one defender to absorb another when there’s a blitz or a stunt coming his way. … He can also be used in the screen game, where his mental processing speed helps him to pick out the most dangerous man and he’s athletic enough to get out in front of the ball carrier as well.

So that answers that. Sprague was getting to the little guys with his mind.

THERE IS NO CEILING. This is the other theme repeated in as many ways as there are scouts. Cooper Petagna:

Sprague appears to only be scratching the surface of his sky high potential on the gridiron. … possesses all the physical attributes to one day potentially develop into a Top-32 NFL Draft choice. … will need to continue developing technically from the feet up, the physical clay matched with Michigan’s player development program is a beautiful fit.

Steve Lorenz called Sprague Michigan's most important OL target of the cycle because he "may possess the highest ceiling of any of Michigan's tackle targets," which is saying something since Sherrone was pursuing just about every elite tackle in the country.* Brooks said they moved Sprague up near their top-50 mostly based on "an excellent profile in regards to a long-term NFL Draft projection at tackle. Ryan Wallace of their KSU site came away from the UC camp muttering "there's still so much untapped potential." Allen Trieu called him a the "Classic Midwestern offensive tackle prospect with a high ceiling and seemingly strong intangibles."

Has a lot of raw ability and is trending in the right direction judging on the strides made between his sophom*ore and junior years. Either tackle side is a possibility at this time.

Cam Anderson (Loveland's coach) had the last word after the AA game.

He’s going to be really, really good. He has a high upside. He has the frame to still add some weight. He has a great first step. He has a violent punch. He makes great use of his length but still maintains leverage. … I think he’s going to be an Andrew Gentry type … a 330-pound guy with a high NFL upside.

And here's the capper Brice Marich caught Sprague playing 50% of the snaps at defensive tackle in addition to every snap on offense, recording two TFLs. That's 75% of a Mason Graham (less because Sprague didn't say he's ready to play another 60 minutes), but DT is an exhausting position, and the fact he was taking snaps there while also running 290 pounds around in space and burying Poor Timmies suggests he's already in a good spot with his conditioning, which this Michigan fan from the '90s can assure you often isn't the case with OL recruits.

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* [This was from a list of Michigan's ten most important targets at the beginning of the 2024 cycle. The others on offense: Jadyn Davis, Jordan Marshall, I'Marion Stewart, and Brady Prieskorn. They went 0/5 on defense].

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Etc. Okay I found a little bit of Loy (emphasis mine):

Sprague is going to be a priority target for Rudolph, Bowden, offensive coordinator Gerad Parker and head coach Marcus Freeman. Look for the Fighting Irish to make a major move for him. He’s high on Notre Dame already and the staff rarely misses on kids with genuine interest in the academic and athletic blend Notre Dame provides. He’s a Catholic kid, which helps the Irish as well. Already being compared to the likes of Mike McGlinchey and Joe Alt will also bode well here.

Did you catch that? *Genuine* interest. Loy oh Loy.

In other etcetera here's some good sportsmanship via Libby:

Before Rockhurst regrouped to do the handshake line, Sprague walked over to the Blue Springs’ starting defense and shook the hands of each player.

Why Jon Runyan Sr.? Because Sprague has a lot in common with Jake Long and I'm trying to keep that in the holster. Lewan too.

The guy most like Long in memory is Runyan Sr., a two-time state shot put champion and a second-team all-state basketball center who had an offer to play basketball for (then associate HC) Tom Izzo. So basically Jake Long except a 4th round (#109 overall) pick not 1st overall. Runyan also spent a season playing guard because the 1994 team had three other pros—Tree Jenkins, Mike Sullivan, and Thomas Guynes—available to play tackle and (no offense to certain MGoBlog readers) didn't like their guard options as much.

I also could have gone with Jansen, who overlapped a year with Runyan and was a similar player, since Jansen was a tight end convert who spent his career at right tackle. But but but basketball.

