Aidan Hutchinson of the Lions is in high demand in Allen Park. To avoid being swarmed by reporters on a daily basis, the NFL's freshly-minted Defensive Rookie of the Month typically speaks with the media on Thursdays. He was hunched over a tablet in front of his locker on Wednesday, engrossed in film and not to be disturbed, when he was asked about Ben Herbert. Hutchinson smiled, switched off the tablet and said, "Herbs the best, man."
Herbert is the director of strength and conditioning for Michigan football and, as Jim Harbaugh said this week, "the X-factor in our entire program." Hired by Harbaugh in 2018, Herbert has raised the intensity in Schembechler Hall, as big a reason as any why the Wolverines are on the verge of back-to-back Big Ten titles. Harbaugh is so enamored with Herbert that he tried to nominate him for the Ryan Broyles award this season as the top assistant coach in the country. The selection committee told Harbaugh it had to be a position coach, so he settled on Jesse Minter, coordinator of the nation's No. 1 defense, instead.
And where do you think Minter's players are molded?
"The center of player development," Harbaugh said of Michigan's strength and conditioning department. "Never had a better hire than Ben Herbert and what he's meant to this program."
In his four years with Herbert, Hutchinson grew from a rather doughy four-star recruit into one of the best players in the country and the second overall pick in the NFL draft. Where "a lot of college football strength coaches are kind of closeminded," Hutchinson said, Herbert is a forward thinker who "will adapt and stay up with the new ways."
"The way he takes care of the guys' bodies, the kind of lifts we did, the kind of recovery, it's definitely ahead of the game," said Hutchinson.
Michigan's program was reborn in the weight room after the 2020 season. A new core of players resolved to raise the bar once and for all, and Herbert refused to let them fail. The Wolverines went from two wins to 12 and made their first trip to the College Football Playoff. Now they're about to return.
"The tone in the weight room my senior year, when we were rocking in there, it was no joke," Hutchinson said. "It was one of those things, you never want to disappoint Herb. Like, he would never scream at me, but if I were to do something not as good as I could, there's no words that need to be said from Herb. It's more of that disappointment. And it's like, 'Damn, I could have given a little more.'"
Frank Ragnow can relate. The Lions starting center had showered and changed and was about to head home Thursday afternoon when he was asked about Herbert. Immediately, his eyes lit up. "Oh," Ragnow said, "I got all day to talk about Herb."
Ragnow spent four years with Herbert at Arkansas, where Herbert was the head of strength and conditioning for the football team from 2013-17. When Ragnow lost his father to a heart attack midway through his junior season, Herbert flew to Minnesota for the funeral and wound up being one of the figures Ragnow leaned on the most. To this day, Herbert and his wife have Ragnow and his wife over for dinner a few times a year.
Ragnow considers Herbert "a mentor." He gives him immense credit for "the player and the person I am today." He calls him "the best coach I've ever had." And yet he struggles to explain what Herbert means to him, because he means so much.
"He's a person you just automatically feel like you have to raise your standards around," Ragnow said. "You just want to impress him because he's perfect, man. I don't even know how to describe him. He just makes you want to be a better human being, in all areas."
As Ragnow was searching for the right words, fellow Arkansas product and offensive lineman Dan Skipper walked past his locker. "Skipper," Ragnow called out. "How would you describe Herb?"
Skipper, who also spent four years with Herbert, stopped in his tracks, thought for a moment and said, "He pulls the most out of you, whether you want it or not."
"But it's not in like a dictatorship way," said Ragnow. "It's in a because-you-respect-him-so-much way."
"He demands so much from you, without hammering down," said Skipper. "He sees your potential," and then he and Ragnow and finished the sentence together: "And he gets it out of you."
Ragnow and Skipper agreed that Herbert sees more in his players than they might see in themselves. This is how he gets the best out of them, and yet "he's not this old-school hard-ass that's going to be bitching at the players a bunch," Ragnow said. If one player does something wrong, "He'll bring up the whole group, instead of dog-cussing one guy for his abilities," said Skipper.
"Which just raises everybody else," said Ragnow.
Harbaugh knew he was hiring Herbert from the moment they met. He had a few other candidates to interview at the time, but Herbert had already wowed him over the phone with his "level of detail and expertise" and the way he blended "the old-school strength coach" with the "cutting edge, scientific strength coach." Then Harbaugh shook Herbert's hand and it was over.
"In the hallway outside of my office," Harbaugh said. "It's unforgettable, if anyone's ever had a handshake with Ben Herbert. He leans in and it's like he's looking right through your entire soul. I got to the point where, 'I cannot look at you anymore, I must avert my gaze.' And I knew that he was the guy right there." (Harbaugh would like it to be known that he won their ensuing stare-down the next day.)
Hutchinson, Ragnow and Skipper all have a similar story. Hutchinson said he knew Herbert "was a 'starer', so you gotta stare right back and try to be an alpha." Skipper, who met Herbert on his recruiting trip, said "something about his eye contact, his level of intensity, discipline, attitude, everything about him is just up here, all the time."
"The consistency is the thing that's so inspiring with him," Ragnow said.
Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. Herbert works hard to cultivate it with his players, which allows him to push them. Skipper recalled a version of "fat camp" during summer lifting at Arkansas where the linemen tried to shed weight by running a hill on campus. One player, said Skipper, "had an eating disorder and just couldn't help himself get out of his own way." So Herbert arranged "a buddy system to where he had someone with (the player) every night to stop late-night eating." When freshmen slept through morning workouts, Herbert had juniors and seniors "driving to the quad and knocking on guys' doors to make sure they had a ride."
"That's the type of effort he'll put into anyone," Skipper said. "If they come to him and just say, 'Hey, I need help with this,' he's like, 'Alright, we got you.'"
In some ways, Hutchinson, Ragnow and Skipper are still playing for Herbert. He's the voice in the back of their heads, the standard they strive to meet every day. Present or not, they don't want to let him down. Ragnow and some of his teammates at Arkansas wore tank tops with Herbert's face plastered on the front and the words, "What would Herb do?"
As Harbaugh could tell you, Herb would always do more.
Listen live to 97.1 The Ticket via:
Audacy App | Online Stream | Smart Speaker
