Until recently, Michigan’s roster had stayed largely stable in terms of players entering the transfer portal. The only significant departure had been safety Keon Sabb, which happened long before the spring game. However, following Saturday’s final practice, three young Wolverines have decided to explore their options, possibly after noticing some signs about their future roles.
This one is pretty strange as Beasley is just an early-enrolled true freshman who has only been on campus for less than four months. The Belleville product looked like a Mike Barrett clone in his No. 23 jersey during Saturday’s spring game and seemed to have some upside as an athletic backer who played running back in high school. His career never really even started so it’s really hard to speculate as to why he’s looking around already.
Herring is just a second-year player himself, so again this one is a bit puzzling. He likely wasn’t factoring into the two deep this year, but that’s not abnormal for offensive linemen. Look no further than guys like Greg Crippen, Gio El-Hadi and Jeff Persi — all of them have played very sparingly through three or four years but are now poised to potentially start for the Wolverines after buying time, paying dues and learning from very solid players in front of them. Herring only saw action in one game last year as a true freshman so maybe he just didn’t want to wait. It’ll be interesting to see where the West Bloomfield product ends up.
And then there’s the biggest head scratcher. Also in his second year, Waller played in 11 games last year a true freshman, which included meaningful snaps in big games like the Big Ten title game. He then played well on Saturday in the spring game recording the only interception and looked like the kind of player that might start opposite Will Johnson. He likely had a close connection with former defensive backs coach Steve Clinkscale, but this decision is still a confusing one.
