{"id":76478,"date":"2025-07-19T22:36:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T22:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/76478\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T22:36:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T22:36:12","slug":"predicting-michigan-footballs-biggest-defensive-breakout-players-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/76478\/","title":{"rendered":"Predicting Michigan football’s biggest defensive breakout players in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Michigan football team begins its fall camp in a matter of weeks, and if the Wolverines want to make the College Football Playoff after last year’s 8-5 season, they will need new breakout stars to emerge on both sides of the ball.<\/p>\n

If recent history is any guide, that will need to continue on defense, as Michigan’s dominant run from 2021-23 was filled with new breakout stars thriving in their new roles\u00a0on defense.<\/p>\n

So who can step up for the maize and blue this fall? Below, we break down our five picks for the biggest breakout stars on the Wolverines’ offense. While a “breakout star” can be a wide-ranging term, in this story we’re defining it as a player with less than three career starts and under 250 snaps played.<\/p>\n

So take a look at our pick at each position group below. If you missed it, here is our piece predicting offensive breakout stars<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0from earlier this week.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Defensive line: Trey Pierce<\/a><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

Enow Etta would be a solid choice here, too, as the former top-150 recruit has reportedly bulked up to 6-foot-5 and 320 pounds. But with 211 career snaps played and one career start, Pierce qualifies for this story, and seems like a player on the cusp of a breakout season.<\/p>\n

The 6-foot-2, 315-pounder essentially emerged as Michigan’s No. 4 defensive tackle last season as a redshirt freshman, logging seven tackles, five run stops and two quarterback pressures. That’s a quiet box score total, but Pierce earned the trust of Michigan’s coaches in key spots last season, and was touted for his awareness and decision-making on the line, as well as his leverage and ability to stop the run. When Graham and Grant turned their focus on the NFL Draft, Pierce earned his first-career start and logged 38 snaps in Michigan’s bowl win over Alabama.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Michigan football team begins its fall camp in a matter of weeks, and if the Wolverines want…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":76479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-76478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114882293552684667","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}