(Last because it needs a new name now). While updating my master roster database with this year's NFL Draft results I produced a rather striking analysis: Harbaugh's players were getting into the NFL at about twice the rate as his modern predecessors at Michigan. The data are here for anyone who wants to check my work, or you can go to my tweet storm to see the lists for Harbaugh, Hoke, Rodriguez, Carr, and Moeller.
Anyway today's goal is to explain this:
(Here's that same table if you're having trouble with the interactive version.) Blue means drafted, shaded by round. Yellow shades refer to undrafted free agents, with designations for guys who had full, long NFL careers (UDFA+), actually played in the NFL (UDFA), or just signed but never made a roster (UDFA-) with this year's guys in their own category of don't know yet. The sample includes counts scholarship players, transfers, and the type of walk-on who ascends to the Kovacsian Order of Glasgow. I also removed Xavier Worthy, though other non-enrollees who signed with Michigan are included, just because I didn't think it was right to count Worthy; YMMV.
Not counting guys still in college—and Hoke guys that Harbaugh's program probably deserves the credit for—Harbaugh's recruits are about twice as likely to sign an NFL contract, twice as likely to play in the NFL, twice as likely to be drafted, and twice as likely to be drafted in the first three rounds.
The social media explanation for this has been "player development," and there's truth to that, but it's hardly the whole truth.
What I'd like to do here is to use what we know of the players' stories to see if development was truly the big story. I suspect there's a lot more nuance here, that they were better at developing players than most, but also had some strategies for finding underrated talent, and geared their program in certain ways to make the players coming out of it more valuable to NFL teams.
[After THE JUMP let's talk about this.]
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