i post the morelli photo again

Formation Notes: I should have thought of this before; I’m going to designate covered formations by putting the covered player in parentheses. So  “Gun 13 Quads (Y)” means shotgun with 1 RB and 3 TEs, with the Y (inline TE) covered.

I called this “Racecar B” to denote the four-DE personnel.

I called this formation Old Deuteronomy.

Because numbers, you see.

Substitution Notes: Michael Barrett continued to get run as a slot safety/LB hybrid. Rod Moore got the start at safety over RJ Moten, who was in on the last play so that appears to be a depth chart thing not an injury. The DT rotation included Morris but only a tiny bit of Jenkins. Snap counts are in the chart.

[After THE JUMP: A three-act structure.]

Previously: Last year’s profiles. P Tommy Doman Jr. S Rod Moore. CB Ja’Den McBurrows. LB Jaydon Hood. LB Junior Colson. LB Tyler McLaurin. DE Kechaun Bennett. DE TJ Guy. DE/DT Dominick Giudice. DT George Rooks.

When Michigan was desperate for play-immediately DTs in 2020, people couldn’t help but notice there was a five-star—or near enough to it—nose tackle at Oak Park named Justin Rogers committed to Kentucky. I would poke Sam Webb sometimes about the Rogers thing; the response was always “Don’t ask.”

So I wasn’t asking when Oak Park produced another DT in 2021. It was Sam who told me, “You can go watch film on this guy now.” Not that there was much of it. Most of the highlights were Benny pancaking guys at offensive tackle with a smattering of DE but only on important downs. Then he was out for most of 2020 after a car accident. Without him (until the last quarter of the last game), Oak Park lost every game. Then due to the COVID year the MHSAA declared everybody made the playoffs, Benny returned, and Oak Park rattled off four straight, dying one victory short of being the only state champs to go winless in the regular season.

When Ohio State was trying to recruit Benny on the OL (the position he was listed until the final rankings), Sam was the one saying Michigan and Iowa have a shot because they want him on defense. When Benny suddenly committed to the Spartans after the Ricky White fiasco, it was Webb who told us it was because MSU was talking about NIL opportunities. When he didn’t sign with them in December only Sam wasn’t surprised. And when Benny flipped Blue on Signing Day, Webb didn’t take a bow. He should now.

So should Shaun Nua, since this flip (and Rooks) went went right after Nua was retained. Also because he picked up a monster of a recruit here who’s absolutely, definitely ticketed for a tackle spot unless he’s moved even further inside. The question though is which side of the ball.

[After THE JUMP: Stop calling him an offensive lineman (unless he is).]

The problem with Michigan's defense against Ohio State the last two years was pretty simple: they didn't have the dynamic defensive tackles they had in 2016 and 2017 and had to weaken other parts of the defense to compensate for it. In 2018 they couldn't generate pressure versus single-man blocking with Kemp and Mone, giving Dwayne Haskins time to sit in the pocket and OSU's receivers and backs time to shake defenders who weren't designed to last that long against elite speed. In 2019 they couldn't hold up physically with Kemp and true freshman Chris Hinton, and got pasted with Inside Zone and Duo until the linebackers stopped acting responsibly. It also forced Michigan to leave Josh Uche, one of their best players, on the bench for standard downs because they needed their DEs to play interior gaps. As we've said before, that was a "we need DTs" problem not a "why aren't you playing him?" problem.

Take those two games out of the equation and everyone feels just fine about the Harbaugh era. But that's not how we measure things here. I think most people see that if everything else can hold where it's at, getting the DTs back to 2016-'17 level gives this Michigan a shot to beat what's quickly becoming the strongest program since Point-a-Minute. Then we see Michigan not even a factor for any elite DTs in two straight classes (2020 and 2021) and the despair creeps in.

Can Michigan build a competitive defensive tackles depth chart with what they have now? Sure. They also could have had one in 2019—they just got really unlucky on a relatively standard roll. Can they have one in the future? It's harder to say.

