Michigan no longer recruiting Montae Nicholson (may be full at safety for 2014)

Submitted by a2_electricboogaloo on

Per TomVH TomVH

Will be interesting to see how that phone call goes with Smith. Montae Nicholson was told there is no room as of now w/ Michigan.

— Tom VanHaaren (@TomVH) August 27, 2013

Tom then clarified by saying that they're full at that position, not for the class.

.@meddler76 no room for his position, not overall.

— Tom VanHaaren (@TomVH) August 27, 2013

So we may be full at safety for the 2014 class, which would not only mean that we not recruiting Nicholson, but we may not be going after Juju Smith as well.  It sounds like Smith is going to contact the coaches today, and then we'll see whether or not we are still going after the 5-star California safety

 

UMaD

August 27th, 2013 at 1:57 PM ^

Clearly, the coaches are not trying to create a 22-position team in every recruiting class.

The curious timing of the offer/commitment of Kinnel has something to do with this I'd guess.  Also, probably how the '13 class is looking now that they've arrived.  Optimistically, CB looks very strong with Stribling emerging, so guys may move to Safety.  Pessimistically, some of the CB recruits don't have the one-on-one skills to stick there, so guys may move to Safety.

Also, it's possible the coaches are re-thinking their bigger-is-better philosophy a bit in the secondary.  See: offers to Crawford and Kinnel, plus Avery seemingly ascending quickly ahead of younger but bigger players.

San Diego Mick

August 27th, 2013 at 1:59 PM ^

will not be asked back, such as Josh Furman? Any insight on this out there?

Also, the schollies that Hoke gave to Glasgow, Reynolds & Kerridge, are they one year deals?

Mr Miggle

August 27th, 2013 at 2:12 PM ^

sometimes don't come back for their own reasons. If they have their degree, they might just want to move on with their non-football career or look for more playing time as a grad transfer.

Mr. Yost

August 27th, 2013 at 2:44 PM ^

...Nicholson seemed like the leader at S for Michigan. The arrow was down on Westphal and Smith was a "wait and see" type. I'm just interested as to why this comes out now and not weeks ago when we got our most recent DB commit for 2014.

rmic2

August 27th, 2013 at 2:47 PM ^

I know Montae's family personally, and was really pulling for him to come to Michigan. He is a great kid - both on and off the football field - wish him all the best. I could sense UM was pressuring him to commit, and I think that turned him off. He wants to wait, take his officials - who can blame him.

PSU, Pitt and Oregon have to to be the leaders for him at this point.

Things change - I am still holding out hope.

StephenRKass

August 27th, 2013 at 3:15 PM ^

I thought Nicholson was one of our best options at Safety for 2014, and this surprises me too.

On the one hand, I understand how someone wants to take all their officials and take their time in making their decision. On the other hand, I can understand the coaches giving  three different kinds of offers, depending on the recruit:

  1. We have a committable offer for you . . . today, right now. Once the spot (or spots) we're recruiting for are filled, the offer is no longer committable. IIRC, this happened with offensive line recruiting, when we had the commitment palooza Saturday a while back. We filled the spots, and that was that. This kind of offer tends to go to high 3 star and low 4 star recruits.
  2. We have a non-committable offer for you . . . we'll let you know if and when it becomes commitable. This happened with Drake Johnson, the Ann Arbor Pioneer RB who committed almost on the spot, once a committable offer was on the table. This happens when a recruit is below the radar, 2 star, low 3 star.
  3. We have an open, committable offer for you, that you can accept at any time. This kind of offer is pretty much reserved for the likes of Da'Shawn Hand, Jabrill Peppers, Leonard Fournette, Adoree' Jackson, etc. Perhaps Malik McDowell, Marshon Lattimore, JuJu Smith, and a few others are here, but eventually, there comes a time when the offer can be pulled.

Recruiting moves so fast now. Keeping spots open is fraught with danger, when someone you are hoping will sign on decides to go elsewhere. 

Dude Lebowski

August 27th, 2013 at 2:56 PM ^

Bad things come to those who wait in the new era college fooltaball recruiting. Unless of course your a concensus top 10 talent like Hand. They will keep a spot open for you.

