2010 Recruiting: Jordan Paskorz

Previously: S Carvin Johnson, S Ray Vinopal, S Marvin Robinson, CB Courtney Avery, CB Terrence Talbott, CB Cullen Christian, CB Demar Dorsey, LB Jake Ryan, LB Davion Rogers, and LB Josh Furman.

"Workmanlike" was the watchword of Paskorz's commitment post and that tepid word still rules after his senior season. At the time there was little to go on outside of a hastily-assembled ESPN profile in the aftermath of Paskorz's commit; after 14 months there has been additional information added to the pile.

Paskorz is still the younger brother of Notre Dame fullback Steve Paskorz and the Irish took a brief look early in the recruiting year but ended up taking a pass. This will be brought up during the next three M-ND games. He's still not a big recruit in the eyes of the sites. Scout interviewed him after his January official in which he discloses a 11.6 100 meter dash time—pretty impressive for a defensive lineman. He finished his senior year with 13 sacks and 85 tackles, ending up first team all-state on a team that made the state semis.

At Michigan, Paskorz is one of the few players told he will play at the LB/DE hybrid "quick" position currently inhabited by Craig Roh who has a high probability of sticking there. At 235 pounds currently but lacking the 6'4-6'5" frame Michigan prefers for its out-and-out linemen, Paskorz is a classic tweener who might fit in Michigan's defense better than he does elsewhere. That's the impression provided by his ESPN evaluation($), anyway:

Paskorz will offer some versatility as a defender at the college level. At the high school level, he plays from a two-point stance and could be considered as an outside linebacker/defensive end prospect in the right fit. Overall, we feel he will fit best more as a traditional defensive end. He could be asked to play from a two-point stance, but seems best suited to play near the line of scrimmage in an attacking fashion.

The rest of the evaluation is a series of sentences that go "he does this okay, but needs to work on this, too." The overall impression is that he's one of Michigan's less exciting recruits. Scout and Rivals actually think a little less of him (Rivals breaks DEs down into strongside and weakside spots, meaning he'd be about 80th on a unified list), but they all put him in the wide swath of generic three stars. What difference of opinion there happens to be is minor.

Paskorzs's offers echoed those evaluations, with a few middling-to-bad BCS teams hopping in and notable powers staying away. Pitt, Virginia, and Minnesota were the schools Paskorz picked Michigan over. He might have gotten more interest if he extended his recruitment past late May, but his offers are right in line with his rankings.

This lack of recruiting acclaim and the corresponding skepticism from the Michigan internets (possibly including this Michigan internet if the author of the following piece knows the distinction between blogs and message boards, a 50-50 proposition) spurs the haters-gonna-hate article:

Hampton's Jordan Paskorz has heard the whispers. The senior standout football player has read that he's overrated and that his scholarship offer to Michigan was helped by bloodlines. But the 6-foot-4, 235-pound Paskorz brushes it off like he has so many offensive tackles.

Once you get past the defensiveness, though, that piece has some useful quotes from Paskorz's coach:

"…it's hard to find a player of his caliber. He worked hard, he devoted time early in the morning and he didn't miss workouts. Jordan has been a quiet leader, and at least to me, he's exemplified what a Division I player should be."

"He's a physical specimen," DeMatteo said. "You look at him sometimes, and you forget he's just an 18-year-old kid."

There is also further confirmation that Paskorz is going to be behind Roh:

DeMatteo knows Paskorz likely will play a nearly identical position in the Michigan system.

"It's really based on what the offenses are doing. It's not any more complicated than that," DeMatteo said. "He has some things you can't coach.

"With all that being said, I can tell you right now, people aren't going to be afraid to run towards him. People aren't going to back down from him, and I hope he expects that."

You can find more assertions like that at the Post-Gazette and on Rivals. He will be a quick end.

And that's basically it when it comes to information floating out there. I've done a lot of these with an eye towards looking a little deeper than the recruiting sites do on the vast mass of three-star prospects that haven't leapt out at Scout or Rivals, often finding reasons for optimism. See Carvin Johnson for a canonical example. Here, though, there isn't much to go on. All recruits are lottery tickets that have a chance to hit big, but that doesn't mean you can't get a rough sense of the chances from surveying google. This is all a long way of saying I'm not expecting immediate contributions from Paskorz and think he's got a relatively low chance of being anything other than a functional rotation player a la Greg Banks. At this time, Pittsburgh-area newspaper cranks are invited to view this animated gif if it will make them feel better.

Why Jeremy Van Alstyne? It's really hard to find a Michigan player in the last decade who was a 230-ish pound LB/DE coming out of high school who did not have a ton of hype (Tim Jamison, Roh). I was going to go for Brandon Herron, but he was 6'2" and under 200 pounds as a high school kid. Van Alstyne was 240, listed at LB, and expected to play DE. He was always supposed to be breaking through but suffered a series of injuries and then didn't play that well even when he saw the field. He ended up a rotation player and erratic starter.

Etc.: State runner-up in the shot put. Fluffy article previewing Hampton's season last year with a couple quotes. Signing Day interview on WTKA. Paskorz's coach in an AA.com article on something he won't do at Michigan:

“I’m sure all the computer breakdowns would say that we were so right-handed because he played as our tight end to the right side,” Hampton coach Jacque DeMatteo said. “And he just mauled people. It was fun to watch. It was really nice to be able to coach something like that.”

Guru Reliability: High. Unified opinion about a healthy kid and nothing in the offers to contest the assessment.
General Excitement Level: Insert the usual disclaimers about how I don't want to be rude to a kid but have to maintain some air of objectivity: low. There's obviously some chance that Paskorz develops more than his classmates but his ceiling seems pretty average and he's got a ways to go to get there.
Projection: Redshirt, then spends another two years behind Roh before challenging for the starting job as a redshirt junior.