Coaching staff viewed 2018 *3 RB Hassan Haskins as 5* talent

It sounds like they are using 5* more a figure of speech to say he is way better than his ranking and was flying way under the radar, than saying he should have actually been a 5*.

No more 5* RB's at Michigan.

I would be surprised if our staff uses any kind of star system to rank recruits.  I'm sure they have a board that ranks targets, but what would be the point of saying 1 player has 4 stars and another has 5 when you're already ranking them on the board.

Maybe they liked Haskins more than other staffs did, and maybe they thought they'd play a little coy in his recruitment, but stars are generally for the fans.

I believe Hassan Haskins is severely underrated. I don't see a five star talent though. Film seems to be a step down from a Najee Harris type. 

Yeah, this feels a whole lot like pumping a guy up.  Which is fine.  But if you honestly thought he was a 5* talent, then you offer and fight to keep his commitment.  And not to crap on anyone, but Michigan hasn't produced a 1k rusher since Fitz and Denard under Hoke.  I doubt a bunch of programs would have looked at Michigan taking a flier on a 3* kid and assume they had unearthed a gem.  I wish him luck and hope he plays like an elite player, but articles like this are always a bit hard to take seriously.

I’m sure the staff thinks every kid they recruit is a 5 star or they wouldn’t offer. 

• As others have said, this could be simply spin or pumping a guy up after-the-fact.  If it was one of the two, I'd guess it's pumping the guy up.  The recruiting class closed out in February, so if this was spin to mitigate any impression of a bad recruiting class, you'd think this party line would have been trotted out back then.  Plus it's SO specific to one guy.

• That being said---what if it isn't?  I'm sure the "5 star" part is short-hand/exaggeration, but I could easily see a scenario where they think he's way better than what the public scouting services had him ranked.  And as others have said, with the public scouting service infrastructure taking a major nose-dive, it does put a bigger premium on using what OTHER big programs think of a kid as a short-hand/signaling if a program is either under-staffed or simply on copycat mode.

• A team could swoop in early on an under scouted/under valued kid in the hopes of getting in on the ground floor.  A team could swoop in at the end as well.  There are pros & cons to both approaches.  It depends entirely on where the program wants their risk allocated.  Getting in early shows your genuine interest but risks bigger dogs coming in & having to fend them off for a long period of time.  Pulling a submarine and surfacing very late with your interest reduces that risk but increases the risks that either a big time program beats you to the punch, or the kid happens to be very loyal to a smaller school that offered earlier/the kid holds a grudge that the last minute big program didn't notice/offer him late or viewed him potentially as an Plan C or D.  My bet would be which strategy would work best is probably a case-by-case scenario depending on several variables including geography, personality of the kid, what the rest of your recruiting board looks like etc.

• I certainly don't think that the "hang back to avoid copycats, then swoop in at the end" is a viable as a BLANKET strategy.  However, I'd be utterly shocked if that's what Michigan is doing here.  If we've got nearly unlimited resources to staff up a good recruiting department, what I could easily imagine is a strategy where we designate 2-4 talent scouts specifically for a "diamond in the rough" desk/department.  Of course, you lock down your local powerhouse feeder schools in your state & as best you can in other regions of the country. 

         But if we've got the money & manpower, WHY NOT earmark a small unit to specifically           scour the prep landscape for the under the radar kids?(whether it's b/c of remote                       geography, kids who are late bloomers physically or late to arrive at the game of football, kids           who just didn't "play the recruiting game" and go to a bunch of camps, etc.)?  Then,                           depending on how your board develops over the year, pull in a certain % of that identified                 pool.  Maybe one or two would even be at the top of the recruiting board above other kids                 who are on everybody's radar.  Even if they aren't, it might be a good parallel strategy to                   develop so that if you DO have to go with your Plan B or Plan C kids, you've got potentially               far better options teed up & ready to go.  Then if your Plan A kid falters at the 11th                             hour, you're not grasping at straws in some emergency file drill scenario but instead have a               turn-key contingency plan ready to execute at a moment's notice.

You wonder if the same MO went into Ronnie Bell's recruitment. That dude was super productive in high level Missouri football. Harbaugh put a high percentage of lower ranked guys into the NFL at Stanford. Aside from our bad fan feels from last year, it's possible that this staff is at the leading edge of talent identification. We've seen more evidence of that in some of our 2019 guys getting big rating bumps.

I have a hard time believing that they didn't offer until late because they didn't want other schools to know.