All-Twenty Tuesday: Georgia’s Sony Michel

“I got a message for all of ’em.. shake… and bake!

What does that do? Does it blow your mind?

That. Just. Happened.

Shake and bake… It rhymes… they’re both verbs.”

– Talladega Nights

It seems like most great players have a signature thing. The game of football, when played at the highest level, makes it hard to stand out. Chances are everyone you go up against is athletic enough to do most of the moves you’d see in a football game. But the ones who are great, the ones who stand out, each seem to have something about them that allows them to be different – better.

For example, Tom Brady’s ability to manipulate defenses with his eyes or Drew Brees’ signature pump fakes or LeSean McCoy’s incredible one-cut ability or Le’Veon Bell’s patience or Odell Beckham’s incredible catching abilities. Each of these players are in the top tier of their positions, not only because they have the all-around game to be there, but also because there’s something that puts them over the top.

The NFL draft is where prospects’ journeys hit their transition point. Years and years of college tape they’ve produced get analyzed for months under microscopes that vary depending on who’s looking through them. Though some scouts might look for different things, traits of success that stand out usually, well, stand out no matter who is looking at it. Matt Harmon was the first person I’d heard use the phrase “trump card” when referencing these standout traits, and the term has stuck with me.

It’s early in the process, and I’m sure I’ll see plenty more prospects with all sorts of trump cards on both sides of the ball, but since we’re fresh off the National Championship Game, there’s one prospect I wanted to make sure I got to first, one whom Bucs fans should get to know if they don’t already: Georgia running back Sony Michel.

Three-Down Player

There are certain nuances to a position that make it playable by those who have certain sets of skills. For example, if you’re a track athlete and you have great straight-line speed, you can get away with playing running back behind a good offensive line at certain levels of the game. Another example could be if you’re a big bruiser kind of a back. These are the players who may not have the best balance, the best vision or the best receiving ability, but in short yardage situations they know how to put their head down and get a couple yards. These two examples can exists within the running back position and provide a team with solid situational players.

But, when it comes to feature running backs, the ones that separate themselves are often the ones who still flash without the ball. This, to me, is a giveaway to which players from that position are the most natural, and the ones who have ability to be more that just role players.

Michel, as a receiver out of the backfield, shows me a player who has the potential to do it all. He’s not a player who panics with open space and is good at maximizing the space he can create as a receiver, as shown above.

Though Michel wasn’t used too often in the passing game, plays like the one above show that that wasn’t because of a inability to do so.

Michel recorded 26 catches for 270 yards in 2015, 22 catches for 149 yards in 2016 and had just nine catches for 96 yards this season, but averaged nearly 10 yards per catch over the course of his career at Georgia.

Even though I believe the Buccaneers should be using a more two-back emphasized running back game plan (rather than the four-man rotation they seem to be using now), even if they choose to continue to diversify it, Michel is a stronger, more capable back than Charles Sims. Michel is also a player who, even if the Bucs just use him as their third down back (unlikely, if drafted), can be used as a player to both run and pass with, something they don’t trust Sims to do right now.

That, in itself, is a plus.

Being reliable as a receiver and blocker (Michel is) is what makes you valuable on third down and checks the first box towards being a complete back.

One-Cut Wonder

As I’ve sort of explain already, there can be different types of running backs classified by certain skill sets. If we were to label Michel, I’d label him a “one-cut” back.

What I mean by a one-cut back is that Michel has both the instincts and the lower body strength to put his foot in the ground and really explode either up their field or in a different direction.

In the clip above, Michel used that lower body power to burst past the line of scrimmage and get up the field in a hurry.

I’m not even sure Michel is that “fast” of a player, in a linear sense. He definitely gained lower body strength and therefore has increased his accelerating power and therefore his foot speed over the years, but even after watching the clip above, I’m not sure he’s going to test super well at the Combine or anything.

But, the reason I say that is because it doesn’t matter. There’s a difference between running in a straight line and being able to use momentum and acceleration to hit a hole and beat a defender to an angle. You’re rarely running in a straight line, even when close to the sideline. One thing I think Michel does very well with that one-cut ability is plant and go at different angles. That allows him to accelerate like we see above. When Michel runs in the 4.5’s in the 40-yard dash, don’t be alarmed. He’ll be more than fine. He can one-cut with the best of them.

Michel’s Trump Card: The Sony Shake

I’m sure you’ve picked up on this in the few clips of his we’ve shown already, but Michel has a knack for making people miss. Elusiveness is a big part of being a one-cut back. Not only is the one-cut ability in the lower body strength to accelerate, but, as referenced before, it is also in the ability to change direction on a dime.

Now, there are plenty of football players who have the athleticism to make defenders miss in the open field, but it doesn’t happen nearly as much as it does with Michel. If you’ll notice, Michel doesn’t have super long strides; his speed comes from his feet hitting the ground faster rather than his steps being longer. Because of this, he is often the one in more control of incoming contact. Michel is so good at setting his defenders up to miss, and being that good results in some eye-popping plays like the one above.

I call it: “The Sony Shake.”

Usually there are running backs who thrive in space and the are running backs that thrive in chaos. It’s rare when you get a player who can do both.

In the first section, we showed examples of how Michel used space to his advantage as a receiver without the ball. In the play directly above, we see an example that he’s also keen at playing the game in slow motion, if you will, while everything around him is flying at warp speed with the ball in his hands.

Playing as an elusive back also requires good running back vision; Michel has that trait. He’s often looking for the open space to run the ball before it’s even there and has a knack for creating it himself, if not readily available.

Michel had 3,613 yards on 590 total carries during his career at Georgia where he finished as the school’s all-time leading rusher behind Herschel Walker and Nick Chubb. That’s a 6.1 yards per carry average. I’ll bet a good chuck of those yards, a larger percentage than most running backs, come after making at least one defender miss.

There are a few other nuances of Michel’s game that I didn’t even get to go over in detail, but the run in the clip directly above put all of them on display.

Michel had the patience to wait at the hand-off and side step the initial push, then he had the lower body strength to plant his foot in the ground and get up-field. From there, he encountered contact, which he broke through via determination and great balance. After that, the space opened up and he put a “Sony Shake” on a poor defender so hard you can actually see his soul leave his body, if you look close enough.

That’s some shake and bake.

There are many Bucs fans who are hoping that Michel is wearing red and pewter next year. Their dreams right now have Michel going in the second or third round. But, I’m going to be honest, if he does even better at the Combine than I think he will (which, like I said, doesn’t really matter to me), than he’ll have the tape and the testing to go off the board before the Bucs pick again after Round One.

For a few draft scenarios involving Michel, click to the next page.