The Freaks List Used To Be Where Michigan Kept Its Defensive Line

Bruce Feldman has published his Freaks list at The Athletic every August for years, 101 names long, and it works as a rough census of who in college football can do something physically ridiculous. This year's came out Monday morning.

Michigan's entry is a long snapper.

That is not a joke at anybody's expense. Gavin Magorien is real, his testing is real, and No. 78 out of 101 puts him ahead of every player in the sport who did not make the list at all.

It is still a long snapper.

Feldman's write-up, quoted in full by Von Lozon at Maize n Brew on Monday morning, has Magorien at 6-0 and 202 pounds, a sophomore who spent 2025 snapping for Marshall and played receiver and defensive back at McDowell High in Erie, Pennsylvania. The numbers: a 10-foot-10 broad jump, 26 bench reps at 225 pounds, a 550-pound squat, a 6.87-second three-cone. Feldman's own framing is that this makes a case for one of the strongest players pound-for-pound in the sport, and that qualifier is doing honest work. A 550-pound squat is 2.72 times what Magorien weighs.

(Nobody audits a squat. Figures like these come from strength coaches, which is worth remembering about every list of this kind, very much including the years the numbers flattered Michigan.)

Every one of those figures is Feldman's, relayed by Lozon, and so is the claim that Magorien is the only Wolverine on the list. None of it has been confirmed anywhere else. What can be checked is Michigan's own roster, which lists him at No. 46, LS, sophomore, 6-0, 202 pounds, Erie, Pa., McDowell. Five stated fields, five matches. Whatever else is uncertain here, nobody has the wrong guy.

(Michigan lists four long snappers on a roster of 118. One of them can squat 550 pounds.)

Anyway. The reason this is worth more than a chuckle is what the same list looked like two Augusts ago.

In 2024, Michigan put four men on it, and the highest of them was Kenneth Grant, a nose tackle, at No. 3 overall. Third. Out of everybody. Behind him, per Andrew Bailey's write-up at Maize n Brew that August, came Alex Orji at 13, Will Johnson at 28 and Marlin Klein at 90.

Mason Graham did not get a number of his own and did not need one, because Feldman put him inside Grant's entry instead, which is the part worth reading twice:

"The Wolverines have produced more freak defensive linemen in the last half-dozen years than anyone, from Rashan Gary (first-rounder), Kwity Paye (first-rounder), Aidan Hutchinson (first-rounder) and Mazi Smith (first-rounder) to Kris Jenkins (second-rounder)."

That is not a compliment about one player. It is a description of a pipeline, written in 2024 as a settled fact about the program, by the man who compiles the list.

The 2025 list carried two Wolverines, Klein at No. 35 and Manuel Beigel at No. 62, per Tony Garcia of the Detroit Free Press. Beigel was a defensive lineman. Feldman wrote that he "weighs 315 and moves like a linebacker," and that he went up the reactive plyo stairs in 2.64 seconds, faster than any other lineman in the program.

Four, then two, then a long snapper.

Grant went 13th overall to Miami. Graham went fifth to Cleveland. Johnson went 47th to Arizona out of the same draft. Klein went 59th to Houston in this year's, the fourth Michigan tight end taken in four drafts. Orji transferred to UNLV.

Of the five names Feldman attached to Michigan in 2024, not one is on the 2026 roster. Not one of the 118.

(A roster page is the only document in this sport that cannot spin. Your name is on it or it is not.)

Beigel is still here. No. 76, junior, 6-5, 312 pounds, Frankfurt, Germany.

He is listed as an offensive lineman.

(Nothing on a roster page is more consequential or less remarked upon than the two letters printed after a name.)

That switch happened in the spring, under a staff in its first year in Ann Arbor, and On3 reported it off the March roster release: Beigel, who had appeared in eight games across two seasons and four of them along the defensive line, was moving to the other side of the ball. Which is a defensible thing to do with a 312-pound man who moves like a linebacker, and a lot of programs would do it. It also means the last Michigan defensive lineman a national list certified as an outlier athlete now blocks for a living. If Lozon has the list right, the position group Feldman himself called the best supplier in the country two years ago has nobody on it at all.

None of which tells you Michigan will be bad. A Freaks list is not a depth chart, and a 550-pound squat has never tackled anybody. Gary was No. 1 on the whole thing in 2018 and then went 12th overall to Green Bay, which is the version of this that works, and plenty of players who never sniffed the top 101 have ruined a Saturday for somebody.

What the list measures, roughly, is where a roster keeps its physical outliers. At Michigan they lived on the defensive line, year after year, long enough for the man who compiles the list to write it down as a fact about the program. Then the last two went fifth and 13th in the same draft, and the one who stayed changed positions. That is the roster Kyle Whittingham inherited, described in somebody else's terms instead of his own.

Michigan opened camp on August 5. It plays Western Michigan on September 5, 7:30 at night, in Ann Arbor.

Somebody out there is going to have to make a tackle.

Sources#

Feldman's 2026 list, Magorien's ranking at No. 78 and Feldman's description of him: Von Lozon, Maize n Brew, published 2026-08-10, quoting Feldman's entry in full. The underlying list is at The Athletic; the testing figures and the lone-representative claim are single-sourced to Feldman through Lozon and are labeled as such above. Magorien's and Beigel's roster lines, the four long snappers and the 118-man count: Michigan's official roster at MGoBlue.com, read 2026-08-10. The 2025 Freaks list rankings and Feldman's quotes on Beigel: Tony Garcia, Detroit Free Press, 2025-08-04. The 2024 list, its four Michigan entries at Nos. 3, 13, 28 and 90, Graham's placement inside Grant's entry, and Feldman's quoted paragraph on the defensive-line pipeline: Andrew Bailey, Maize n Brew, 2024-08-06, quoting Feldman's entries in full. Beigel's move to the offensive line and his games played: On3, 2026-03-18, off Michigan's spring roster release. Draft slots for Graham, Grant, Johnson and Klein: 247Sports and the drafting clubs' own announcements of the 2025 and 2026 picks. Orji's transfer to UNLV: Sports Illustrated, 2025. Gary at No. 1 on the 2018 Freaks list: Maize n Brew, 2018-07-14; his selection at No. 12 overall in 2019: the Packers' own announcement of the pick. Opener date, time and site: Michigan's official 2026 schedule at MGoBlue.com, read 2026-08-10.