We missed the news because I had a holiday this weekend. On Saturday afternoon 3* LB commit Casey Phinney decommitted from Michigan and quickly flipped to hometown Boston College.

Phinney was one of three low-ranked Northeastern players, along with TJ Guy and Dominic Giudice, who joined Michigan's class in the early weeks of the lockdown. While Guy appears to be a Kwity Paye-level discovery, and Giudice is an already-275-lb DT who's still being evaluated as an outside pass-rusher, the sites continue to rank Phinney barely inside top-1200, which would put him behind eleven current Michigan State commits. Even when he committed we were tactfully wondering if Phinney would get moved to fullback, a position that's being phased out of the program. Phinney probably wondered as well. Since Phinney pledged, Michigan has added three 4* linebackers, the NCAA gave everyone—notably the four LBs in Michigan's 2020 class—an extra year of eligibility, and recently the Wolverines secured another Massachusetts linebacker for 2022 who's basically a four-star version of Phinney. Both parties should be fine.

The timing leads to speculation that Phinney was dropped when he didn't help reel in high-4* teammate Drew Kendall, but that's been largely debunked; if Kendall chose Michigan for a friend it would have been TE commit Louis Hansen, not anyone at Nobles, and Michigan was well aware. There were some rumblings that BC was trying to poach Hansen, but these appear to be all from BC's side.

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