'Ready to go kill': Michigan's Evan Link talks mentality shift with offensive line

"Offensive line at this university has such a high standard," said Link. "Those guys set it in '23, and then people have set it in countless generations before. And so a lot of us... what we're trying to do right now in spring is just get back to that standard. There's a certain mentality that comes with that, and it wasn't really present last season just because we lost all those guys and nobody was really around anymore who had been there and done that. A lot of guys were kind of just... I mean, for me, that was my first time playing in games. So I had no idea what it took to do what they did."

Now, with 13 games and 11 starts under his belt, Link is entering the 2025 campaign with a much different mentality. Having experienced what it takes to succeed at this level firsthand, Link believes the line is better prepared mentally for what's to come.

"Now that I have a little bit more sense of it... I know Gio [El-Hadi], I know 'Crip' [Greg Crippen], I know all those guys in that room who played last year. They have a sense of it and what has to happen. So I think for spring and summer, it's really just going to be getting the mentality of the unit right. Just because as soon as we get that right, everybody's out there ready to go kill. That's what you have to do on the offensive line. You have to be ready to throw your body on the line, hell be damned, you know what I mean? So I think for us right now, everybody's just trying to get in that mind. Trying to get back to that, trying to get back to what those guys set and what those guys showed us."