Recruiting for depth
I know that everyone (myself included) would love to see a recruiting class loaded with 5 stars, but I think RR is getting knocked around too much for some of these lower ranked recruits. First and foremost, some might perform well above the three star status. More likely, however, is that not only were the first two on the depth chart at each position last year ill-suited for RR's system, but so were 3-5. It is not easy to get 2 or 3 top ranked guys to commit to the same school at the same position, so I think many of these guys are roster fillers who are upgrades over what we have and have some upside to suprise everyone and end up major contributers. There are over a hundred guys on the football team and that depth is hugely important. I know that eventually even our third and forth string guys could be five stars, but right now, I think he is being wise by taking 3 star depth that fits his system.
I think the same thing for the most part. I think RR wants to build a solid base, and he's still getting some excellent and highly rated guys along with it.
Being a 3 star doesn't equate to being an "average player" or whatever, and I think people forget that. A lot of these kids will add some badly needed depth, and just as many will probably start or help push starters in practice. The four/five stars will come with success, not 3-9 seasons.
I don't think anybody cares too much about the star rankings of our offensive recruits. Our defensive recruits are a different matter, however. We lack both depth AND elite level talent on that side of the ball. There is a legitimate reason to be concerned about that, imho.
I would disagree that any player, this early in the process, if getting offers because RR says "Ah, fuck it, he'll be a 3rd stringer."
If you think any coach feels that every player he recruits is going to start, your crazy. Some of these kids are absolutely being looked at as solid backups with a potential to be that diamond in hte rough. In this age of 17 year old egomaniacs, you are only going to get one or two so called superstars at any one position (unless you are USC for some, ahem, reason). An few all americans can absolutely turn a team into a championship contender, but the depth for injuries, practice, and long, bar room brawls like UM-MSU or UM-OSU cannot be ignored. If you think RR was pissed watching the first string practice last year, how well do you think the scout teams were doing? I think he is absolutely recruiting 5-6 guys thinking that they will be solid back ups to go with the 12-15 guys that he thinks could be great starters.
Odoms was a three star last year and did he perform like it. Omameh was a two star and he's starting to look pretty good. Molk, Huyge, and Ezeh also three stars and Evans who's competing was a two star. So either our talent level is terrible or the coaches are coaching these kids and they have heart and desire.
While I would love to see nothing but, 4 and 5 stars running around we don't have the payroll that SC does. Plus, some of our schemes lead to recruiting tweeners who in all likelyhood are docked a star because they don't fit a traditional position.
Hey ya'll - first time, long time.
Don't the three star commits have a chance to maybe jump to four and possibly five stars? Maybe their talents will come out in the coming season? Maybe some are late bloomers? They are after all just entering their senior year of high school...
So either our talent level is terrible
What about last year's team indicates that our talent level was good?
"So either our talent level is terrible or the coaches are coaching these kids and they have heart and desire...."
Who says it's an either or situation?
I get your RATIONALE above, but you're treading very close to "Mike Hart was a 3 star" reasoning. Evans may be competing, but I'm not expecting him to do anything other than platoon. And, would you rather have Odoms, or Julio Jones as one of your wideouts? Tell the truth.
At this point Michigan has verbal commitments from 4 or 5 four stars depending on which scouting service you adhere to. They're still in the mix for many others. Many of the highest rated kids wait to make their choices. They want to take their official visits and then decide.
I've said this before, and I'm going to keep bringing it up because today is the Ides of June and we're more than 7 months away from Signing Day - if Michigan secures commitments from HALF of these guys:
Gholston, Clay, Seantrel Henderson, the DT from Utah, Hill, White, Cullen Christian, Ifill, Mathis, Wood, Easterly and Hankins
and gets 2 more good O-linemen and a QB (Jones?), all the rationalization about whether Rich Rod is "recruiting the right guys" will have been a little trite.
If recruiting ends up the way I hypothesized above, we'll also have a top 5 recruiting class (that's for the guy who said we'll never have one again with Coach Rod).