Guru Reliability: Um…. Medium? As with Frazier the things they are saying (with one exception) are the same, but this time there were two outliers instead of one.

The Rivals thing I take to be an issue with their standard non-reactivity to new information. Sprague debuted at the bottom of the top-250 at the start of the 2022 camp circuits, and was moved up then and again after the start of the 2023 circuit. There were no more updates on him after that, probably because he gave them no more camps or things to write about. Weird that they ignored the AA game though.

On the other end of the volatility spectrum we get 247, who moved Sprague up 100 spots twice.

This doesn't tell us much about the gurus—all of them except Rivals wrote pretty much the same recruiting profile, and Reimink isn't one of the guys involved in the ranking AFAK.

But this does tell us something about Sprague, who was the kind of Aidan Hutchinsonesque riser who kept forcing scouts who saw him to move him up again.

Variance: High-minus. Offensive linemen are difficult to project, and Sprague is still in the midst of a great body change and only a few years into taking the sport more seriously than his previous main sport. The fact that he held his own at an AA game shows that Sprague is closer to the field than the build-a-frames like Ryan Hayes, Jeff Persi, and Tristan Bounds.

Ceiling: Vast. Jake Long. When you're 6'8" and athletic with a long runway because you recently began to focus on football, that's what we're talking about. He might not be in as weak of a draft as Jake Long was, but Taylor Lewan/Jake Long is what we're talking about here.

Flight Risk Level: Low. Generally OL recruits stick around and that's especially true at OL-U where the guy who recruited them is now the head coach. Sprague said he connected very strongly with Grant Newsome, another academic-minded tackle, as well. A kid from Kansas City might get homesick if he's not punching through the depth chart, but as I said with Frazier, the depth chart in two years is going to require either a lot of portal of multiple guys from this class.

General Excitement Level: Very high. Baseline: 5; –1 for let's get this out of the way offensive linemen are really tough to predict because there's so much to commit to muscle memory as well as so much weight and strength to gain, so we can't just go predicting Jake Longs every time we get a guy like this BUUUUUUUUUUT; +1 for being an AAU-caliber basketball player athlete who's playing tackle; +1 for being more polished than his classmate who's one of the most experienced OL recruits in a minute; +1 for great knee bend and pad level; –1 for but it sounds like that's not consistent yet; +1 for being bigmclargehuge; +1 smart ice bear is best bear; +1 for the ceiling is the roof.

Projection: So look, I know the tackle spots are pretty much set with Hinton and either Gentry or Persi, but I'm kiiiiinda leaving my ear open because I don't think Evan Link has developed far enough yet, and I think we learned in spring that that's the only reason Link hasn't passed Bounds, and I'm not saying it will happen but there's a chance Sprague is a fall camp revelation who makes the two-deep. That won't matter for this year—they'll probably get a four-game redshirt on him even in that circ*mstance. But the way the program talks about him and the current makeup of the depth chart are set up for the kind of fall camp where if Sprague is going to blow up next year we would start hearing about him making Link and Bounds sweat by about the third week of August.

At that point we'll have an idea if Sprague was a five-star all along or, more likely, a Gentry-level prospect who can come off a redshirt and be Andrew Stueber if you really need him to be, and a starter when you really need him to be in a couple of years. It's interesting that they have Sprague at right tackle and Frazier at left when they name the five-man OL class by position, but that distinction isn't much of one. Hinton runs out of eligibility next year, Persi and Bounds go through 2025, and by the time Sprague and Frazier are redshirt sophom*ores the entire depth chart save Link and Gentry (if he isn't in the league) will have cleared out, not to mention the guards.

Offensive linemen are such a crapshoot that the best LT prospect in America is still less than a coin flip to end up being a good left tackle, but if you're placing odds Sprague is the highest draft pick among them. Gun to head, Sprague loses to the left tackle job to Link next year, but wins the right tackle job after Gentry leaves.