A perspective on Harbaugh taking low-ranked recruits (with numbers!)

Submitted by Inuyesta on

I posted the bulk of this in a thread on 247 about the big group of New Jersey prospects coming in for a visit next weekend.  If you want to see this post in its original context, the thread is here, and this post is on page 3.

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As commitments have rolled in at a dizzying rate in the aftermath of the Summer Swarm tour, the ageless debate about taking lightly-recruited players now vs. holding out for the possibility of landing better-regarded prospects later has heated up once again. The debate has been particularly sharp regarding the situations of Ron Johnson, a 4* DE prospect from New Jersey who has named Michigan his leader, and Rashad Weaver, a 2* DE/TE from Florida who was offered at the Miami satellite camp and committed shortly afterward.  247's Steve Lorenz has reported that Johnson, who holds 25 offers including Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan State, Notre Dame and Oregon, might not be a "take" for the staff if he tried to commit.  This has been perplexing to some given the quick acceptance of Weaver's commitment; before Michigan, Weaver's best offers were from Illinois and Syracuse.

"Elite" opinion -- which is to say, the opinions of people who are paid to write about Michigan recruiting -- has fallen firmly on the "trust the coaches" side, and for good reason.  In evaluating any given prospect, Harbaugh and Co. have a veritable ocean of experience playing and coaching football at the highest levels while the average fan concerned about recruiting rankings generally has no experience of any kind.  I, too, personally trust that Harbaugh knows what he's doing, which is why you don't see me on the warpath the way I was, for instance, when Hoke took Brady Pallante. If Harbaugh thinks a kid is good enough to play for Michigan, that's good enough for me.

 

But I also understand the other point of view, and I think the other point of view needs to be taken seriously rather than dismissed out-of-hand as stargazing. If Weaver redshirts, spends two years on the bench and a third only playing 15-20 snaps a game before being given the firm handshake while Johnson turns into a 2 year starter, All-conference honorable mention type at South Carolina or Penn State or wherever, Harbaugh's gonna look pretty silly on this one and deservedly so.

Some food for thought:

No one fills their class entirely with 4*s. Even Alabama takes a good handful of lower-ranked, under-the-radar kids every year. Mature fans know this. But its fair to be a little skeptical when taking lightly-recruited kids becomes a big trend...if Devin Gil, Josh Metellus, and Terrell Lucas all commit (as they seem likely to do), that will make nine commits with 247Composite ratings of 0.85x or worse, which seems like a lot even for a 25-man class. If you look at teams that compete for national championships year in and year out, they generally don't take that many lowly rated kids.

Average number of commits rated 0.85x or lower per class, over the past 5 classes (2011-2015)

Alabama - 2.4 

Florida State - 4.4 

LSU - 4.8 

Ohio State - 5.4 

Oregon - 8

If you look at those teams, the only one that has ever taken as many as nine 0.85x players in a single recruiting class is Oregon, which had nine in its 2015 class. Alabama had two seasons where they didn't take anyone that lowly rated.

It's also worth noting that even though Stanford didn't recruit that well by the rankings under Harbaugh, the players Harbaugh recruited who got drafted tended to be better-regarded than that. Here is the list of recruits Harbaugh signed at Stanford who went on to be drafted along with their 247Composite rating coming out of high school (I'm not giving Harbaugh credit for the 2007 class since he was hired a month and a half before that class signed; I am giving Harbaugh credit for the 2011 class even though he left Stanford for the 49ers a month before that class signed):