We may finish in top 10-15, but it will be near impossible to finish top 5. We have zero top 100 players on Rivals, and one top 100 player on Scout (Gardner). For 2009, Rivals's top 10 classes all had between 11-14 4 star recruits except Tennessee, who had 9, and every team had at least one 5 star. We are nowhere near that path; every remaining recruit we take would need to be a 4 star in order to have a chance to place in top 10. This will be a down year for us because of last year's disastrous record. Just hope we finish off recruiting strong, have a good season, and build from there.
Our high ranking for now is likely due to quantity. While I'm not saying we don't have quality as well, your logic and facts can't be argued with. Unless some of our 3 stars get raised to 4 after their seasons are over, history shows that the ranking will fall where you say.
It's not like Mike Hart is the only three star to ever have a great college career. I find it funny that you talked about the Hart reasoning and then list a bunch of 3 stars(White, Hill, Wood, Easterly, Hankins, Christian, Ifill) in "we need to get half of these guys".
Personally, I would rather have Shariff Floyd instead of the DT from Utah. I have faith that RichRod and Barwis maximize what they get out of the kids that come to M and trust their judgement in recruiting.
half of those guys. Read the post again. I said that IF WE DO, this will be a fine class.
There is no recruiting debate about star rankings, facts have long since settled that, they matter. The facts have been on the site several times so you have no excuse to trot out that reasoning. Second, if you think RR and staff wouldn't love to have these early commits be 4 star guys, you should re-think your position. But third and most importantly, I too am trusting the staff and think they are getting the best kids they can. But after a better year this season, you can bet that next year's early commits won't be filled with three star guys with very average offers.
"While I would love to see nothing but, 4 and 5 stars running around we don't have the payroll that SC does."
I really can't stand this notion that Michigan has just become a mediocre recruiting school and can't get anything past a 3* and all that shit. We had the 8th ranked recruiting class in the country last year according to rivals, with 1 5* and 13 4* with a first year coach after a 3-9 season. That is the best recruiting class (again, according to Rivals) since 2005, when we had the 6th rank class. As it was mentioned earlier in this thread, we are "in it" for many of the nation's blue chip recruits, so we do have "4 and 5 stars" and have had many of them.
But I do think that our "tweeners" that fit this offense are docked in the rankings because they may not fit in a traditional offense despite great high school statistics.
Teams see a recruiting dip in the following year's recruiting class, not the current one. ND pulled in a fantastic recruiting class in '07 despite going 3-9, but their next recruiting class was so-so, and they struck out on alot of blue chip prospects except Te'o. ND could have pulled in a better class but they faltered down the stretch. We did pull in a good '08 recruiting class, but we'll have a dip this year because we went 3-9 last year. Unless we have a winning season, none of those blue chip recruits will be showing up on our campus.
that's a good point. I completely agree.
But I still think the notion that we have somehow lost the ability to land 4 or 5 star prospects is completely off-base.
I think RR is doing a great job and according to Rivals we were 13 in '06, 12 in '07, 10 in '08, and 8 in '09. Yet some think we have terrible talent.
During those same four years OSU was 12, 15, 4, and 3 and Penn St. was 6, 24, not in the top 25, and 24; ND 8, 8, 2, 21; Georgia was better than Texas recruiting with a combined 26 against a 29 for Texas, but that didn't show in on field success. SC was first with a combined 15 (1, 2, 8, 4) followed by Fla with a 17. Bama had a 23 over the four years but last year was the first it showed on the field.
Many of those '06 and '07 players aren't here anymore.
And you have to take into account the '05 class as well. That class was to be seniors in '08, or 5th year this year. Half of the 4* and 5* never made it past their first year, or were busts. That '05 class was probably the most devastating as far as the program is concerned.
Kevin Grady
Antonio Bass
Marques Slocum
James McKinney
Justin Schifano
Eugene Germany
to start off with. Not all bought into the new philosphy as stated by several of this year's players. Defensive scheme was pretty pathetic. QB play last year was a joke and that will affect all of the talent surrounding said QB. To top it off very young and inexperienced which isn't to say that they weren't talented.
What I was getting at is that we happen to have lower rated guys beating out higher rated guys. So either the coaches are coaching them up or they just have more heart and desire then the higher rated guys. Or heaven forbid the recruiting services don't really know what they are talking about. After all, Rivals takes in to account Pro potential which has absolutely nothing to do with college performance. The only person to win two Heismans didn't have much of an NFL career.
