John Wienke… What do we know about him? I found this video on youtube, and the username posting it was “mgoblog” but I found nothing about it posted on mgoblog itself, so pardon me if it’s a repost of Brian.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcM81DaAEBI]
He is a left-handed quarterback who chose Michigan over Illinois and Iowa, with other offers including Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Kentucky, Iowa State, and MAC teams.
He is a 6’6″ lefty, and was the MVP amongst the quarterbacks at Michigan’s summer camp, as well as the Nike camp at Colorado.
With his size and (presumed) mobility, he is a prototypical Michigan quarterback, aside from the whole lefty thing.
Wienke is ranked as low as he is (not at all! ZING!) mainly due to exposure, rather than because of his skills. I assum he’ll be a strong three or low four in the final rankings. He seems capable of serving as a capable backup for Mallett for a couple years, and likely won’t be the project that Cone was/is. With Mallett and Cone in the same class, Wienke will probably redshirt to get a year of separation, and be ready to start being the primary backup in ’09 (jesus, are we seriously talking about kids who won’t see the field for more than two years?). Wienke is more developed than the Navarre-esque Cone, but Cone will also have two years in the system before Wienke is actually a Wolverine.
The main issue with the kid is probably going to be the fact that he is left-handed. This changes a lot of things on the field, including the snap, the dropback, play action, even the spiral on the ball as wide receivers go to catch it (see: Lloyd bragging about Zoltan’s lefty spin on punts being harder to catch).
Posted under Recruiting
Tags: commitments, Football, Recruiting
Watch for this guy to prove that 5 star quarterbacks don’t alway make it in the NCAA or that they end up transferring when they see their starting job taken from them. Hint hint: Mallett needs to make sure get his game tuned to perfection because this kid Wienke will take his spot.