Vincent Gray Crystal Ball
January 9th, 2018 at 12:40 PM ^
I've read on Michigan blogs that more specific departures are already known by the coaches in terms of why we're recruiting more spots than we seem to have available.
There are clearly people on the roster we could already point to that are probably never going to see the field. It's another advantage that good recruiting teams have. We can kick the tires on more players than other teams because once it becomes clear they won't play, a lot of our players transfer and open up spots because they will play at other schools.
And that's no loss for the players, they get a couple of years of Michigan coaching before they go
January 9th, 2018 at 1:14 PM ^
Considering how the season ended and the resulting perception of the program outside of A2, getting even one of these guys would be an upset.
January 9th, 2018 at 11:21 AM ^
candidate for a grey shirt?
I couldn't resist.
January 9th, 2018 at 11:28 AM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 11:40 AM ^
star ratings don't matter though, right? I mean, look how many 3*'s were playing last night
January 9th, 2018 at 11:50 AM ^
Winning at the CFP playoff level is a process, not a switch.
The more we win, the more 4/5 stars we attract.
And it's not like we aren't loaded with a bunch of them already.
MSU finished #15 with mostly 3 stars. Wisconsin I think #7. Are our coaches worse then theirs at identifying talent? I doubt it
January 9th, 2018 at 12:36 PM ^
Is that our coaching staff can't coach up to the levels of MSU and Wisconsin, which hasn't really been shown much in the last 3 years.
January 9th, 2018 at 12:51 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 1:08 PM ^
Michigan to Michigan. I'm comparing Michigan to the likes of 3-star teams like Wissconsin and MSU. How about looking at the talent vs. finished product between us and them? It'll take time, I admit, and I have faith in them, but you're not going to get me to admit that JH&Co. have coached up their players better than teams like Wisconsin and MSU.
January 9th, 2018 at 1:11 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 11:43 AM ^
DB is a position in which I give the coaches the benefit of the doubt (like TE/FB). We've had very good results there IMO. Positions I won't: Qb, OL
January 9th, 2018 at 11:55 AM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 8:20 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 11:48 AM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 11:57 AM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 12:17 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 12:08 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 12:09 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 4:11 PM ^
that gives us 8 three stars that are composite 600+ when composite three stars start at 370 this year. I don't think any of them are Baker Mayfield and that leaves most of them 200 spots below evryone on that list except Baker. If Doyle signs that would give us two more in the 500s and another in the 490s. Hopefully they pan out, but that's counting on a high hit rate for mid to low three stars.
January 9th, 2018 at 11:50 AM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 11:51 AM ^
Baker Mayfield was a 3*.....
He wasn't playing last night, but I wish he was on our roster.
January 9th, 2018 at 2:46 PM ^
Pretty sure Mayfield was a walk on.
January 9th, 2018 at 2:51 PM ^
He was a low three star. You're correct that he walked on. He did have scholarship offers from lesser schools. That happens at Michigan sometimes too that we get walk ons who have offers from lower tier schools
January 9th, 2018 at 11:52 AM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 12:14 PM ^
you ended up #69 for your efforts, could be karma
January 9th, 2018 at 11:55 AM ^
One thing to notice here is that there are really no 'true' safeties on the board, let alone the team. Sure, there's JKP, Metellus, Kinnel, and a couple others. But in the current croot group? Don't think so. Yet every DB is the same size - 6'2", 180-190. They're all corners on the surface, because that's what they played in HS. But most of them (more than half is my guess) will become safeties in Don Brown's defense.
The only weak spot (term used loosely) in the defense is safety, because they are asked to cover man in the slot and on deep/wheel routes just as often as the corners are expected to come up in tight run support. There is a reason why so many versatile corners are being asked to come - they will be moved to safety. The elite corners we get (Hill, Long, Thomas, St Juste, etc) will be corners, the best of the rest will be corners. The others will be damn good man covering safeties.
January 9th, 2018 at 12:11 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 12:16 PM ^
I was hoping Michael Barrett would be in this class, but I guess he must not be a take. Bummer.
January 9th, 2018 at 12:55 PM ^
We're still finalizing the class.
Also, he has two very differnet choices since GT is recruiting him at QB. If he wants to be a QB, that's the type of offense he should be in.
I hope he decides if we do have the slot that being a swiss army knife for us is a better long term opportunity
January 9th, 2018 at 12:18 PM ^
1. Recruit Vincent Gray, 3 star
2. Change last name to Gary
3. ???
4. Upgraded to 5 star because last name Gary
Foolproof plan, once he dominates the B1G nobody will ever notice.
January 9th, 2018 at 12:23 PM ^
Stars mean almost nothing for an individual recruit. Stars are predictive though when you are talking about a class of recruits, or several classes of recruits.
