2008 recruiting top 150
*Behind Paywall*
Michigan had 4 recruits in the top 150
#69 - Dan Oneill - Transferred to Western
#71 - Darryl Stonum - Kicked off team
#115 - Brandon Moore - Used primarily as a blocker
#141 - J.B. Fitzgerald - Primarily a backup
No contributing recruits from this class and we still managed to win a bcs bowl game. Just imagine how successful we are going to be with top recruits under the wings of our current coaching staff!
January 19th, 2012 at 1:31 AM ^
Man was everyone wrong about O'Neill. I remember being pretty excited about that one.
January 19th, 2012 at 1:52 AM ^
That's what I kept reading.
Is he at least dominating the MAC?
January 19th, 2012 at 6:22 AM ^
He was All-MAC this season. Third-team, though.
January 19th, 2012 at 1:58 AM ^
I met him at Western through a friend. He was generally obnoxious and rude, not very "enlightened." He's no Michigan Man.
January 19th, 2012 at 6:57 AM ^
My friend in high school who had slight MAC interest before quitting football was a OK-Red D-lineman and put O'Neill on his back several times when they played during O'Neill's senior season. This is when my optimism began to fade.
January 19th, 2012 at 3:44 AM ^
The somewhat frustrating thing about O'Neill is that he clearly wasn't a fit for Rodriguez's system, but he has turned into a decent MAC player. He probably could have played at Michigan, but he and the coaches just didn't mesh.
January 19th, 2012 at 10:29 AM ^
and was 3rd team all MAC. He's a depth guy, at best.
January 19th, 2012 at 9:20 AM ^
I remember there was an article about him when we played Western a couple years ago and he had some quotes about how he was ready for the boos when he walked in to the big house. I think he gave himself a bit too much credit on that one...
January 19th, 2012 at 2:01 AM ^
really makes you remmebr how many players we have lost to attrition. Obviously with a BCS win our future looks amazingly bright, but it is still is shocking
January 19th, 2012 at 2:41 AM ^
I just looked through all of the classes still here we've had a much higher success rate with walkons then those signed in the RR era it seems. By contrast this last class is already contributing heavily
January 19th, 2012 at 2:58 AM ^
Wait, what?
January 19th, 2012 at 3:22 AM ^
just reread that not sure what I was getting at. been up way to long studying
January 19th, 2012 at 2:22 AM ^
I just looked at the Rivals and Scout top 100 rankings, and the list doesn't get much happier. You can add Boubacar Cissoko (Rivals #44; Scout #48), Brandon Smith (Scout #62), and Sam McGuffie (Scout #63).
January 19th, 2012 at 6:00 AM ^
I realize the OP was highlighting Top 150 guys, but there were some "contributors" from that class: Martin, Demens, Floyd, Koger, Odoms, Omameh, and Roundtree.
January 19th, 2012 at 6:34 AM ^
Stole my thunder. To say there were "no contributing recruits from this class" is super dumb. I remember many of us who were skeptical of how McGuffie might project at the college level were most excited about Mike Martin from that class.
January 19th, 2012 at 6:14 AM ^
Second, for the record, this was Carr's last class, so it doesn't say a lot about the change from the last coaching staff's recruiting to this staff's recruiting. That comment will be made more by our success this coming year and beyond.
January 19th, 2012 at 7:04 AM ^
Well, saying this was Carr's last class is like saying last year's class was RR's last class. While true, it was a split between Carr and RR, just like last year's class was ultimately a split between RR and Hoke. RR's class last year might have had Dee Hart and Sammy Watkins. That class of 08, I can't quite remember who else might have been in it had Carr not retired, though I do know some of the names RR was fully responsible for.
January 19th, 2012 at 12:32 PM ^
Weinke, an ok QB prospect, and I think a fullback or LB. That was it. The rest of Carr's commits stayed and RR added a few guys at the end like Feagins, Odoms, and a couple LB's who left the program early.
On the other hand, we lost of ton of talent when it became likely that RR was not going to return. Obviously we are much better off with Hoke at the helm so this is not a slam on him at all.
Frankly it is a more a slam on Brandon who should have fired RR after the OSU game and given the new coach more time to secure the class. I've heard that DB hand a handshake deal with Harbaugh but Harbaugh wanted to stay to coach the bowl game and so that is why DB waited. Maybe that is true, maybe not, but IMO that is not a good excuse as DB's should have never let Harbaugh dictate the timeing.
January 19th, 2012 at 7:13 AM ^
A few national sportwriters recently wrote things along the lines of "Hoke wins Sugar Bowl with Rich Rod's players."
As others have noted here, that's not really the case. 5th-year guys ('07 ... Molk, RVB) were all Lloyd and a big chunk of the 4th-year guys (Martin, etc.) were, too. Those are generally your most well-developed and important players.
Similarly, we're all familiar with "Ugg. RichRod lose because too many midgets recruiting argle bargle." He lost for a lot of reasons, but one of them was indeed a lower-than-average level of talent in the upper classes in '08, '09, and '10, as shown (in part) by the NFL drafts those years. Not his (recruited) guys ... as far as his recruiting (eeee ... defections and marginal academics) is concerned, we won't know about that until the next couple of years. Hopefully people won't blame Hoke for *those* years.
January 19th, 2012 at 7:43 AM ^
Nature vs. Nurture robbyt003. Nature always wins.