2008 class 

Andrew Luck - 0.9768 

David DeCastro - 0.8947 

Jonathan Martin - 0.8620

2009 class 

Levine Toilolo - 0.9117 

Zach Ertz - 0.9090 

Stepfan Taylor - 0.8961 

Tyler Gaffney - 0.8955 

Trent Murphy - 0.8347 

Ben Gardner - 0.7667

2010 class 

Cameron Fleming - 0.8600 

David Yankey - 0.8600 

Henry Anderson - 0.8558 

Ed Reynolds - 0.8250 

David Parry - NA

2011 class 

Ty Montgomery - 0.9026 

Jordan Richards - 0.8755

In Harbaugh's 4 classes, he recruited 83 players; 40 of them, or 48.1%, were rated 0.85x or lower. Of Harbaugh's 83 recruits, 16 were drafted, but the portion of low-rated recruits among the draftees slides to 31.3% (5 of 16). This isn't groundbreaking stuff, it's just a demonstration that higher-rated players are more likely to be drafted even when Jim Harbaugh is their coach. But yeah, higher-rated players are more likely to be drafted, and insofar as "drafted" is a workable proxy for "good," higher-rated players are more likely to be good. So it's fair to be concerned or skeptical when you see Harbaugh taking a bunch of low-rated recruits. 0.86x or better recruits under Harbaugh at Stanford were twice as likely (25.6% vs. 12.5%) to be drafted than their lower-ranked peers...it's fair to want Harbaugh to put himself, and Michigan, in as good of a situation as possible.

Comments

BlueCube

June 17th, 2015 at 1:35 PM ^

recruiting and evaluation staff is. It's headed by an absolute madman coach who probably watches tons of film on guys daily along with the rest of his schedule and demands his staff does the same. They are going to out hustle a lot of people to see these kids.

Kids grow and develop throughout the year and it's very possible to improve and get a bump during the summer camps and season. Michigan is getting there early.

I think Harbaugh also looks for athletes first and foremost and isn't going to be fooled by linemen who can dominate a high school game based on size alone. 

From what Sam Webb has said, many of the players Michigan picked up recently were due for bumps. Michigan is getting the jump on other teams.

Inuyesta

June 17th, 2015 at 1:53 PM ^

Yeah, it's definitely very heartening that a lot of guys Michigan got in on earlier in the cycle as "under-the-radar" types have blown up...thinking about guys like Xavier Kelly (a 3-star Kansas State commit when we offered, now #107 overall in the Composite with 31 offers), Jonathan Jones (still a 3* to most services, but has dominated camp settings and earned an invite to The Opening, seems due for a bump), Rahssan Thornton (3*, turned into a fierce recruiting war between LSU, Michigan, and Texas before he committed to LSU very recently), Kingston Davis (picked up LSU, UF, and Nebraska offers post-commitment), or even Brandon Peters, who was a 3*/4* tweener when we offered and has since made the Elite 11 finals and risen to #140 overall in 247sports' rankings.

Similarly, some of these new guys, like Dytarious Johnson and Sam McKeon especially, seem like they're very much underranked and due for sizeable bumps.

So, that's why I'm in the "trust the coaches" camp.  But I certainly understand the other perspective.

schreibee

June 17th, 2015 at 2:24 PM ^

I appreciate your reasonable, measured approach to evaluating Harbaugh's method (or madness) in offering so many "under the radar" types at this point in the recruitment cycle...and with numbers!
As your clarification points out - you'd have been well served to include it in the OP - many of the players Harbaugh got in on early have already seen significant rating spikes. It is therefore reasonable to predict that many (most? all?) of these others will as well. As Ace has stated numerous times, it's where they're rated on NSD that figures into the player's and class's composite score, to be evaluated for posterity - not where they're ranked in mid-June.

Will Weaver end up ranked comparably to Ron Johnson? Can't say yet. Does taking one preclude taking the other? No way of knowing that right now. People who think they know better than Jim frickin Harbaugh what's best for Michigan's FB program can come on here and hyperventilate all they want. The only things we can positively say will be accomplished by that is either firing up (or possibly alienating) any of our recruits that read the blog. The thing we can positively say will NOT be accomplished is Jim Harbaugh changing one damn thing he's doin to please Hannibal or Pinky!

distant gerbil…

June 17th, 2015 at 2:16 PM ^

Back when kids were into such things, I remember long debates on the playground about Michigan's propensity to sign undersized, "quick" defensive linemen during the seventies and invariably someone would say "why don't they just sign big, quick linemen?"

