growth of recruits

This is why you recruit athletes instead of giants who are already 330lbs. Your strength program will determine how the recruit will put on the weight which more often than not, leads to mostly a good weight gain. In short 40lbs added on an athlete makes a good lineman, 40lbs added on to average athleticism makes you just plain fat.

This article is why I can't wait to see AJ William's college career play out. He is our recruit with the highest ceiling at this point and that is saying something considering our current commits.

The most eye-popping number from that chart?

Phil Taylor was 346 lbs. as a recruit.  Yikes.

With recruits you want to look at their frame, their work ethic, and diet.  If they're already eating right and spending hours in the weight room and yet lacking in ideal size - you might be stuck unless the natural maturation of the body changes it. 

But look on the front page at the pictures of Woodley and Long.  Woodley was strong but still pretty skinny.  Now his arms are bigger than my head.  (I've stood next to him and compared at a basketball game in Saginaw)

If he has the highest ceiling you must be assuming he will become a 1st round pick at LT?  Because otherwise it's pretty easy to argue why many others have a pretty dang high ceiling.  People keep talking about how small Biggs is height-wise.  Last time I checked he was an inch shy of being the same height as Ray Lewis and Patrick Willis.

After Woodson, he's the best defensive player I've ever seen at UM.

Way to early to say AJ Williams has the highest cieling, he's yet to strap up for the maize n blue

Wellman, but ceiling implies more than that.  Ross, Stone and Bolden all have serious work ahead to capitalize on their strengths.  (Let the double entendre do the heavy lifting.) 

Recruiting is pretty vague as is without putting labels on players who regardless of ceiling have D-1 talent.  It is what they do.  Make plays guys. 

As has been said before line recruits are hard to gauge.  Even going to the next level...that Mandarich sure was a beast. /s

Until we get some other commits on the line - in my dreams I do want Williams to have the most growth over his carrer - Omameh at tackle please. 

HS 250+lb TEs make D-1 OT college recruits...this speaks more to footwork.  Weight gain and ceilings are on the athlete.  Williams looks (IMO only) to be nimble enough to push rush ends into the stands and also to grow big enough to seal a DT.

Ross' father is about 6'3" from the looks of the photo on Scout and his mother seems to be tall for a woman as well. I'm expecting Ross to be at least 6' 2". 

am curious to know jake long's signing day measurables.

As fans, most of us talk about the "skill" positions most of the time, and it is the smaller guys who get all of the headlines.  For example, if we counted the number of times the word "Denard" appeared here last year, it would be quite impressive. In this year's draft, though, only eight of the thirty-two players chosen in the first round weigh 240 or less.  

The "grunt" jobs might be thankless most of the time, but they certainly weren't on draft day.

Magnus just beat me to that. But yeah the other thing you have to remember Tater is that there is a major disparity between the needs of college teams and the needs of an NFL team. For example in the NFL teams generally draft more depth at the line positions because they are more likely to get injured than say a quarterback, wr or even cb/s. Then as Magnus said this was a very rare draft where there just happened to be a lot of talented big men.