recruiting overview

Quick overview of where things stand, since the meat of this article gets into a lot of 2022 recruits with decisions far in the future.

• The deadline passed for NJ 4* DT George Rooks to make a decision before the season. Now we wait (some more).
• 2021 cornerback recruiting is a bummer; Michigan's best hopes are to get CA 4.5* Ceyair Wright on campus or flip another team's commit, the most likely being FSU's Omarion Cooper, and Cooper more likely that Wright at this point. The good news is 2022 cornerback recruiting begins about as well as it could.
• The 2022 class has a handful of recruitments that look more like a "when" than an "if" in NJ 4* CB/S Jaeden Gould, MI 4* OLB/Edge Josh Burnham, GA sleeper TE Oscar Delp, MA sleeper OL Sully Weidman, and maybe two West Bloomfield 4*s in RB/ATH Dillon Tatum and ILB (at Michigan anyway) Michael Williams.
• They'll also probably go all the way to signing day with 5* CBs Domani Jackson and legacy Will Johnson, win at least one of the 4.5* receivers from Illinois Kaleb Brown and Tyler Morris, and have a good shot at landing IMG 4* OL Tyler Booker, top-100 LB Jaylen Sneed, CT DE Wilfredo Aybar, and Devin Bushian IL 4* ILB Sebastian Cheeks, the latter two being your standard Michigan-Notre Dame wars.

247's Steve Lorenz has a pretty comprehensive free update from this week.

[After THE JUMP: a lot of names, and then we move past 2022 cornerbacks.]

Cornerback

Offense was yesterday. Here are the defensive recruits and a bit on 2022 guys.

Defensive Line

If the COVID situation hurts Michigan with a bunch of out-of-state guys it helps with top DT target Rayshaun Benny, who did that thing where you release a top eight when you're down to fewer than that. While Michigan leads that one may draw out to February he told Rivals. Brian already linked the interview with Trieu but I found it interesting that he was confident enough in Benny going blue to use him as the answer to Damon Payne whining:

“So I don’t think there’s a huge issue there when you look at what they’ve gotten in this class already and with what they could finish with. If you get Donovan Edwards, if you get Rayshaun Benny — which, right now, I think they’ll probably get both of those guys. If you look in ’22, you get guys like Will Johnson and Joshua Burnham — (who) Michigan’s in good shape for — I think you feel fine with in-state recruiting efforts.

Just as NJ 3* George Rooks was coming close to a decision between Michigan and Syracuse, Penn State turned up as the new #2 hat($) in Wiltfong's rundown of where the top DTs are leading. The only two 247 crystal balls in on Rooks are from Loy and Clint Brewster, both from late May.

[After THE JUMP: So you're saying there's a chance?]

I've been lapsing while I get the book out so here's a big update again. The recruiting board also got one. Offense covered here, defense tomorrow, and I'll try to be more regular until we find someone to take this off my plate.

Quarterback

If your buddy tells you "Check out our future quarterback at the pool," what do you think is going to be at the link? Right? Well when my text alert sound went off, I saw that much of the message on my lock screen and decided I could look at abs later. Then I forgot to open it for a few weeks. This is what was inside:

Bored at the crib .@overtime pic.twitter.com/qXKkNQ2H9q

— J.J. McCarthy (@jjmccarthy09) April 6, 2020

There is no pool anywhere in that video. Bad text, friend.

Angelique spoke to McCarthy this week as he prepared for IMG's season opener this weekend. That included a better description of the low-amplitude Elite 11 performance than I think we got from any of the sites covering it:

“I performed not perfect the first day, but I only missed probably two balls the whole night, so it was really good,” he said. “And the second day, we had a 20-throw pro day script that we had to do. I was the first one to go voluntarily and I didn't feel I got through as well as I wanted to. But I did all right, still placed top 10 in the final standings for that day. And the third day, we had this conditioning drill where it was like eight targets and we had hit all of them in a certain amount of time and the fastest time wins. I performed top five in that.

He's also Jim Harbaugh:

“I decided that football was going to be my everything around right after we lost the state championship (last season). That was the breaking point. Fifth grade is when I knew I loved football and I just wanted to play for as long as possible, but after we lost state, I knew I had this clear vision of where I want to be. I'm just running with it, and I'm working as hard as I can to get there.”

The Freep has an article behind a subscriber wall, and I don't know anyone with a login to get into it, but the clip looks promising:

[After THE JUMP: They can't poach our recruits. Only WE can poach our recruits.]