Fairly Belated 2019 Recruiting Overview: Offense, Part 1
This usually comes out shortly after Signing Day, but due to a combination of football ennui and blog-wide health issues that forced your author to pick up portions of the basketball coverage the traditional 1,000 foot view for the upcoming football recruiting year has been delayed. Do not complain about this. I am more than capable of writing a long post about local politics instead.
Anyway:
QUARTERBACK
ROSTER. Michigan added Shea Patterson, who should be a true junior if the NCAA appeal doesn't get borked, to redshirt sophomore Brandon Peters and redshirt freshman Dylan McCaffrey. True freshman Joe Milton arrived this spring. Even if Michigan loses someone to a transfer—all but inevitable these days when you have four QBs and no seniors—they'd be in good shape if they didn't ignore QBs all together.
CSI: QB: AWESOME EDIT [sunglasses!]
COMMITS. Surprise: they have not ignored QBs all together, scooping up 3.5* Notre Dame decommit Cade McNamara less than two weeks after he pulled the ripcord on his descent into South Bend. McNamara is a bit of an outlier for Harbaugh QB recruits in that he's not a towering pocket passer. He's a moderate-sized pocket passer at 6'1". The ND decommit happened after a flurry of offers (or offer-type substances) from heavy hitters like Georgia, Alabama, and USC, but since he's in Nevada he might have a hard time moving up the rankings.
FURTHER NEEDS. None.
RECRUITS. None. Michigan has not undertaken 2019 QB recruiting activities since McNamara's commitment. They seem to have fully set their sights on 2020 QBs.
RUNNING BACK/FULLBACK
tbh at this point I'd rather have a 3.5 star [Eric Upchurch]
ROSTER. Michigan has eight tailbacks and is set to lose only Karan Higdon after the season. Chris Evans is the only other upperclassman. Even if Michigan suffers an unexpected bit of attrition the need here is low, especially after the late add of ATH Michael Barrett.
At fullback Michigan has sophomore Ben Mason and freshman Ben VanSumeren and is probably set.
COMMITS. None.
FURTHER NEEDS. They're certainly seeking at least one tailback. Anything additional would be a luxury.
RECRUITS. It's unlikely Michigan pulls a big name. Everyone they're pursuing is out of region and most are from the south. Five-star NC RB Quavaris Crouch is the big name, and he has been on campus. Unfortunately, Lorenz reports that his head coach has moved on and that was Crouch's main Michigan connect. Chances of pulling Crouch away from the rest of the country were already pretty low and are now lower.
Almost everyone else listed as a target is in the "not likely" bin, if not the "why are we even talking about this?" bin. They include LA RB John Emery Jr, who put Michigan in a top eight but remains a highly touted guy from Louisiana; MS RB Jerrion Ealy, who is from Mississippi, committed to Ole Miss, and thinking about a Bama flip; NC RB Khafre Brown, whose brother signed with UNC last year and has a blizzard of unofficial visits to the Tarheels to overcome; IMG's Noah Cain, who's barely drawn mention from the Michigan Insider in months and has 15 Not Michigan crystal balls to five different schools.
The one four star who's drawn chatter who seems achievable is CA RB Zach Charbonnet, who attends Westlake Christian. Westlake does export kids to high academic out of state schools fairly regularly. He seems like a plan B for Notre Dame, which is always a threat for Westlake kids—what what Jimmy Clausen—and 247 has just UCLA and Washington as "warm" schools other than Michigan. Charbonnet made it up for a visit about a month ago.
If it's not Charbonnet it's going to be someone off the radar. This is mostly fine given Michigan's success with highly touted backs over the last… decade? 15 years? I'm not sure there's any period in time during which top 100-ish backs outperform three stars for M. Lorenz suggests that KS RB Breece Hall and MO RB Kyren Williams are lower-rated guys who Michigan will pursue.
WIDE RECEIVER
ROSTER. A year after a bumper crop saw a four-star move to safety, Michigan took only flier recruit Ronnie Bell. Numbers are a priority here despite only having one senior (Grant Perry) unless Michigan wants to have another year like 2017, when they had virtually no experience and it showed.
COMMITS. None.
FURTHER NEEDS. Michigan needs two or three WRs. Outside preferably.
RECRUITS. This is grim. I don't think there's a single crystal ball out for Michigan at WR. There certainly hasn't been one since November started. And there are few targets out there Michigan is even mentioned with. Michigan likely to be just a hat on the table for a USC-bound Kyle Ford; ditto except for Florida State for FL WR John Dunmore. Dunmore was scheduled to be up this weekend, but with the spring game canceled that trip probably is as well. Michigan didn't even draw mention in a Wiltfong article about IN WR David Bell three days ago. MD WR John Metchie is supposed to be on campus this weekend—again, maybe—and is one of those guys who's been to a particular school a ton (PSU in this case) and will be an uphill climb for anyone else.
There are two guys who have recently been on campus. 3* CT WR Cornelius Johnson took an unofficial, but the shape of his recruitment doesn't look particularly promising:
Next up for Johnson is an April 25 visit to California. He also is scheduling a return trip to Notre Dame, and with Penn State offering Monday, a return visit to Happy Valley could take place. He is also looking at trips to West Virginia, Northwestern and Duke.