January 19th, 2012 at 8:17 AM ^
January 19th, 2012 at 8:10 AM ^
This thread is just another example that illustrates how oversigning helps those teams that do that year after year.
January 19th, 2012 at 9:14 AM ^
Oh man this post took a sharper turn than a Tarantino film.
January 19th, 2012 at 2:15 PM ^
lol I was just stating how previous top recruits were busts and we still won a bcs bowl.
January 19th, 2012 at 9:27 AM ^
Sam McGuffie under Brady Hoke's arm? He could have had a chance . . . hope he does well!
January 19th, 2012 at 2:24 PM ^
RR's RB coach SUCKED!, I like Hoke's much better.
January 19th, 2012 at 12:00 PM ^
I will never fully understand why RichRod couldn't take his recruiting game up a notch using U of M's brand. It's been debated ad nauseum, and I get those that say the problem was he didn't embrace the U of M brand (or it, him), and relied more on the RichRod brand, but man, his "lesser star" recruiting was actually pretty solid... Omameh, Odoms, Gallon (Army AA and 4 star, but not a wildly hyped guy, Vincent Smith, Fitz, Denard (highly rated CB, not QB)... but his top 100 guys were largely flame outs.
January 19th, 2012 at 12:41 PM ^
He had a lot of flameouts, period, whether they were highly ranked guys or not. DJ Williamson, Conelius Jones, Carvin Johnson, Ray Vinopal, Tony Posada, Austin White, Terry Talbott...
January 19th, 2012 at 2:24 PM ^
We just went 11-2 and won a BCS bowl for the first time in over a decade. It isn't because we've been bringing in scrubs the last few years.
RR's first full recruiting class produced Denard, Fitz, V. Smith, Lewan, Schofield, Gallon, Gibbons, Roh, T. Gordon, three decent options at LB (Hawthorne, C. Gordon, and Mike Jones), and guys like Campbell and Washington who are probably going to play a big role down the road. Plenty of those guys were 4-star recruits.
And those guys have another year or two of eligibility to reach their peak. Classes that produce record setting QBs, thousand yard rushers, starting WR, two multi-year starters on the o-line, and 6-7 quality contributors on D are not grounds for complaint.
January 19th, 2012 at 1:34 PM ^
Those guys didn't contribute because in most cases they weren't as good as another guy on the team. Brandon Moore has been a backup because the other TE in the class (Koger) has started for years and been a very solid player. Fitzgerald doesn't play because he's not as good as Kenny Demens (a guy who is just a year younger). O'Neill wouldn't be playing ahead of a guy like Taylor Lewan. And Coach Hoke wasn't able to stop Darryl Stonum from acting like a knucklehead.
People make way too much of the misses in recruiting when they are simply inevitable (only 22 of the 85 guys can start at a given time). Take a look at our 2002 class. Matt Gutierrez (transfer), Larry Harrison (booted off team for flashing his weiner), Darnell Hood (made 18 tackles as 5th year senior), Mike Kolodziej (think he played but then left team with some mystery illness, IIRC), Quinton McCoy (failed to qualify and went to prep school, re-signed a year later only to flunk out at UM), Pierre Rembert (transferred), Carl Tabb (made one catch for 2 yards as 5th year senior), and Jeremy Van Alstyne (made 6 tackles as 5th year senior) were all 4-star failures. Gabe Watson, Steve Breaston, and Jason Avant were the only successful blue-chip recruits from that class.
The guys in that class who stayed 5 years went to 3 Rose Bowls.
January 19th, 2012 at 1:42 PM ^
Brandon Moore was behind Steve Watson, a guy who couldn't get on the field at TE, OLB, or DE previously.
Fitzgerald couldn't beat out Obi Ezeh, Demens, or anyone else.
O'Neill might not beat out someone like Lewan, but he had the chance to beat out someone like Huyge...and he didn't.
I agree that sometimes it's a numbers game, but some of these guys haven't panned out at Michigan because they just haven't performed well enough.
January 19th, 2012 at 2:07 PM ^
Being a 4-star recruit doesn't mean a guy is super talented or that his skills will translate to playing in college. Every class has a bunch of guys who vanish or stick around for 4-5 years and never see the field. People act like this was some new phenomenon that happened under Rodriguez and was dooming us to future failure (i.e. BCS bowl wins) when the success rate of the 2008 and 2009 classes are about the best we've seen outside of maybe 2003 (Burgess, Crable, Hall, Long, Woodley) but that was from a tiny 17 man class.
That 2003 class still had plenty of busts even among the blue-chip recruits. Will Paul, Jim Presley, Jeff Zuttah, Jerome Jackson, Quinton McCoy (for a second time), Clayton Richard, and Ryan Mundy (though he did play a significant role prior to transferring) all left the program or made little/no contribution. The lists are long for every class we've ever brought in. What matters isn't that Max Martin transferred, but that Mike Hart ended up being a fantastic player. Our 2008 class produced a bunch of good players and is a big reason why teams 132 and 133 were/are going to be so successful.
January 19th, 2012 at 2:38 PM ^
I understand these things happen. I'm simply saying that, while your previous post seems to say that talented guys were sitting on the bench behind other talented guys, it appears that the guys on the bench just flat-out weren't good enough. It wasn't a Chad Henne/Matt Gutierrez situation where both guys were good but there wasn't enough room on the field. It was a Jonas Mouton/Brandon Logan situation, where one guy was good and one guy wasn't.