The photos on the wall in the room where Ron Bellamy now teaches aren’t there just for nostalgia. They also serve as reference points for Michigan’s receivers coach.
The images of some of his contemporaries from nearly two decades ago — Braylon Edwards, David Terrell, Jason Avant, Steve Breaston and Marquise Walker — are there to remind Bellamy’s current group of the standard they’re being asked to bear.
“History lessons for the boys, anytime they come into the office,” said Bellamy, who played for the Wolverines from 1999-2002. “We just talk about the legacy of Michigan football and the great tradition of wide receiver play.”
And then occasionally they'll talk about building their own legacy as a group, blessed with a depth of talent that Michigan perhaps hasn’t seen at the position in a generation. A group that Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh, as enthusiastic as ever heading into his eighth season at the helm in Ann Arbor, insists has “the ability to be the best we've ever had.”
On paper, that’s hard to argue at the moment, with the Wolverines returning 10 of their top 11 receivers from last season’s Big Ten championship roster, including a fifth-year senior leader in Ronnie Bell — Bellamy calls him “Alpha” — who was the unit’s clear-cut No. 1 option last fall before suffering a torn ACL in the opener.
But now Bell’s back as well, and after setting new personal bests in agility testing this summer, “he looks like his old self again,” said Sherrone Moore, Michigan’s offensive co-coordinator. Bell is winning 1-on-1 battles, making contested catches in team drills and having fun — “a lot of fun,” he says — in fall camp, which is a stark contrast to all those mind-numbing months of injury rehab.
“I’ve been thinking about playing the game for a year now,” he said. “I’m beyond excited, man. I’m ready to go.”
Return to familiar territory
So is Bellamy, not surprisingly. After working with Michigan’s safeties in his first year on Harbaugh’s staff, Bellamy, who’d been the head coach at West Bloomfield for a decade prior to that, has returned to his wheelhouse coaching the receivers this season.
And on an offense that’s seemingly overloaded with skill-position talent — there's tag-team All-Big Ten potential at quarterback, running back and tight end — it’s in Bellamy’s meeting room that it really seems to have multiplied.
In addition to Bell, there’s senior Cornelius Johnson, who led the team in receiving yardage in 2021, and junior Roman Wilson, a versatile speedster who was Michigan’s most productive receiver over the final five games last season. (Wilson caught two touchdown passes in the huge win at Penn State, then added a 75-yarder on a flea-flicker in the Big Ten title game.)
But there’s also a sophomore in Andrel Anthony, the East Lansing native who flashed his potential last fall with a 155-yard, two-TD performance against Michigan State. Throw in junior A.J. Henning, who seems as comfortable in the backfield as he is working out of the slot, and a highly-touted freshman trio — Darrius Clemons, Tyler Morris and Amorion Walker — that Harbaugh happily dubbed a “freak show” last winter, and you get a sense of the possibilities here.
But just don’t call it a problem. Even if that numbers crunch partly explains why senior Mike Sainristil decided to switch positions last winter and now spends most of his time working as a nickel cornerback.
Blasts from the past
When pressed Tuesday, Bellamy drew some interesting then-to-now comparisons between Breaston and Bell, Edwards and Anthony and even Avant and Clemons. ("He’s strong as an ox, he’s explosive and he loves contact," Bellamy said of the 6-3, 210-pound freshman. "Jason was like that.")
Yet when you ask Bellamy how he’ll manage to feed all those hungry hands and keep everyone happy, he answers without a hitch.
“We compete,” he said. “What I know about Michigan football and the wide receivers, we’ve always been loaded. This has been a position that has great history and great tradition. And one of the things is, you compete. You don’t have to be the starter to compete, right? You want to get on the football field, you do whatever you have to do.”
That means playing to your strengths, whether it’s Wilson and his position flexibility, or Bell and his route running, or Anthony and his body control and ball skills. But it also means strengthening your weaknesses, whether that's knowing where to be — and when — in a variety of roles, or finding a way to make yourself useful on special teams.
And in every case, it involves improving as a blocker. Michigan may not be quite the same run-dominant offense it was a year ago, but this will never be an Air Raid attack as long as Harbaugh’s calling the shots.
And that’s just fine with Bellamy, by the way.
“I played for Lloyd Carr,” he said, “And, man, if you don’t block and you don’t take care of your teammates, you don’t play. So that’s the mentality in our room, and everyone knows that. …
“You compete your butt off and you try and get an opportunity to get on the field. But our guys have that understanding: The best players will play. And the guys who do things well will get an opportunity to showcase what they can do.”
And if they do enough? Well, the next generation just might hear about it.
