Around this time last year, Ronnie Bell began to emerge from the corners of Michigan football’s roster and take center stage.
Seen as a supporting character in a receiving corps that included ballyhooed talents such as Donovan Peoples-Jones, Tarik Black and Nico Collins, Bell suddenly became a featured player in the Wolverines’ offense at the beginning of his second year in the program.
He made seven catches in a taut victory over Army last September. Later that month, against Rutgers, he hauled in six more passes.
Three weeks after that, he helped Michigan nearly erase a 21-point deficit against Penn State with five receptions before dropping a short toss from Shea Patterson that would have drawn the Wolverines even with the Nittany Lions near the end of regulation.