Marell Evans, Vince Helmuth to Transfer

By Sean · Thursday, August 13, 2009 · 4:39 AM |  Share | 1 Comment 

Two more scholarships are going to open up, as linebacker Marell Evans and defensive tackle Vince Helmuth are planning on transferring.  Nothing is official yet, but Rich Rodriguez said on Wednesday that both have been given the green light to start looking at other schools, citing playing time as the main reason behind their decision to transfer.

“Good, young men, sometimes that happens, guys think that ‘Maybe I’m not getting a lot of reps, I’m not up on the depth chart,’” Rodriguez said after practice. “I try to remind the guys that the depth chart is not going to be solid until the first week.”

Marell Evans has started one game in his career and would have competed for a starting spot this season.  Whether or not he would have cracked the starting lineup is another question, but we will never find out now.  That is the negative to all this, but on the bright side, Evans is going out in a respectful way.

“Me and coach Rod are on good terms,” linebacker Marell Evans told the Free Press tonight. “It was more than playing time or academics or anything like that. It was a lot of things. Coach Rod is a great coach and I wish him plenty of success. I wanted to finish my career a different way.”

“He’s a great man and I respect the man,” said Evans, a junior from Richmond, Va. “He wanted me to think about this decision and said I’m a big part of the program. But I respectfully wanted to leave the program.”

I’m actually a little surprised Vince Helmuth stuck around this long.  He came to Michigan as a fullback and was switched to defensive tackle after last season.  The switch was made because Michigan needed depth at DT and because Mark Moundros had the fullback position locked down.  It hurts to lose depth at a position where it is needed so badly, but like I said, this move isn’t too surprising.  Helmuth gave DT a shot after playing FB didn’t work out, but now he wants to move on to a different program.