UM 2014 Football Team Pipeline as Expressed by Stars*
Many of us have heard about how "Michigan is wasting all that 4/5 star" talent, especially those of us who live in Michigan and have very haughty neighbors all the sudden. I bought in this myself as the program has obviously underachieved substantially of late. We all know the 2010 class was a disaster but obvioulsly the "transition" year also created issues - at least on the offensive side of the ball.
I was curious how the data lined up with the meme - where were all these 4/5 stars I keep hearing about? So I put together a chart of 4 years worth of recruits as I haven't seen it before in that format. This group of players (past and present) are the the heart of the 2014 team; this would be the 2nd thru 5th year players. I purposely excluded the 2014 class because I don't believe teams that are of championship contention caliber regularly throw out a bunch of true freshman as significant contributors (of course there are the Bosa's of the world as exception but not rule). Most are 2nd/3rd string backups or redshirting.
I think the results might change the narrative a bit - with the caveat that again, a lot of talent via "recruiting services" either was not developed, went to waste, or never panned out. In total there were 99 recruits in these 4 classes and unlike the narrative we hear - the majority were actually 3 stars (56%). At the very top end and bottom end we have 3 five stars and 3 two stars, leaving 38% to the 4 stars. Please note I used Rivals, not a composite - hence a guy like D. Smith is a 3 star not a 4.
Some quick thoughts:
- All other things equal, if you believe starz matter, one should be more bullish on the future as the 2010 class was very heavy in 3 stars, and the 2011 class was pretty evenly split, whereas things improve a lot in 2012-2013.
- Some of our best players of course are 3 stars - see Ryan and Funchess and potentially Henry/Wormley/Smith?.
- We're young esp on offense (duh).
- If this team had just 4 more offensive contributors out of the 2010+2011 classes (2 OL, 2 WR) we'd have zero significant "weaknesses" on paper. Just 4 out of what...20-25 kids. SMH.
- This team has to show significant improvement between September and November 2014 like a Beilein team does between December and February - the young talent per starz via the 2012s and 2013s is peppered in the 2 deep. (pun intended)
- This is not a team loaded (or "wasting) 5 stars - we have 4 total... a whopping 1 more than our friends to the west who tell us they do it all with 2/3 stars. And none are 2010/2011s.
- As for 4 stars, 2010 was a washout aside from Devin, and half of the 2011s are starters (ok %). Most of the 4 stars are again 2nd/3rd year players not 4th/5th.
I have other thoughts but this is already TL;DR so for your inspection here is the 2014 football team expressed in starz. (some of the formatting I used in Excel did not carry over in the cut and paste so a bit more difficult to read on Mgo)
| 5 STARS (3) | 3 STARS (55) | |||||
| 2012 | Kyle Kalis | 2010 | Jibreel Black | |||
| 2012 | Ondre Pipkins | 2010 | Josh Furman | |||
| 2013 | Derrick Green | 2010 | Carvin Johnson | |||
| 2010 | Ricardo Miller | |||||
| 4 STARS (38) | 2010 | Christian Pace | ||||
| 2010 | Cullen Christian | 2010 | Jerald Robinson | |||
| 2010 | Devin Gardner | 2010 | Davion Rogers | |||
| 2010 | Richard Ash | 2010 | Terry Talbott | |||
| 2010 | Demar Dorsey | 2010 | Austin White | |||
| 2010 | Marvin Robinson | 2010 | Drew Dileo | |||
| 2010 | Ken Wilkins | 2010 | Conelius Jones | |||
| 2011 | Justice Hayes | 2010 | Jordan Paskorz | |||
| 2011 | Chris Barnett | 2010 | Jake Ryan | |||
| 2011 | Brennen Beyer | 2010 | Courtney Avery | |||
| 2011 | Chris Bryant | 2010 | Will Hagerup | |||
| 2011 | Blake Countess | 2010 | Stephen Hopkins | |||
| 2011 | Raymon Taylor | 2010 | Jeremy Jackson | |||
| 2012 | Erik Magnuson | 2010 | Antonio Kinard | |||
| 2012 | Blake Bars | 2010 | Terrance Talbott | |||
| 2012 | Joe Bolden | 2010 | DJ Williamson | |||
| 2012 | Amara Darboh | 2010 | ||||
| 2012 | Royce Jenkins-Stone | 2011 | Delonte Hollowell | |||
| 2012 | Dennis Nortfleet | 2011 | Kellen Jones | |||
| 2012 | Terry Richardson | 2011 | Antonio Poole | |||
| 2012 | James Ross | 2011 | Frank Clark | |||
| 2012 | Tom Strobel | 2011 | Thomas Rawls | |||
| 2012 | Jarrod Wilson | 2011 | Chris Rock | |||
| 2013 | Patrick Kugler | 2011 | Russell Bellomy | |||
| 2013 | Shane Morris | 2011 | Greg Brown | |||
| 2013 | Henry Poggi | 2011 | Tamani Carter | |||
| 2013 | Kyle Bosch | 2011 | Keith Heitzman | |||
