People, Michigan is 3-0. They aren't the first team to narrowly escape defeat against a shitty team. Everything will be fine. Team has a lot to prove Saturday and will do it in primetime. They will want to tear uconn's head off by the time Saturdat night rolls around.

Is it too soon to start the "Hoke can't recruit top tier defensive linemen meme?"

I guess I don't understand - we knew the DL was going to be young in the 2 deep and that the OOC schedule was a time for them and the OL to get better. So far, we have seen Strobel, Charlton, Henry, Wormley, Godin, and Glasgow get snaps in addition to the sophomores Pipkins, Ojemudia, and Heitzman. 

Personally, I think the scheme is a little wonky when they try to put too much youth on at the same time and I can see why Mattison was hesitant to blitz when Ross and Bolden have had trouble getting off blocks.

and that is that none of the young players on the D-line have yet shown any flashes of pure talent. And he is right that elite level talent often shows that right away (see Jake Ryan, in fact, remember back to the first few games of a freshman Mike Martin) even though they also disappear from time to time. In fact, Schutt is already playing significant minutes for Ohio with tons of coaching praise.

how many of these SEC / OSU recruits offered the academic and character profile that a Vandy or Stanford recruit offer?

So we either want to be Bama/LSU or OSU, or we want to be like them with the right kind of young men? If the latter, then our field of candidates is narrower, and thus our recruiting profile will end up a step down with more risk.

What this really means is development will take more time and until we have a DLine made of Mattison recruited juniors and seniors, with at least sophomores and juniors and a Heninger or two backing them up year in and year out - we just don't know. Also, much like the Bo years the model is not sustainable year in and year out - rather it is cyclical. Your B1G champion caliber teams come along every other year, and your NC caliber teams occur when the stars align just right with the right leadership.

Thanks for doing the work involved in a post like this, but I have some points of contention...

The Funk/Hoke+Mattison comparison makes some sense if you only look at this year. If you look further back they clearly have done more with less. Will Heininger, Qwash even Frank Clark were never expected to be decent to good dlinemen.

OSU has recruited on an exeptional level on their DL. Not even Bama stacks up. I'm not looking for exceptional results. I'm looking for pressure against Akron.

Alright, you've proven yourself to be a fairweather fan but regardless...

Have you watched any other CFB game this year? Have you seen any *truly good* D-lines in the country that meet your lofty standards? No. Watching OSU play Cal, Tennessee getting murdered by Oregon, and Ole Miss skewering Texas, the same thing plays out over and over again.. there IS NO PRESSURE on the QBs ever. No team outside of maybe Alabama this year seems to be able to get pressure on the opposing QB. That's why even Bama's defense gets 400 yards THROUGH THE AIR ALONE against them.. 

Wrap your head around this fact you fool:

Michigan currently has a statistically better defense than Alabama through 3 games as opposed to 2 games of Alabama. SEVEN Big 10 teams are in the top 50 in total defense. Michigan is BETTER than Ohio in total defense. Alabama isn't even in the top 50!! Competition caveat aside.. no team should be able to pass for 400+ yards against your defense. NO TEAM.

God damnit you people need to SHUT THE FUCK UP.

I don't disagree that the defensive line has been underwhelming, but the analysis here feels somewhat subjective.  OSU is a national team and they recruit like it, but at least part of the uptick in "SEC-level" recruits is because Meyer is from there and still has connections.  I look at the offer sheets and outside of Washington and Spence I see really similar sheets, perhaps where Stanford or UCLA replaces Florida or Tennessee.  And the fact that many of UM's recruits have offers from Vandy, Stanford, etc. maybe points to a different type of recruit being sought out.

I also think Hoke's focus on early signing limits the offer sheets from some of these kids; highly-committed kids are not necessarily going to be receptive to offers and may not report them, as Ace has mentioned a couple of times.  And with respect to ND, they seemingly find ways of getting highly-regarded kids to the school but also has a nasty habit of losing them quickly. 

UM isn't quite to the level of Alabama, LSU, or Georgia defensively, but I definitely think people are overreacting a bit to the Akron game.  It remains a unit unable to generate much pressure on the front line, and the running game has struggled.  That said, Florida had a horrible offense last year and did fantastic because of an unsustainable turnover margin, and so far this year they've been underwhelming.  Texas A&M has the 114th-ranked total defense, and that includes giving up 31 points to Rice, 28 to Sam Houstoin St., and 49 to Alabama (admittedly that's impressive).  Their defensive line is a mess and can't get pressure to save their lives. 