Recruiting Elites: A Question of Can, not Will

Will Carr almost cost Eddie George his Heisman. [Jed Jacobsohn via Burnt Orange Nation]

Just as some of you were giving up the diaries section for dead, AC1997 wrote a treatise on elite (top-105) defensive tackle recruiting at Michigan and the various playoff competitors.

Wait a minute….I can math.  You said 18 for 6 schools, which means an average of 3 per school over a three year period.  That’s not as much as I thought.  What gives?

Good catch.  We know that just about every power-five team rotates three DTs regularly and that the success rate of even the top DT recruits is not perfect, so it is a position you would expect to over-recruit to ensure there is depth and insurance on your roster.  I would have expected that over a three-year period these elite schools would be stocking up on this talent, even if there were only 39 prospects to go around.  In reality, only one school (Alabama, duh) over-recruited from this list with a whopping SIX signees.

All of the other elite schools had just two or three:

• Clemson = 3
• Ohio State = 3
• Washington = 3
• Georgia = 2
• LSU = 2
• Oklahoma = 2
• Michigan = 2

The short version is Michigan and Ohio State have the same disadvantage: recruits tend to stay closer to home and the Midwest doesn't produce that many 300-pound monsters. Ohio State overcomes that by being the #1 destination for the kind of recruit who doesn't care about region because he just wants to make the playoffs. Michigan isn't recruiting better than any program in football history and so can't keep up with OSU in that regard. If you want more details I recommend you read the diary.

Growing Dudes: How to Find a Renes

Recruiting services don't tend to send scouts to your nightmares. [Patrick Barron]

In the comments AC asked me what Michigan's hit rate is on grow-your-own DTs. The answer is it depends a lot on the profile of the recruit.

• Dudes (since 1996): Mo Hurst, Ryan Glasgow, Willie Henry, Rob Renes
• Guys: Eric Wilson, Grant Bowman, Ben Huff, Shawn Lazarus, Matt Godin
• Playable but missing a key component: Carlo Kemp, Jibreel Black, Michael Dwumfour, Gannon Dudlar, Jess Speight, Alex Ofili, Kerwin Waldroup, Larry Harrison
• Whiffs: Phil Paea, Richard Ash, Jason Kates, Ray Edmonds, Brion Smith, Donovan Jeter, Deron Irving-Bey, Brady Pallante, Renaldo Sagesse, Terry Talbott, Vince Helmuth, Marques Walton, Paul Sarantos, Dave Spytek

If you bring in a pair of lightning feet attached to an excellent brain and just need to add 40 pounds to get to 300, your chances are pretty good. If you need to add 70 pounds, or he lacks the athleticism, or he needs to drop 40 pounds of one type of weight and put on another, or he doesn't have that one in a million brain that can process how a team wants to block him from minute details while in a trench battle, your chances are not great. Once you're moving guys over who were never expected to grow past defensive end you're hitting a ceiling.

If you look at the Dudes they came from all over the 3-star spectrum. Hurst came out a 4.01 on my 5-star scale, Renes a 3.83 (what we generally call a "3.5-star"), Henry a 3.48 (really low) and Glasgow was a walk-on. But they also fit a certain body type. Hurst was 6'2/282 as a true freshman, Renes 6'1/275, Henry 6'2/270, and Glasgow 6'4/294. The Guys showed up smaller: Wilson was 6'4/255, Bowman 6'3/258, Lazarus 6'3/245, Godin 6'6/277, and Huff a 6'4/234 linebacker.

The whiffs group has a lot of guys we would call reaches. Of those who came in with some sense among the fanbase that they were better than a shot in the dark, Ash, Kates, and Sagesse were tear-down/rebuilds, Brion Smith (medical), Ray Edmonds (dismissed) and Irving-Bey (transferred/dismissed) failed to materialize for non-scouting reasons. Dave Spytek was 6'7".

[After THE JUMP: a trip through Michigan DT memory lane to see how classes translated into lines]