M-Dog

August 27th, 2013 at 10:55 PM ^

This^^^  Every kid who says he wants to wait and take all his OV's and do the hat dance on NSD, better make sure these days that he is an unambiguous 5-star.

This ain't your daddy's, er, older brother's recruiting world anymore.  Classes fill up by the time you are a HS senior. 

The NCAA really should move Officail Visits to the summer before your senior year.

imMaizeNBlu

August 27th, 2013 at 2:56 PM ^

This could go two ways, one reason is that we're moving one of 2012-2013 DBs whom see to show more promise at SS or FS then CB (Delano Hill, Channing Stribling, and Dymonte Thomas) and will fill that position till they graduate.



The other possibility is that due to Ohio getting there two most recent recruits one of which is at DB Erick Smith and hopefully CB Lattimore are both silent commits who due to their experience at the BBq want in here.



I know which I like more but I'm inclined to believe in former rather then latter.

alum96

August 27th, 2013 at 3:42 PM ^

Dymonte has been slated for safety from the start - nickel seems to be where they are going to plug these very upper end freshman whether they end up as a corner or a safety their sophomore year.  Hill is one of those tweener guys, mixed bag whether he'd be safety or cb but most thought safety I think.  Stribling was a lowly non 4-5 star so who really cares - he probably won't play until a jr because stars is what matters.  Oh wait...  Jarrod Wilson is a 2012 S, Terry Richardson sure won't be a safety, Jeremy Clark - all 305 lbs of him is a 2012 S, and Ross Douglas and Reon Dawson have been forgotten by the fan base but should be somewhere hopefully in the 2 deep as RS freshman next year.  Maybe both as safeties since the CB spot looks "quite full" in 2014.

WolvinLA2

August 27th, 2013 at 3:23 PM ^

I kinda touched on this above, but stuff like this happens all the time after fall camp. The coaches see what they have, and adjust their recruiting accordingly. It's possible that the coaches feel better after camp about their young DBs and feel those open spots in the next class are better used somewhere else.

Considering our DB depth chart has three true frosh on it and two sophomores starting (and only two total seniors), the d backfield should be good for a year. Plus we have the top DB in the country committed.

EGD

August 27th, 2013 at 3:56 PM ^

I hope you're right, but they offered Wangler the first week of August.  That timing would seem to weigh against this being a situation where the staff saw their new crop of DBs in camp and decided, "we're going to be fine at safety, let's get another LB." 

WolvinLA2

August 27th, 2013 at 6:24 PM ^

Sure, but that assumes no corners are moved to safety in the meantime or that neither of our 2014 corner commits move to safety, which is unlikely. I wouldn't be surprised to see a guy like Reon Dawson playing safety next year after putting on some weight. And I think between Thomas and Wilson, we should be in OK shape. We just need one of Furman, Hill or Clark to be a solid back up. My money is on Clark.

brax

August 27th, 2013 at 6:48 PM ^

I agree that Wilson and Thomas make an excellent starting point for next year but nobody can predict injury or player development. It is a very thin position depth-wise and moving a failed corner to shore up a depleted position group may work but is not optimal. I'm curious why we are full at S yet gave out scholarships recently to an unheralded LB and CB. Wouldn't we have been better off taking a 4 star S instead?

WolvinLA2

August 27th, 2013 at 7:23 PM ^

You think Reon Dawson is a failed corner? He's been here a month. And I don't know what taking Watson and Wangler have to do with Nicholson. And Watson can play safety, so maybe once they had him they felt they didn't need Nicholson. Or maybe they just like the safeties they have and think the scholarships are better used elsewhere.

EGD

August 27th, 2013 at 7:31 PM ^

Well, the way things have shaken out, it definitely appears as though Wangler's committment is what closed the door to Nicholson.  I have been sort of making that assumption myself, but I guess it's not necessarily true--it could well have been the plan to take 4 LBs all along and the two 2015 DBs that we just picked up are what left Nicholson without a spot, or maybe it was Watson's committment that did it and we are just now finding out about it, or maybe something else entirely.