ND has three crystal ball predictions, FWIW. TX WR Dylan Wright took a swing through Michigan and Notre Dame, and did say Michigan was certainly in line for an official afterwards. That's all you can hope for as an out of region prospect, but Michigan would need 4-5 guys in Wright's position to expect to land one.
That is the entire WR board until Michigan starts firing out offers to three stars.
In all likelihood Michigan's entire skill position class is going to consist of fliers, late bloomers, sleepers, guys who recently emerged from a coma, and the like. These are the wages of having the worst passing offense imaginable and not having a WR coach who can go on the road to recruit until you hire… uh… Jim McElwain.
Winning heals all wounds.
I wonder if maybe losing Black last year could end up being a blessing in disguise? If last year was gonna end up a wash anyway, he could stay in the system longer (assuming he doesn't make the leap after his RS Soph season).
It really was, I was completely aboard the train just a few months ago. These kids who did have Michigan high on list have seemingly dropped them or fell in love with other schools. Offensive recruiting is becoming worrisome, i think the 19 OL class will be nice and we'll continue to get real defensive players
Hopefully Don Brown's connections in CT can keep Michigan in the race for Johnson. He had good testing numbers at a recent Nike event.
So, we have the number 6 class right now, are #2 in the Big Ten, have 3 top 100 players already, a major 5-star guy, and 10 months until signing day, 2019, and the commenters on this board still find things to bitch about.
Hooray for April top 6 recruiting championships!! There's a good possibility that Michigans best recruits for 19 have already verballed. Read this skill position post again, and any national recruiting article that basically says Herron and Hinton are highly potential flips down the road. It's not the end of the world but there is reason for concern, thats all
kareem walker was elite, green was elite, our elite backs never pan out
Been a while since I've read a recruiting update. So I forgot to just read the update and skip the comments. Lesson relearned.
football stinks. basketball and hockey only from now on. we should get a head start on the death of football and build up an Aussie Rules program.
I am a bit more optimistic about the RB/WR side of things. I think most of this lack of talk is the fact that Michigan struggled last year. There were a lot of high profile RB's looking heavy at Michigan before the downard turn, and I think that interest will perk back up, especially with some of the elite recruiters that are now in place at Michigan. If there's some early positive momentum with a win over the likes of Notre Dame, that could really bolster Michigan's recruiting. Need that win though or things could start off very rough.
Even with weak recruiting in the skill positions this year, I feel like the cupboard is already stocked for the forseable future and therefore no need to worry. If it happens again next year that would seem like more of a problem to me.
A lot of you guys on here know substantially more than I do, so feel free to disabuse me of that notion. But in the meantime here are my arguments for this position:
- QB - We have 4 guys I believe will prove capable of running a successful offense. Patterson is the oldest as a true Junior. Peters has 3 years of eligibility remaining, and McCaffrey and Milton each have 4.
- RB - We have EIGHT guys with only one graduating at the end of the season (Higdon). Evans I think will be somewhere between solid and outstanding over the next couple of years, and then we've got very promising guys coming up in Samuels, Walker, Taylor)
- WR & Slot - Nine guys here (5/4). For WR, three of them are absolute studs (DPJ, Collins, Black), all with 3 or 4 years eligibility remaining. Plus a senior and a freshman. For Sllot, although Perry's a senior, we've got three solid guys behind him (McDoom, Schoenle, Martin). Martin seems like a good bet to break out at some point, and McDoom I think is the fastest guy on the team.
Seems like an embarassment of riches - what am I missing here?
April 12th, 2018 at 10:03 PM ^
I'd like to know why the staff seemed to stop pursueing Cain. Was it because they felt good about Crouch and told him he would be the only rb in the class? Both of them seemed like longshots either way. Hopefully they havent given up on Cain.
Also, I wonder if the recruiting outlook seems especially negative this week becasue the spring game was cancelled. Thats already led to some of the top guys cancelling visits. Maybe the staff is trying to reschedule guys for May/June when the weather is nicer? Michigan is dealing with the spring officials for the first time, and maybe is trying to figure out how to best use it to our advantage.
Recruiting will pick up once we start doing camps. It would be nice to have guys with strong interest right now, but thats all it would be...interest. With 4 new coaches, they won't start to build relationships until the summer when they go to work with recruits at satellite camps instead of making recruits come to them.
April 12th, 2018 at 11:08 PM ^
Just watch his Hudl tape on Rivals. I don't care what competition he's playing against, he's hitiing creases and exploding into the second level. Enough said.
April 12th, 2018 at 11:31 PM ^
Despite the great 2017 WR class, I think not having a dedicated WR coach hurt michigan in its recruiting efforts last year, and now kids are taking a wait and see approach with coach Macelwain...
that South Carolina game was a brutal as any in memory, which is why i think many posters are so down... i mean after a month of prep they gain under 100 yards of offense versus the 40th ranked defense in the first half? That's as bad as the M00N game
Now if Shea is declared eligible for next year, i think the offense will look much much better and some recruits will take notice...still optimistic, but really based more on Shea being eligible...if not, its a total unknown...
but to be clear, the "no coach could do better" argument is running thin... Franklin won at PSU in the fifth year after sanctions gutted that program. 2 years under BoB before he bolted and then a Rose Bowl in Franklin's 3rd year.
PSU went from dumpster fire to Rose Bowl in 5 years.
April 13th, 2018 at 12:14 AM ^
Guys with McElwains background don't hang around as position coaches. Unless he replaces Pep next year he will be a 1 and done coach for us.
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