Cornerback Justin Turner, a redshirt freshman from Massillon, Ohio, has decided to leave the Michigan football team and will transfer. He asked for and received his release from Michigan on Tuesday, and now he will look for a new place to play college football.
Turner didn't make it to camp on time last year because of NCAA Clearinghouse issues. The hope originally was for them to be worked out before camp got underway, but instead he showed up after practice had already been going on, and that set him back for the entire season. Although Michigan's secondary struggled throughout the year, Turner didn't see any game action and was redshirted.
This year, with the depth at cornerback already thin, it was expected that Turner would be in the mix to start. Instead, speculation suggests that he was out of shape and wasn't ready to play physically-speaking, although the lack of depth may have forced him into the lineup. Either way, as mgoblog points out, there's no doubt that losing another cornerback hurts considering how little depth there was to begin with.
Impact on the team bit: losing Turner is a terrible blow to a secondary short on everything; beyond the starters at corner Michigan has three freshmen, one of them highly touted and the other two middling three-stars, and vagabond James Rogers. Corner's the worst spot on the team to suffer attrition. Turner was a near five-star coming out of high school who killed people at the Army game; his disappearance from Michigan without so much as playing a snap ranks up there with the most disappointing recruiting flameouts ever.
Cornerback was already Michigan's thinnest position, and now the depth situation is even worse. On paper, it looks like it will be bad enough just with who is at the position, but if a starter like Troy Woolfolk goes down, Michigan is really screwed. After all, the secondary was absolutely terrible last year, and that was with Donovan Warren, who left Michigan a year early. It hurts to even think about what it will be like this year