| 2013 | Jake Butt | 2011 | Jack Miller | |||
| 2013 | Chris Fox | 2011 | Desmond Morgan | |||
| 2013 | Jourdan Lewis | 2011 | Tony Posada | |||
| 2013 | Mike McCray | 2012 | Ben Braden | |||
| 2013 | Dymonte Thomas | 2012 | Jeremy Clark | |||
| 2013 | Taco Charlton | 2012 | Devin Funchess | |||
| 2013 | David Dawson | 2012 | Matthew Godin | |||
| 2013 | Ross Douglas | 2012 | Mario Ojemudia | |||
| 2013 | Ben Gedeon | 2012 | Kaleb Ringer | |||
| 2013 | Delano Hill | 2012 | AJ Williams | |||
| 2013 | Wyatt Shallman | 2012 | Chris Wormley | |||
| 2013 | Logan Tuley-Tillman | 2012 | Jehu Chesson | |||
| 2012 | Allen Gant | |||||
| 2012 | Willie Henry | |||||
| 2012 | Drake Johnson | |||||
| 2012 | Sione Houma | |||||
| 2013 | Jaron Dukes | |||||
| 2013 | Maurice Hurst Jr | |||||
| 2013 | Deveon Smith | |||||
| 2013 | Channing Stribling | |||||
| 2013 | Csont'e York | |||||
| 2013 | Reon Dawson | |||||
| 2013 | Khalid Hill | |||||
| 2013 | Da'Mario Jones | |||||
| 2013 | Dan Samuelson | |||||
| 2 STARS (3) | ||||||
| 2010 | Ray Vinopal | |||||
| 2011 | Matt Wile | |||||
| 2013 | Scott Sypniewski |
Thanks that 2 star was Ray Vinopal, I had cut and paste the 3 star to 2 star area for formatting purposes and forgot to switch the names out. Actually I see I listed him twice, so erased him out of the 3 stars.
Yes I have never seen it like this either, hence why I created it to see how it all lined up. Thought we had more 4 stars than 3 stars until I did this.
As both 2 and 3 star.
Might also be nice to remove or * the guys who are no longer on the team. Not sure that would change the percentages too much though.
No I kept them there because those were the recruits that formed the basis of the current situation. i.e. "you don't develop your 4 or 5 stars meme". Further these were all potential contributors the coaching staff(s) had identified. Each flameout contributes to the current situation so it's informative to see the flameouts next to those who hit paydirt.
Maybe I'll change the headline because it's not "the team" but perhaps the pipeline for the 2014 team as a better description. Thx
you should at least removeve those recruits who never made it to campus. I saw Demar Dorsey & stopped reading because you can't develop a player who never was on the team.
it is a good effort and fairly informative, covering our most favorite sport. saturday morning, maybe you try the decaf next week?
One of the more interesting things I have found too is that, if you take this back to the beginning of Rivals and extend it through the first 12 covered cycles (2002-2013), Michigan's cumulative haul for both four and five-star players per their system is impressive in comparison to the rest of the conference. You might expect that, of course, and you would have similar expectations for Ohio State's cumulative haul as well. The two are fairly comparable.
More specifically, in that timeframe, Michigan took 13 of the 50 five-star players that went to Big Ten schools, or 26.00%. By itself, Michigan amased 125 of the 599 four-star players per Rivals, or 20.89%. What is sort of interesting about 2010, which we often point out (rightly) as a bit of a disaster in terms of retention among other things, it was the class with the lowest average Rivals ranking (3.19) in those 12 cycles as well.
I think 2010 is a great example in how just one year of failing to address your needs can really hurt a team...
on the bright side if we can just go 9-3 or better this year, no lose the commits we have, and keep hoke, we will be loaded from now on with multiple options at the majority of positions...
jdon
Thanks for the post. Sincerity confirmed via up vote. Should Demar Dorsey be listed?
I just took all the recruits and put them there regardless of situation; I know Demar's was unique. Feel free to remove him mentally and reduce the # of 4 stars by 1; the data set as a whole is essentially identical - demoninator drops from 99 to 98.
Most of this talk about wasted talent is in regards to the 2012-13 classes, guys that were freshman and sophomores last year. We still don't know what players like Kyle Kalis or Derrick Green (or even Pimpkins) are going to be! Last season just sent everyone into panic mode and gave our rivals better material... Lets wait this thing out!
Perhaps in your circles - in mine there is a lot of talk about the great RR classes per the rankings and how all those RR 4/5 stars went to waste by both RR and Hoke. Not just the 2012s.... our "friends" focus on Green as a "bust" but they dont know the classes that well to focus so much on 1 class.