Calling Reon Dawson a "failed corner" though, yeah, I don't know what that's about.

WolvinLA2

August 27th, 2013 at 9:08 PM ^

I don't know why a linebacker commitment would take the spot of a safety, so the Wangler theory doesn't make any sense to me. We're not exactly in "best player available" territory yet. I'm not 100% sure the reasoning here either, but typically turning away talented recruits is a good thing.

EGD

August 27th, 2013 at 10:47 PM ^

I see your point.  I guess what I was envisioning, though, is that the coaches know how many spots they have the in class, and based on that number they have to decide how many LBs they will take, how many defensive linemen, how many safeties, etc.  Evidently the staff wanted a fourth LB more than a S--or at least they did if that fourth LB was Wangler. 

At any rate, in looking at the roster I don't think it's really going to make much difference in the long run whether we take a safety in the 2014 class or not.  Wilson has three years left, Clark, Hill, and D. Thomas each have four years, and Reon Dawson will presumably redshirt--plus there are guys who could move over from CB and then Kinnel is committed already for 2015.  That's a lot of bodies for two spots.  

 

brax

August 28th, 2013 at 12:13 AM ^

Who said that Reon was a failed corner? You said that the S position could be supplemented with a CB. Whoever moves over will, by definition, be someone who couldn't win the CB spot.



And while I think that taking Watson and Wangler closed the door on taking a safety, I do not know that for a fact. But my point still stands. It is very odd that the coaching staff decided to take two players with average rankings at positions that have more depth than to wait on a more decorated player at a position with a lot less depth.

WolvinLA2

August 28th, 2013 at 12:41 AM ^

It certainly seemed like you suggested Dawson was a failed corner, but either way, that's not the case.  Sometimes you move a player because he is good and you want him on the field.  That doesn't mean he is "failed" at another position.  Is Courtney Avery is failed corner because they wanted to work him in at FS?  If that's what you're saying, then I disagree that it's a bad thing.  Is Norfleet a failed RB that we now have at slot receiver?

Teams always have certain positions with more talent than others, and they often move those guys around to get them on the field.  This is not a bad thing.  If the coaches feel we have a lot of young talent at CB and some of them can play safety, that's a good thing. 

I still don't get why turning away a good recruit is viewed as a negative to so many people.  It seems people on this board get more excited about future players than they do about the current ones.

brax

August 28th, 2013 at 1:07 AM ^

Avery couldn't win the CB spots and Norfleet couldn't win the RB spot so they failed at those positions. That does not mean, however, that they have failed as players. I am excited to see what Norfleet can do in the slot and Avery seems to have the coaches' confidence at safety.

My point is simply that depth-wise, safety is quite thin next year and I am surprised that the coaches would take other players over a highly recruited safety. Can we get by with just Thomas and Wilson next year? Maybe but the margin of error is slim. Can we move someone else to the safety position if we need to? Maybe but I'd rather rely on a highly touted player who was specifically recruited for that position.

WolvinLA2

August 28th, 2013 at 8:40 AM ^

It seems extreme to say a player failed at his position simply because he's not a starter. Every good team, ours included, has talent beyond the starting line up. If that talent can be moved around to make the team better, that's not a bad thing.

Point is - sometimes the third best CB on a given team is better than the second best safety. So moving one of them can often improve the team overall.

WolvinLA2

August 28th, 2013 at 2:32 PM ^

Only if they're not good at playing safety. What you are assuming is that this third CB isn't still a good starting safety, and sometimes a team just has more "starters" at a particular position than they have starting spots for, so they start them somewhere else.

We've recruited a lot of DBs lately, so maybe the coaches feel enough of them can play both positions that taking Nicholson isn't necessary.

TheGeneral

August 28th, 2013 at 10:34 AM ^

Good attitude. Some boards have rules about who delivers information and what can be brought from other places. I just didn'ty want to step on toes.

 

Basically Minkah is in the works to transfer and the popular rumor is to Paramis this year to play with JBB and Jabrill. We'll see where it goes.

 

EDIT-and there was good reason for nobody to talk about it, the transfer is NOT happening. Shame, but it's good to hear Minkah is still so interested in playing with Peppers