Is the services don't know what they're talking about, how do USC, Florida, Texas, and OSU own everyone's ass every single year?
You can try to rationalize it all your want, but Omameh is likely replacing a guy (Ortmann) who routinely got demolished all freaking season. I'm not saying Omameh isn't good - he may be, and his offer list somewhat backs that up.
"After all, Rivals takes in to account Pro potential which has absolutely nothing to do with college performance."
/head asplode
Do a search on this site for recruiting star rankings. As I said earlier, there is no legitimate debate to be had about the worth of star rankings There is actual data beyond Chitown's very sensible anecdote, that they correlate to both NFL draft status AND college program success. Would you say that the 6th round of the NFL draft is no better than the 1st because Terrell Davis and a few other guys from that round have made the Pro Bowl? Come on.
The example of 6th round picks better than 1st that you should use is Tom Brady, not Terrell Davis. WHAT KIND OF MICHIGAN FAN ARE YOU!?!??!
(walks sheepishly away)
Why does everyone keep saying the DT from Utah? His name is Ricky Heimuli; is it really that hard to look up? This is prolly a Pac-10/BYU battle for the kid, so our only realistic (if even that) prospects are Hankins, Jibreel Black, and Sharrif Floyd.
http://michigan.rivals.com/viewprospect.asp?pr_key=81604&Sport=1
I'm not sure why Michigan fans can't just accept the fact that our recruiting is down this year. We just finished 3-9; negative recruiting is at an all time high. Justifying the lower rated recruits as "depth fillers" is ridiculous. Our D is in bad condition and needs playmakers immediately. How are guys who are supposed to provide depth going to make an impact immediately? We need depth and elite level talent, and that's not going to happen until we show progress on the field this season.
I think that we are still going to get some elite playmakers. This class has a long way to go. I am just speaking out against the people freaking out about the lower ranked guys that are signing early. I don't think we are going to fill a class with them, I just think that this class is probably going to have 5-7 guys that don't project to be huge difference makers. Hopefully, the rest of the class does.
I'm not sure which of your posts to respond to, so I'll jump on the last one. Our recruiting is hardly "down" this year. We have 13 (maybe 14?) commits and it's not yet halfway through June. Per Rivals, only 4 of them are 4 stars, but some of them are higher on Scout. That said, it's so early, many of them have the chance to pick up another star. The fact that this many kids are jumping on the M wagon this early, does not suggest a down year.
Take a look at Oklahoma last year. They had 23 commits, 11 were 4*s, 11 were 3*s and one was a 2*. They were ranked as the #13 class in the country. Or Tennessee, granted they had 2 5*s (not out of the question for us) but they had 9 4*s and 10 3*s. They were the #10 class in the country. I see us being right in this neighborhood, which I wouldn't be upset with at all.
Well, going by star averages Michigan is 20th according to Scout. Just sayin'.
That's a poor indicator, with some schools having so few commits. A team with 4 commits, 2 4*s and 2 3*s would be above us right now. Would you trade our class for theirs?
It may not be a great indicator but really you're arguing quantity over quality at this point.
I'm not saying I disagree with you, just that there are two ends to the spectrum.
No, I'm arguing that it's too early for any indicator to be effective. At no point did I say we're doing better than the team with a higher average but only 4 recruits, I'm saying that it's too early to determine that. It's very possible that our class this year is no worse than last year, yet people are already calling it a down year. I think that's an ignorant comment.
Time will tell if our recruiting is down this year. Evaluating recruiting classes is best done in hindsight.
Or, preferably, after the class is at least signed to LOIs.
the 37th post about this in the last week. Good gracious, why the hell does this have to be re-discussed every day?
Because its mid june and there is nothing else to talk about
How about talking about why so many African surnamed football recruits last name starts with an O.
" why the hell does this have to be re-discussed every day?"
I would imagine that this being a UM discussion forum and people being interested in the topic may be a good place to start.....
...but when I saw the title of this thread, for one weird moment I thought it said "Recruiting for deeph" and was greatly confused.