This made me laugh because it says a lot about most of that class.
Thank you for drawing this up. The youth excuse gets thrown around a lot on here but you can just look at the depth charts from the last two years and see the gap. The best part though is that 50+ freshman have played over the last two seasons so like you point out, those 2011 and 2012 guys are juniors and seniors now, and that is where the overall talent level and retention rate picks up.
fits nicely in there, if not into the class.
Yes I had Vinopal twice - didnt notice until I posted but yes it is funny (and applicable) to keep a blank line for the 2010s lol.
reporting for duty to express the UM Football Team pipeline!
in that the chart shows how very few players from the 2010 and 2011 recruiting classes we have on the 2014 team. Even if the highest % of them were 3* recruits, most teams have a handful of contributing seniors and redshirt seniors from among those two recruiting groups. Michigan, OTOH, has had to go with younger, more inexperienced players in the absense (through way-to-high attrition) of those upperclassmen. Even the fact that Michigan had to immediately play true freshmen from the 2010 class (thus, those guys used up their eligibility already) leads to my conclusion that we'd be fielding a better team had some of them been still around to help.
All that, in the end, DOES negatively affect overall team performance.
Bingo on all counts.
Hence it is titled "the pipeline" to the 2014 team rather than "the 2014 team". If I took away all the misses and left the hits, it would not showcase the % of stars by class and across all 4 classes. I would have assumed we had a lot of 4 star misses if I removed all the "misses" so the whole idea is to show what ranking of guys we are getting on a whole that could have contributed to this team and how they were spread across the star spectrum.
Srsly /smh
Kalis will play well this year after time to develop. The problem is that his development never should have happened on field (I'm looking at you RichRod and your lack of 2010 linemen)
For obvious reasons.
I miss living in Michigan, but one of the aspects I don't miss is having to put up with Sparty slappies on a regular basis. I occasionally glance at RCMB and it's just amazing how obsessed many of their fans are with Michigan and how often, despite their recent success, they resort to hypocrisy, exaggeration, infantile name calling, and outright lies about Michigan.
that MGoBlog is innocent of obsession? If nothing else, we have less of it because of people like you who pop out of the woodwork to bleat about something.
I think it's MORE informative when you see this chart with the players we know are no longer on the team.
I might have bolded the names of the players currently on the team in case anyone is forgetting though since I think that makes the information jump out more clearly.
As evidenced by some of the posts even in this thread we need a good year just for people to quit bitching about the team they love. This chart gives me a lot of hope for next season.
I bolded the starters in Excel and separated the classes in each star grouping to make it easier to read but formatting did not come over with the cut and paste. Made me a sad panda.
All things being equal the chart makes me feel a "little" better about the lack of improvement between September and November last year... a little ... because if you did the same exercise last year you'd remove the 2013 players and add back the 2009s of which there were about 10-11 contributors, but the holes from the entire 2010 class and the 2011 class on offense (Jack Miller and Bryant were the only 2 reasonable contributors at the time) were still apparent. I thought the team should have improved a lot more last year from Sep to Nov but in retrospect there was a relatively small amount o what I call middle players (3rd year players) who are typically the ones who make a serious jump (2 year under their feet, some game experience, ready to put it all together). You can get some improvement from 2nd year players (and we did with Henry Wormley etc) but generally a guy will flash in year 1 or 2 and then accelerate in year 3 to what he is going to be. Jame Ross should be an example this year of that.
Doesn't excuse last year as a whole as I have stated an elite coach would have had us at 9-4 or so even with all the issues (and not looking like a tire fire v Akron UConn NW etc) but this year if you do not see a major improvement from this team from Sep to Nov we have major issues go forward as a team as it would indicate to me players are not improving at an individual level like they should. There is plenty of tinder now at the right ages to make those jumps.
I refuse to see an underclassman as a "washout" unitl he has had the opportunity to grow physically and spend time in the weight room. I still contend that when Hoke has his own senior class, we will see what he is actually capable of doing.
Thanks to all of the splintering, in which so-called "Michigan Men" were sabotaging recruiting, Michigan wasn't able to recruit like Michigan during RR's regime. Hoke had to start over for his style of ball and his caliber of athlete.
I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I also think we are gong to be pleasantly surprised moving into the next couple of years, as the roster begins to contain more of Hoke's upperclassmen.
Most of all, I think a lot of the 4 and 5-star guys will start to justify their rankings when they are playing on a more level playing field in regards to age and physical development..
Hell, even my beloved Temple a Owls got linemen in 2010.
The reason your theory is skewed is you are using up 99 scholarships with when your only allowed 85. Some of the reason we have other kids is cause kids transferred out. You can't use a kid we no longer have and use a kid who got his scholarship.