Jim Harding Listed Three Goals For His Line In March. The Third One Still Has No Name On It.
Establish a starting five, find a rhino, build center depth. That was the assignment Michigan's offensive line coach gave himself before spring practice began. Two of the three are visible in every camp story written since. The sixth-lineman job has had exactly one player attached to it by a Michigan coach in five months, and the answer was about spring.
Before Michigan held a single spring practice, its new offensive line coach said out loud what he was trying to accomplish in it. Jim Harding gave three goals on the In the Trenches podcast in early March, and Andrew Bailey wrote them down on March 12, five days before the first practice: establish a starting five, find a rhino, and build center depth.
Two of those are settled or visibly contested. Andrew Sprague has right tackle and Jake Guarnera has center, center depth got worked all spring, and the three open jobs on the line are the story of camp.
The rhino is the third one. In the five months since Harding listed it, exactly one player has been attached to that job by anybody on the Michigan staff, and the answer described spring practice rather than August.
Nobody from this site has been at a Michigan practice, and every rep described below is somebody else's account of one.
The one time a coach put a body at it#
The account belongs to Mike Lynch, listed by the athletic department as Michigan's assistant offensive line coach. Going player by player through the room with Alejandro Zuniga of 247Sports in a review of spring practice, Lynch got to Marky Walbridge, an early enrollee from the 2026 signing class:
"He looks like a defensive end the way he moves, the way he bends, the way he changes directions. Super athletic. He's going to be good. He just needs to continue to gain weight and get stronger, and he's done that. He's another guy that wants to be coached. He took a lot of reps at tackle and at the rhino position, which is that sixth offensive lineman on the field. Elite, elite quickness and twitch."
Note what Lynch does with the definition: he drops it in a subordinate clause, the way you explain something the room already knows. It was already public. Bailey's March write-up had glossed it the same way, as the sixth offensive lineman, used frequently in Jason Beck's offense.
Walbridge is No. 78, listed at 6-6 and 285 pounds, a freshman from Hanover, Massachusetts. He got those spring reps because he was one of the 14 signees who enrolled in January rather than arriving with the summer group, per Seth Berry's list. A player who is not on campus in March cannot take a rep in March, which is duller than it sounds and does most of the work here.
Three sessions, four accounts of them, and the sixth job is in none#
An absence is a claim, so here is the check rather than the verdict. The people who would know have all taken questions since camp opened on August 5.
Beck, August 5, after the first practice, explained the package at length and named nobody in it. Harding, August 6, after the second, counted it into his own assignment: Anthony Broome framed the job as finding the best five, "or 6, counting the Rhino position." No name. Nick Durand's separate account of that same Harding session, published August 7, is entirely about the search for the best five, about versatility, about who might move inside, and it never mentions a sixth lineman at all. Whittingham, Monday, five practices in, talked through the line and went no further than left tackle.
Three sessions, three coaches, four write-ups, no name.
What has traveled instead, and whose guess each one is#
Bailey made the earliest guess himself in March, and it is the most structurally interesting one because it does not depend on a freshman. Michigan has four tackles worth starting, he wrote, at least three of them will start, "and the fourth to become Harding's rhino." Under that logic the Rhino is whichever of Andrew Babalola, Evan Link, Blake Frazier and Sprague is left over.
The camp-week guesses went the other way, toward size. Nick Durand, at SB Nation on August 3, wrote that true freshman Malakai Lee "could be a candidate to see the field early as a sixth offensive lineman in certain packages," citing his 6-7 frame. Jacob Westendorf, at Sports Illustrated on August 6, offered Nathan Efobi as "a physical presence to be Michigan's rhino." Alex Drain, at MGoBlog on August 7, floated Link and labeled the guess as his own. Four names, three writers, and in every case the writer says he is projecting.
The three men who have actually done it are all chasing something else#
This is the part the projections skip, and it is checkable. Michigan has used a sixth lineman before, under the previous staff and without the name, and three men on this roster have lined up in it.