People still can't seem to wrap their heads around that. Gray's 3 star says very little about him, a class full of Grays though is pretty predictive. You need a bigger sample size than 1 for stars to be predictive.
January 9th, 2018 at 12:36 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 1:13 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 1:18 PM ^
When I hit the link on both phone and computer, all I get is the OP's post for about 1 second and then a big blue blank screen without any content, not even ads. On Chrome and FF too.
January 9th, 2018 at 2:14 PM ^
Same thing happens when I hit the link on the we all thought about it thread.
January 9th, 2018 at 3:34 PM ^
It's a CSS error, I think usually from a bad embed of a tweet or something. Something's basically causing the page to shift way off the screen, but it is still there.
January 9th, 2018 at 1:33 PM ^
We are really going after those 3 star players. Maybe someday Harbaugh can compete with MSU. When we hired Harbaugh, I really thought we would compete with OSU and Alabama. I will go on record saying that you will NEVER beat teams that sign 5 star players with 3 star players consistantly. Move over Harbaugh, You are not the answer to beating Meyer or Saban. Best for you is trying to beat Dantonio
January 9th, 2018 at 1:41 PM ^
Half our team are 4 and 5 stars, right?
Also, you compete with OSU and Alabama by winning and building a rep and continuing to sign better players as you win. It's not an instantaneous process
January 9th, 2018 at 1:56 PM ^
Please enlighten us - who is the answer to beating Meyer and Saban?
January 10th, 2018 at 7:04 AM ^
Not 11 million dollar a year Harbaugh
January 9th, 2018 at 2:37 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 2:48 PM ^
Nice of you to share the family photo.
January 9th, 2018 at 1:38 PM ^
Lets just hope this year's weak class is because of the limited spots from last years loaded class. We will struggle to compete for championships with classes like this one
January 9th, 2018 at 2:44 PM ^
It's alreay way ahead of any Harbaugh class at Michigan at this point.
It's probably more about playing time than positions available for 3/4 stars. With two mega classes in a row and few upper classmen, we only lose a few players in 2017 and 2018. That means they'd be competing with starters and multi-year starters for the next few years.
With 5 stars, it's probably a combination of luck as well as wanting to see the results on the field. 2019 players may feel by the time they sign that's less of an issue because they will have the chance to see results before they actually sign.
Remember what happened to Hoke's 2015 class. It was spectacular, then we lost all the top players when we tanked that year and it was increasingly obvious he'd be canned. Of course they didn't know Harbaugh would end up coming
January 9th, 2018 at 1:52 PM ^
Go Blue?
January 9th, 2018 at 3:55 PM ^
January 9th, 2018 at 5:21 PM ^
January 10th, 2018 at 8:37 AM ^
obviously the more stars, the higher probability of success
I am sure the staff would love a class of nothing but 5-stars - who wouldn't
but since that isn't realistic, let's look at how Michigan is building a roster
2016 - 13 247 composite 3-stars
4 - solid players - K. Hudson, Nordin, McKeon, Metellus
4 - role players - McDoom, Spanellis, Dwumfour, Eubanks
2 - TBD - Uche, Gil
3 - no longer with the program - K. Davis, N. Johnson, Mbem-Bosse
the TBD and role players can still move up in the pecking order, but we needed depth so badly and one can't be too unhappy with the 2016 3-star class - those that fell behind are no longer here
2017 - 9 3-stars
solid players - B Mason
role players - Robbins, Woods, Paye, Hawkins,
TBD - K. Taylor, Stueber, Honigford, Paea
a little early to evaluate, but those that have played have filled a need
let's look at some of the 2018 3-stars
Gemon Green, Sammy Faustin and German Green - Gemon has flipped back and forth from low 4-star to high 3-star - all 3 fit the 6'2" narrative for DB's - and given 5 defensive backs in 2017 and 4 in 2016 being able to red-shirt a couple defensive backs isn't a bad thing
RB's Turner and Haskins - a power back and a smaller back - both highly productive, both likely to red-shirt
TE Schoonmaker - looks like a Gentry replacement - Muhammed comes in and plays year one while Luke red-shirts - former QB
SDE Upshaw and Welschof - raw talent with not a ton of experience -seem likely to red-shirt
WR Bell - with the WR depth and missing on others grabbing a WR likely to red-shirt that was committed to play basketball isn't the worst thing - given that we turned down other, higher rated WR's (the guy who went to WV Spalding I think) the staff obviously likes him
it seems like more and more of the 3-star guys are likely to red-shirt - like we're building depth in the roster
the major needs are OT and DT which makes grabbing at least one more OT as well as Friday the key to a nice class
as far as the 3-star situation, the staff has done a nice job of finding ones that fit what they want, and those that don't move on so more guys can come in - i like that plan