I didn't and still don't think that was necessarily being critical of Bo, because he had a logic and they did what they believed was best for them, but it was most certainly OK to wonder about the practice.

This is sort of the situation now. I don't believe for a second that Harbaugh is "settling" for 2 star recruits; he's after something specific and it would seem to be the role of a Michigan sports blog to discuss what that something may be. Obviously, he inherited Singleton and a roster full of 4 and 5 star talent, so he just had to maintain that if status quo was what he was after. It would seem though, that there is something he wants other than what he inherited.

Smarts/football IQ, toughness, work ethic, what have you, there is something he wants in that locker room that he may not believe he has enough of today. He may want to build a foundation of warrior type leaders at playing football his way, and that means more to him right now than star ranking. We all know that half the roster walked out on Bo's first summer at UM, what we may not know is whether Bo then brought in these types of hungry players in his first class to build a roster full of the character that he taught. You obviously really don't want to sign players who are going to walk out the next year, right?

I don't think everyone has to be offended and feel as if Harbaugh is being attacked for wondering about this, especially when he signs a 4.7 CB people are going to wonder if he can cover the Devin Smiths of the world, although most of them seem athletic enough to compete.

I think its certainly plausible as well that as time goes by and he has opportunity to scout the younger players that he may feel more comfortable finding and building relationships with more 4 and 5 stars that he knows have the characteristics that he is looking for, this current cycle may be a one off.

gobluenyc

June 17th, 2015 at 8:10 PM ^

I was thinking about all of this and weighing the plusses and minuses of the concerns over stars. One if the things I wondered is what big name recruits think about all this. We've seen evidence that the popular kids often follow other popular kids. However...

I think JH is offering kids he wants on his team, no matter what the rating services have to say. That is the point, and is a strong message to all recruits.

Zarniwoop

June 17th, 2015 at 4:10 PM ^

The only time I'm concerned is when they sign a big, slow, not terribly athletic guy.

I really don't understand it.

That said, I don't have to. Because the staff obviously saw something that invalidates "expert ratings" in their minds.

snarling wolverine

June 17th, 2015 at 4:32 PM ^

So it's fair to be concerned or skeptical when you see Harbaugh taking a bunch of low-rated recruits.

Let's keep in mind that the current rankings are provisional and will continue to change. I would not be surprised to see some guys get a bump by February.

aplatypus

June 17th, 2015 at 4:44 PM ^

This is the key line to me from your post: 

In Harbaugh's 4 classes, he recruited 83 players; 40 of them, or 48.1%, were rated 0.85x or lower.

To me, that's a pretty big deal considering how freaking well his teams did. You showed that some top tier teams like Alabama and OSU didn't recruit a whole lot of guys under .85 but Harbaugh had almost 50% of his recruits below that line and still got the team to compete at a very very high level. That's also while at Stanford, not Michigan, FSU, OSU, Bama, etc. 

Sure smoe of the guys will be misses, on an individual level, but to me your diary further supported the idea that Harbaugh just don't care and he'll win with anyone. 

Inuyesta

June 17th, 2015 at 6:13 PM ^

I think it's saying too much to say that Harbaugh will "win with anyone."  I think it's safe to say that a big reason for the outsize success Harbaugh had at Stanford (going 12-1 his final year) had a fair bit to do with having a generational talent in Andrew Luck as his quarterback...a player that good at QB can paper over a lot of inconsistencies elsewhere.  It would be interesting to see how Stanford would have done if Harbaugh hadn't left for the 49ers and had to coach with Hogan as his QB.  (My take is that he would have done well, but probably not reached the heights he achieved with Luck...probably more like 9 wins a year, which is still very good at Stanford).

