Hello, I'm back, and very thankful to have missed the dumbest week of the offseason thus far. The long-promised recruiting mailbag is here, and I'll have a recruiting roundup tomorrow once I've caught up.

There may be in-class attrition. It probably won't include Mike Onwenu. [Rapai]

At long last, we've gone long enough—hold on...

[checks Twitter]
[checks three different message boards]
[checks Twitter again]

...we've gone long enough without a commitment for me to put together the recruiting mailbag I promised weeks ago.

@AceAnbender #MGoMailbag A lot of talk about us reaching and passing 25 in this class. Do you see it?

— CBCS (@MGoFour) June 15, 2015

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Michigan already sits at 21 commits in the class and they have several positions of need yet to fill: wide receiver, tight end, defensive tackle, BUCK linebacker, cornerback, probably one more offensive lineman, and maybe an additional inside linebacker. They may even take a kicker, though Quinn Nordin's recruitment is trending towards Penn State. That's seven or so more potential spots. If they find a way to make the numbers work, this class could conceivably reach 28 players, with the coaches backdating a few early enrollees to fit under the yearly cap of 25.

Can Michigan make this work without oversigning? I think so. Brian covered part of the numbers outlook in his recent mailbag, noting two areas where scholarships should open up:

• There are 4-6 current redshirt juniors who are candidates for unrenewed fifth years. They'll have spent four years in the program and will leave with degrees in hand.
• There are a couple potential medical redshirts, not including the now known to the public effort to get Ondre Pipkins to agree to take one. Pipkins, a senior, wouldn't have affected the 2016 scholarship count regardless.

There's another huge factor: the impending depth chart crunch. Michigan is set to have seven scholarship quarterbacks on the roster in 2016; they'll also have seven scholarship running backs. That's 14 players for two starting positions (three if M goes RB-by-committee), and there's a good chance underclassmen pass an upperclassman or two. Depending upon how the depth chart shakes out, there could be 3-4 transfer candidates just from those two position groups. As the pecking order is established in fall camp and during the season, some players will look for playing time elsewhere.

In addition, I looked at Stanford's 2010 class for a reason. Any class that fills this many spots this early is likely to have attrition, and while Stanford's 2010 class had an unusual number of decommitments even for Harbaugh, it'd surprise me more if Michigan held onto every current commit than if they lost at least a couple. David Reese is looking at Louisville and Notre Dame. Dele' Harding camped at West Virginia recently. In-class attrition should be expected.

For those looking at the number of highly ranked targets on Michigan's board and wondering where those spots will come from, that should help provide an answer, as should this: always remember that fans tend to overestimate their team's chances of landing top-ranked commits. Is Michigan going to pull in some four-stars and perhaps even a five-star or two down the stretch? Yes. Are they going to add Rashan Gary, both Kellys, Dontavious Jackson, Terrance Davis, Ahmir Mitchell, and Nasier Upshur to round out the class? No. While Michigan is in very good shape with each of those prospects, anyone who's followed recruiting for a while knows that a class never wraps up so neatly, let alone so spectacularly—especially when dealing with so many out-of-region prospects.

At this point, I'm not too concerned about the numbers. There's still an entire fall camp and football season to play before Signing Day, and Michigan is in their first year under a demanding coach with a markedly different style from his predecessor. If M has to "free up" a half-dozen scholarships in February, we have a problem; I don't anticipate this being a problem.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the mailbag.]

I do not want to add to the already over-discussed topic of taking so many “under the radar” kids with low or no rankings.  What I am wondering is whether there is any concern that so many of the offers seem to be based almost entirely on camp performances?  I admit there could be a major flaw in the question itself if you tell me that many of the camp offerees were well-scouted on tape before the camp sessions, but the timing of the offers and the quotes from some of the recruits about being surprised by the offers suggests otherwise.  I understand that some of the kids have impressive HS stats and that seeing a player in person at a camp is an important and valuable part of the equation, but I know also that every year NFL scouts, coaches, and GMs look foolish for placing too much emphasis on combine performances. 

