jayson jones

2020

With June expected to be a huge month for visits, it seems this week is the calm before the storm. We start with leftovers from last week’s big news, as The Michigan Insider’s Brice Marich spoke with MI DE Braiden McGregor’s family about their stories from the recruiting trail. They detail when they knew McGregor had decided he would go to Michigan, share some Jim Harbaugh stories (for example, he told McGregor he has go-go-gadget arms), and talk Shaun Nua and what he did to impress them.

There was some commitment-day tension as it was reported that the staffs at both Notre Dame and Michigan, McGregor’s presumed leaders, had heard nothing from the nation’s 89th-raked player all week. Turns out Michigan’s staff may not have heard anything because there was nothing they needed to hear; McGregor was already committed. He told Marich he silently committed to Michigan on a recent visit to Ann Arbor a couple of weeks ago. He told WolverinesWire’s Brandon Knapp it’s always been Michigan for him; he realized this in part when he started using Michigan as his point of comparison for all other schools.

The Wolverine’s Brandon Brown wrote a piece on the impact of McGregor’s commitment, and one of those ways is allowing the staff to focus on interior DL now. Brown says to keep an eye on AL DT Jayson Jones, TN DT Omari Thomas, CA DT Kobe Pepe, and CN DT Jaedon Roberts. 247’s Steve Lorenz also wrote about where the staff goes from here with regard to defensive line recruiting, and he thinks the top priority on their list is VA DE Antwaun Powell. On the interior, NC DT Kedrick Bingley-Jones has an official scheduled for next weekend and appears to be a priority. He also clarified that, though they’re listed as defensive ends on 247, FL UCHE Jaylen Harrell and GA UCHE Choe Bryant-Strother are being recruited as Uche-like ‘tweeners, hence the new designation.

[The headline and caption make sense if you hit THE JUMP]

Yesterday I was driving home and a deer leapt a gosh dang guard rail and bounded across the road and I hadn’t been that surprised since, well, you know. So Saturday night got ugly in a hurry. Not only did Michigan hockey lose to Minnesota at home in a game they desperately needed to get points out of, but they lost on an even-strength goal with under two minutes to play. That same night, OK S Daxton Hill dropped the Thanos Snap of recruit tweets, flipping his seemingly rock-solid commitment from Michigan to Alabama. Judging by the texts I got and twitter and message boards and every other available piece of evidence, this went over poorly.

If you were surprised, you weren’t alone. According to 247’s Steve Lorenz, not only was Michigan’s staff caught off guard, Alabama’s staff was surprised to learn of the flip. Michigan visited Hill at home last Wednesday. Alabama visited Hill’s home the next day, but no crystal balls were flipped. Lorenz says that the Alabama staff felt better about flipping FL S and current Ohio State commit Jordan Battle and thought that, if anything, they might get an unofficial visit from Hill. The Michigan Insider’s Sam Webb reiterated that Michigan’s staff found out when the public did and, though they wanted him to sign during the early signing period and he had apparently let them know he wanted to wait until February, there were no red flags presaging a decomitment.

The main point of Webb’s post centers around a quote from Hill’s father Webb obtained when he visited the family this fall. The family said they liked that Michigan was about winning all areas of life and not just winning at any cost, and Webb points out that Alabama was Alabama when Hill committed to Michigan, which was coming off a loss to Notre Dame that had people down for weeks. Webb went on to say that he feels Hill isn’t done grappling with whatever might have shifted his hierarchy of decision factors; when a poster on their message board asked if this wasn’t over, Webb responded with a clip from Rocky V of Mickey as a Force ghost or something that ends with Rocky yelling ‘Yo, Tommy! I didn’t hear no bell.” Now Lorenz checks in with a notes post in which he says he was also able to confirm that there's some optimism on Michigan's end that this recruitment may not be over. With Hill's decision horizon apparently extended two months, that makes some sense.

[After THE JUMP: Ann Arbor in December is a hot vacation destination]