ESPN Grades Michigan's 2018 class at a B+

don't particularly need offensive lineman in bulk right now, what we need is impact players.  I think both of our lineman in this class are going to be solid two-year starter-ish type guys who are adequate.  But "adequate" is only going to go so far.  We need that guy, and we just can't seem to land him.  Of all the things I expected with JMFH, difficulty recruiting on the O-line was certainly not one of them.

it has been too long with just adequate to bad offensive lines. In RR days when we had the horrible secondary, that was fixed quickly when Mattison/ Hoke came in.  The o-line has been a sore spot for this team to become elite, that it is hard to not have that focus on it.   

Better offensive linemen would indeed make this class better, therefore we’d all feel better about this class, if it was better. I hear what you’re saying.

Except the “getting highly ranked guys” part is what’s IRRELEVANT due to the difficulty in accurately gauging OL. You pretty much just need bodies. Outside of some elite players in high school, everyone else is pretty much a crapshoot. Last year, Michigan took 6 players who are on the OL (7 if you include Hall, but he transferred). Michigan took another 3 in the 2016 class. OL really wasn’t a huge position of need. OL numbers aren’t down, the players there are just incredibly young, so the starting caliber wasn’t there yet. That’s why Michigan was able to take a few projects (Mayfield and Hayes both need to put on significant size, Hayes needs to learn the position better) and then target a few high end prospects (NPF) but it wasn’t a case where Michigan needed to go out and sign five or six offensive linemen capable of playing right away. Ultimately, that was the case with the rest of this class. Michigan brought in so much talent across the board in the 2016/17 classes, that they were able to take fliers on a couple of guys with a lot of potential but that weren’t to the point where it really affected their ranking.

But it is difficult to gauge. For many reasons. For starters, at a lot of these camps, these offensive linemen are just flat out bigger and stronger than everyone. They push people around with little need for proper technique. That doesn’t work at the college level. Then it goes to coaching. Most of these offensive linemen haven’t been properly taught in high school. They don’t have proper bend, hand usage, they don’t know how to pull or pickup a stunt. In high school and in camps, it’s usually simple. Block the guy in front of you. It becomes INCREDIBLY more complicated when you get to college. You don’t really know how good a kid is going to be until he actually gets to college and gets coaching. Another part of it is projection. Ryan Hayes is 6’7” 252 lbs. He’s also ranked as a 4* OT. Obviously he isn’t going to play tackle at 252 lbs. he’s going to need to put on at least 45-50 lbs. Now the difficult part when scouting these kids, is trying to figure out how that added weight will affect the kid. Is he going to even be ABLE to put on that weight? Is he going to be able to adequately balance his muscle:fat ratio while adding 59 lbs? Is the weight going to affect his speed? Is it going to affect his mobility? His footwork? How do you accurately project all of that? (Answer: you don’t. It’s a shot in the dark) No offense, but it is people like you that don’t understand what actually goes into all of this stuff that cause the biggest ruckus when a lower ranked kid gets an offer or a 3* commits. Sometimes, those 3* guys are just better football players. Those 4* and 5* guys may have more potential. They may have more raw ability. They’re ranked higher because they have the potential to be incredibly good. But really, none of that matters. It’s all about whether or not they can put it all together. Ryan Hayes has the potential to be a really good tackle if he is able to put on the needed weight and his body responds properly to adding 50 lbs... or it could all go wrong and he’ll never see the field and there will be countless 3* OL that would have made a greater impact. But that’s the issue with the majority of fans. Not just with our fanbase, but all college fans. They don’t look at the actual player. They don’t look at his abilities. They don’t look at his faults. They don’t look at what the kid actually needs to do in order to make an impact. They just see the number of stars next to his name and base their projections solely off of that.

Rich Rod's second to last class was ranked higher than this at 17... after going 3-9 and 5-7 two years in a row. When would 20 have been an "incredible achievement"?

It also says something about how well he’s doing that an 8-5 season with the youngest team in America and you lose both your top WR and starting QB is a reason for people to scream at the top of their lungs. At the end of the day, all things considered, if the floor for a Harbaugh coached team is 8-5, I’m okay with that. If they have too 8 classes in back to back years. A slide down to a top 20 class isn’t a huge deal, especially when the next class is looking like an early bet to be top 10 as well. People need to just relax and look at the bigger picture here.

our biggest rival does sign top 10 classes year after year, and so do the teams who are legit contenders for national titles.  It feels like a remote possibility that we will ever be that.