Brady Norton has started three games for Michigan at three different positions: right guard, right tackle, and the sixth offensive lineman. That is Bailey's accounting in March, and Zach Edwards' game-by-game version from June 30 matches it: Norton started at right guard in Week 1, started as the sixth man in Week 2 against Oklahoma, got hurt, came back on special teams, and finally started at right tackle in the Citrus Bowl. So the sixth-lineman job at Michigan last season was one start, not a role. Frazier has repped as the sixth and seventh utility lineman. Sprague has experience as the sixth man too.
All three are spoken for in the starting five conversation. Norton is in the right guard competition, Frazier in the left tackle one, and Sprague already has right tackle. Nobody has said any of them is doing both jobs.
Why the sixth job is not a rounding error#
Beck put his own figure on the volume at Utah last season: "it was like 400 or 500 snaps." Utah ran a shade under a thousand offensive plays in 2025, so the bottom of his remembered range is two of every five snaps and the top of it is half. It is a round number about his own scheme, from memory, and even the floor of it describes something other than a jumbo package kept for the goal line.
That is the gap. The thing Michigan started once last year is the thing its coordinator ran on close to half his snaps.
Two clocks, and they do not agree#
Harding put a date on the starting five reluctantly, and it was not a date so much as a range: two scrimmages in camp, the group dialed in by the end of the second, "so approximately two weeks out, you'd love to have it solidified." Two weeks out from the September 5 opener is on or about August 22, which is 11 days from today.
Kyle Whittingham counts in practices instead. At Monday's availability the head coach said: "You get about 10 practices under your belt, that's about the time where you really start to make some definitive decisions," per Brandon Carr's account of the session. Half of that marker is already in the bank, and the other half arrives well before Harding's calendar does.
On the same Monday, Whittingham named the left tackle rotation: Babalola, Link and Frazier are "really those three guys getting the majority of the reps out there." Link sits on this site's ledger as a call to start the opener at guard rather than tackle. Harding said on August 6 that Link had moved inside but that "tackle isn't something you can just set aside." Three practices later the head coach has him among the three men splitting the majority of left tackle work. That question is live in both directions.
Harding wrote the sixth job onto his own to-do list before spring started, which means it is not a wrinkle somebody thought of in August. It is the one item on that list nobody in the building has answered in public since, and the three players who have actually done the job are all trying to win a different one. Somebody is going to play a great deal of football this fall in a role that has been open, by the coach's own accounting, since March.
Sources: Jim Harding's three spring goals, from his appearance on the In the Trenches podcast in early March, via Andrew Bailey, Maize n Brew, March 12, 2026, which also carries Bailey's own leftover-tackle projection, Brady Norton's three starts at three positions, and Frazier's and Sprague's sixth-man experience. Norton's 2025 game-by-game sequence from Zach Edwards, Maize n Brew, June 30, 2026. Harding's August 6 availability, the "best 5, or 6, counting the Rhino position" framing, the timeline answer and the Evan Link quote, from Anthony Broome, On3, August 6, 2026, with Nick Durand's account of the same session at Maize n Brew, August 7, 2026. Jason Beck's August 5 availability after camp's first practice from Nate Schreck, The Michigan Daily, August 5, 2026. Mike Lynch on Marky Walbridge from Alejandro Zuniga, 247Sports, in a review of spring practice; Lynch's title from the University of Michigan athletics staff directory. Michigan's early enrollee list from Seth Berry, Sports Illustrated, January 7, 2026. Kyle Whittingham's Monday availability from Brandon Carr, All About Ann Arbor, August 11, 2026, and Trent Knoop, Sports Illustrated, August 10, 2026. Rhino projections from Nick Durand, SB Nation, August 3, 2026; Jacob Westendorf, Sports Illustrated, August 6, 2026; and Alex Drain, MGoBlog, August 7, 2026. Roster lines from ESPN; Utah's 2025 offensive play total from ESPN team statistics.