There are certain programs that are able to compete at a high level despite not recruiting among the elite (according to the rankings)...off the top of my head, I would name Oregon, Baylor, Michigan State, Wisconsin, and perhaps TCU in that group.  But even though schools like that may win conference titles, I don't see any of them (except perhaps Oregon) as genuine national championship threats...I don't think it's a coincidence that Oregon has struggled the in its recent national championship games against recruiting powers Auburn and Ohio State, and I don't think it's a coincidence that neither Wisconsin nor Michigan State have been able to put together 12 complete games to reach the national championship.  We'll see what happens with Baylor and TCU moving forward, but my expectation is that those schools would similarly flounder at the highest level of competition.

I've long thought that college football is structurally rather similar to European soccer due to the abundance of different leagues and the seeming permanence of teams at the top/lack of parity among the leagues.  Let's run with that analogy and say the Big Ten is the Spanish league La Liga.  The question is do we expect Michigan football to be Real Madrid to Ohio State's FC Barcelona -- a worthy rival both in the domestic league and for European supremacy -- or do we expect Michigan football to be more like Atletico Madrid or Valencia, popular sides that might pop up and win a domestic trophy here and there, but which rarely amount to anything outside Spain and are not usually mentioned in the same breath with the big boys?   If your expectation is only that we be an 8-to-10 win sort of team that competes for Big Ten titles but doesn't usually make a big dent nationally, then there's nothing to worry about, we've got that covered with Harbaugh on board. But that's just the floor for a coach like him. I don't see any reason, with a brand and resources such as we have and a coach such as we have, why we shouldn't play the role of Real Madrid, or even supplant Ohio State as Barcelona. That's tough to do with under-the-radar recruits, though, and so its a fair thing to worry about.

LKLIII

June 17th, 2015 at 11:09 PM ^

Totally agree with your last 3 sentences. My total guess is that Harbaugh is looking at this as a two phase project. Phase I is to get those tough as nails totally committed 2-3 star kids in to create the foundation of the team. Get the exact locker room culture he wants--kids running through walls for him etc. Sprinkle in a few 4-5 stars as he can but otherwise go the Stanford route and rehabilitate Michigan back to the 9-10 win level. Then once Michigan is in striking distance of the top, he'll have access to a bigger pool of 4/5 star kids wanting to come to Michigan. At that point he'll have the pick of the litter and go for kids who are 4/5 star athletes AND the tough as nails Harbaugh attitude/work ethic. That's Phase II and once it happens we'd be consistently in the hunt for the national playoff system.




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Bb011

June 17th, 2015 at 9:34 PM ^

The main flaw is that you are taking final rankings and comparing them to rankings that are about a year away from being final. There are huge changes in rankings during the summer going into players senior year and the fall of their senior year. This is because a lot of players get evauluated during the summer (which is exactly what has happened with these 2 *'s.) It will not surprise me if a lot of these .85 and lower players are actually quite a bit higher come the final rankings.

SysMark

June 17th, 2015 at 10:48 PM ^

Good post but two factors run counter to your argument.  One, it's very early in the ranking/evaluation process for a lot of these players and, two, Michigan could still easily be taking 10 more players in this class.  Time will tell and I'm optimistic.

nick614

June 19th, 2015 at 6:46 AM ^

I don't pay much attention to ranking or stars. To me the best indication of a player's ability is who has offered them a scholarship. If a player has offers from all the blue bloods then they are a 5 star player to me even if 247 or scout rates them as 3 stars. These schools know way more than recruiting websites who are biased to where they have the most coverage.

Maize and Blue…

June 19th, 2015 at 6:14 PM ^

Is that some of these players may be great in practice, we know the type and have them on the team now, although I will not name any names, but shit the bed when they actually get in games, and that is why they are ranked so low. In order to beat Ohio State, and other top programs, we need playmakers who make plays on the field, I just hope these guys are up to it.

My peace is said.

Farnn

June 20th, 2015 at 9:45 PM ^

What?  Most recruits are rated by practice anyway.  A lot of recruiting rankings are based on camp performances which are glorified practices, sometimes with little bearing on actual football games.  Yes, some players are better in practice than games but there is nothing to indicate that the the current commits have a higher proportion of those types than any other class.