My point is that teams have flaws, and UM definitely showed some of theirs on Saturday.  But OSU and ND are no different than UM, and just because the line is young and struggling now doesn't mean it can't improve.

It is extremely rare that a team, outside of Alabama, will have 2 Brandon Graham caliber defensive lineman. You're talking about a mid-1st round draft pick that would have been a pro-bowler his rookie year if he hadn't blown out his knee.

I think having 2 All Big-Ten caliber lineman, and 2 solid starters should be the benchmark for Michigan. Michigan is at 0 and maybe 2 right now, and that's the problem. In 2 years, I think this could be a pretty good group, but they are not talented as a group to have so many 2nd and 3rd year players in the regular rotation.

About the D Line. We seem to get zero pressure on the QB for 4 out of every 5 plays. The one who who should be making a impact weekly by now is PIPKINS. He came in as a national recruit w offers from the big boys. What bothers me more is how OSU was able to poach those 3-4 D Lineman from Penn St and the others when there was trouble. If not for that they too would be having some issues. The next year or two in recruiting w dictate our future for the next 6-8 years as to how we are perceived and how we will be looked at from a national perspective from recruits to other top tear programs. If we continue to hit on 1-2 5* players a year and get 10-12 4* players a year we will be fine. With that said we need 2-3 D Line that are rated as a high 4* -5* player every year for the next few if we wanna win a National Championship.

correlate on field success with recruiting profiles from Scout, Rivals and ESPN.  Some of Michigan's best players were not 4 and 5 star football recruits.  

It also proves that Ohio was not really adversely affected by sanctions for Tatgate given their team depth.

Is it possible that Mattison is keeping our defense very generic and vanilla so as to throw off future opponents, knowing he could get away with it (well, should be able to get away with it) against inferior competition?

We aren't aggressive like we've been in the past couple years, maybe they're holding out for some reason?  No need to show the entire defensive plan the first 3-4 games of the season anyways.  Just a thought.  A thought that could be very incorrect, I admit, but a thought nonetheless.

Realistically we haven't gotten much of a pass rush the last two games because the last two opponent qbs have been throwing passes so quickly you'd think they were hot potatoes. We've spent the majority of the last two games in deep nickel coverage trying to avoid giving up the big plays. Against Akron in the second half they threw the kitchen sink at our secondary and did pick up a few. Expect more of the same against Indiana. Expect a repeat of Central sackapalooza against more balanced offenses.

Nobody has to be happy with the performance of the DL. No one should be happy about it. It hasn't been great like hoped. It hasn't been consistent as hoped. But just because it isn't there yet doesn't mean it won't get there. It also doesn't mean it will. But it's far to early to tell and people are jumping off a statistically proven band wagon indicating it will improve far too quickly because of their reaction to a single game.

This isn't just a problem with the Michigan fan base. It's a problem with all fan bases. It's a problem with people who follow politics or business decisions. But there is a consistent need for their to be a clear, defined problem and for someone or some group to be held absolutely accountable now or else the future will not look better. The problems on defense aren't just up front. The problems aren't as simple as "we suck at DL right now". There are things that Michigan needs to do better at every single position and more things they can do better at every single position. This should not be shocking. It should also give an idea that their isn't a single thing that can be blamed, or fixed, and everything will be fine.

DL is young on this team. Young at a position where technique is above all else important. People demanding that we need college ready players and to simply reload are missing reality, because outside 2 or 3 places that hasn't happened, and it's even questionable if it happens so easily at those places, because even at those places they aren't as heavily reliant on young players to play with as much consistency as is expected from many posters here.

This is a work in progress than does need to improve. I think it will. No one should be satisfied with the performance, but no one should be acting like Michigan is screwed if something drastic doesn't change, be that coaching change, or needing brand new players. There are issues, no doubt. There are problems occuring that you should expect not to, and ones you should expect to. Things need to get cleaned up, but it's not to say they can't be cleaned up. Maybe this isn't the group by itself to be absolutely dominent on its own, but it is a group, that with time and work and reps can be good to very good. And with additional help and additional years can be great. It won't do that on its own, but it has that potential. Complaining because it isn't there yet and giving that as evidence that it won't be is misguided. Pointing out a single group to identify your displeasure for those problems is just as much so. There doesn't need to be a symbolic sacrificial group for something that is much more complex. There doesn't need to be complete discourse because you're looking at things from a much too short-sighted perspective.