Thanks,

Ross

I don't think this is an entirely fair portrayal of Michigan's camp offers, but it's one I've seen in some form often enough that it's worth addressing. Let's use Dytarious Johnson as an example; as a two-star on Rivals and unranked everywhere else when he committed, Johnson was seen as a flier when Michigan took him.

But Michigan was quite familiar with Johnson before the Prattville camp. Harbaugh took a commitment from his teammate Keith Washington in the 2015 class. It's a good bet that when the coaches were going over Washington's film, the junior linebacker on his defense also caught their attention. Like the rest of the camp commits, Johnson had junior film to evaluate. In his case, the coaches had been monitoring him during the spring, and Johnson had even been on campus for the Spring Game with Washington, though at the time that was noted by few. The camp simply provided the final piece of evidence needed for the coaches to decide he was worthy of an offer.

There's also a reason the camps are arguably more valuable than watching high school film*: it's the only setting where a coach is able to actually, you know, coach his prospective recruits. That's valuable not only for gauging a prospect's ability and potential, but also for knowing how well a player takes to instruction—"coachability" is a big thing for this staff, which believes they can get the most out of a player's raw ability if he's willing to listen. I certainly wouldn't compare Harbaugh taking camp commits from players he got to instruct in what's essentially a practice setting to, say, Al Davis drafting Darrius Heyward-Bey because of his 40 time or JaMarcus Russell because of his cannon arm.

*To be clear, I'm not advocating for the coaches to not take high school film into the equation, and that's certainly not what this staff is doing.

Hi Ace,

Putting aside the debate many of the MGoBlog readers of signing so many "lightly" recruited players so early in the cycle, I was wondering if the recent rash of 2&3 star player commitments should have been expected, and if maybe this is the downside to the seemingly pan-offering approach to recruiting Harbaugh and Co. appear to be taking.  From the player's perspective, if I was a HS football player with some low level offers and Power-5 major player like Michigan (especially if I cared at all about academics) came calling, I would jump all over it before the choice is taken from me by a 4 or 5 star.  If I garnered other interest from other Power 5 schools, I could always de-commit later.  So why isn't the class currently "full" of 2 and 3 stars and how does the coaching staff juggle this possibility while hoping to land some of the bigger fish when they make their decisions later in the recruiting cycle?  Thanks for the insight.

Brian VanderBeek (MGoBeek)
Philadelphia, PA

This one's pretty simple: the coaches have been up front with recruits about whether an offer is truly "commitable," so if a prospect has committed, it's because the coaches found him worthy of a spot in the class. That's an easy way to safeguard against Plan B types filling up the class, and given the way Michigan is recruiting there are still plenty of Plan A options out there. I don't think any camp commits took the spot of a top target.

Michigan may, in fact, get some in-class attrition because of the type of scenario laid out in this question: lower-ranked, out-of-region camp commits may think twice once the initial euphoria of adding a Michigan offer wears off and other programs closer to home start sniffing around. I'm guessing Harbaugh factored that into his recruiting strategy when he laid out plans for the satellite camp tour.

With the increased national recruiting emphasis under Harbaugh, it looks like the big sacrifice has been Ohio. Do you think this is part of the overall strategy or does it just seem like Ohio has fallen off the map (yes, please).

While it's true that Michigan hasn't focused on Ohio in this cycle as much as they have in the past, I don't expect that to be a long-term thing, in large part because it'd be really stupid on Michigan's part to give up on the most fertile nearby recruiting ground. The recent deemphasis has been the result of a temporary dip in talent.

There are just 11 composite four-star prospects from Ohio in the 2016 class, according to 247, and this coaching staff was working from way behind Notre Dame and Ohio State for the guys they targeted (namely OL Tommy Kraemer and Liam Eichenberg). For comparison, there were 19 composite four-stars or better from Ohio in 2013, 15 in 2014, 17 in 2015, and the early 2017 rankings have 15 Ohio prospects with at least four stars. While these coaches are focused on California, Florida, Alabama, New Jersey, Texas, and out-of-region prospects in general much more than the last staff, I doubt they're going to punt on recruiting Ohio.