Remember this?

I didn't say Lloyd left nothing for RR to work with. I said he recruited like Penn State, which is kind of fine if nothing ever upsets the machine and your scouting abilities are unparalleled, and that RR had attrition like early Bo, which is fine if you're going to recruit like Nick Saban, but that both will kill you.

It was never meant as a vindication of Rodriguez. It wasn't even a theory. DD was supposed to say "here's what happened to our defense."

I didn't give RR as much guff for bad DB recruiting at the time, because at the time Justin Turner was redshirting only because he arrived late, and Vlad was recovering from the knee thing, and there were like 8 cornerbacks and deep safeties leaning toward Michigan that we figured there's no reason to worry about Lo Wood at ND cause - hey - we've got maybe one of Keenan Allen or Josh Shaw or Tony Jefferson plus Cullen Christian, Dior Mathis, Sean Parker, Tony Grimes, and maybe Demar Dorsey or Rashad Knight. Who knew he'd whiff on all but Cullen. By that point, RR hadn't lost Vlad, Turner, or Warren. Woolfolk's ankle was fine.

Plus, I admit, I figured Denard would be redshirting right now to become a really really good cornerback.

Lloyd's big mistake was not being able to parlay the 2006 season into a big recruiting class. There were big scouting problems, which might have contributed to guys transferring later. For example, James Rogers got a camp offer after wowing Michigan's coaches against a top CB recruit of the time. U-M offered Rogers and thought they'd found a major sleeper, and didn't offer the CB. Turns out, neither of them were that good. It seems to me that a knowledgeable staff can figure this kind of stuff out earlier. At safety, seemingly everyone but Michigan knew that Jonas Mouton was a linebacker, Brandon Smith was a tweener, Stevie Brown was raw, and Artis Chambers was a basketball player.

At CB he got just Donovan Warren when he needed at least four safeties and cornerbacks. Mike Williams was in that class, but he proved useless. Troy Woolfolk was a legacy -- Butch did that recruiting. CB was not recruited well.

At linebacker he nabbed Panter (JUCO), Evans (2-star) and Herron (a DE). This is when the underclass LBs were Brandon Graham, Cobrani Mixon, Brandon Logan, and Obi Ezeh. Graham was already DE-bound, Logan was already useless, Mixon was already transferring, and Obi was already Obi. LB was not recruited well.

As for Rich Rod, recruiting-wise, he has been excellent at finding his guys for offense, scouting the right players, and convincing them to come play for him. Getting Shaw and Rountree at the last minute looks brilliant now; they're the best at deep positions. But defensively, RR hasn't done this at all. Rich Rod's defensive recruiting could be a result of all of that losing, but he made the same mistakes that Lloyd did, only amplified. Look at the depth chart, then look at 2009 recruiting, when for the desperate OMIGOD HELP positions of CB1, CB2 and FS RR got...Justin Turner. Rodriguez also took a gamble that Emilien could come back from injury (he couldn't). Other than that, he might have only gone after Witty to get Denard Robinson. 2009 was a deep year for cornerbacks, and we've got none of them.

For recruiting blame on Rodriguez, look at his priorities in 2008. Defensively, he added Taylor Hill, who got to campus, took a look around, and left. Other than that, RR trusted Lloyd's recruiting and did what he could to keep them. Offensively, in a month in a half RR built a pipeline to Pahokee with Odoms, fended off Cal and others for McGuffie, dug up Omameh and Barnum while adding them to an already good-looking offensive line class (Khoury, O'Neill, Wermers, Mealer), picked off Terrence Robinson, unearthed Feagin from who-knows-where, and coaxed Shaw and Roundtree to decommit from Penn State and Purdue, respectively, all while chasing the No. 1 recruit in the country around trying to get him to play quaterback. Those who say RR didn't have time to recruit in 2008 are forgetting that the man got his 2010 starting RB, half of his receiver corps, and added a sleeper offensive lineman who's now a starter, and another 4-star who ended up being better than four highly rated guys already in the class.

And no defense.

For defense, RR hired Shafer then gave him assistants who didn't get along with him, then fired Shafer and hired Robinson, then gave him a system he doesn't understand. There's a ton of culpability for the defense on Rich Rod. He can talk all he wants to about the true freshmen cornerbacks, because he's right that they're true freshmen cornerbacks. But why is Jonas Mouton still playing like a freshman? Why did a defensive line that was so deep when he got here become severely lacking any depth? Why is there an embarrassment of riches at slot receiver and guard while the only defensive back from '08-'09 is a converted wide receiver who should be a linebacker?

That was all in the DD series, and it's still part of the story today.

Lloyd Carr got sloppy with recruiting late in his career, especially in '07 and '08, expecting whichever hotshot coach who followed him would be able to hang on and mold all of these projects into the next great Michigan thing (I sincerely believe Lloyd thought he left the school in good shape -- he also thought DeBord should be an HC candidate).

Rich Rod, on the other hand, is an extremely, almost ludicrously good scout, recruiter and schemer for offense. He wins tough battles for offensive recruits, and does an unbelievable job of finding the kinds of guys who will succeed for him. He invented the best current offense in football, and has a group of sophomores putting out a Top 5 offense in Year Three when he was left a perilous offensive line situation. Defensively, RR has done little to show he can recruit any better than the Michigan coach who thought Chris Richards, Johnny Sears and Brandon Harrison would fill a gaping need at cornerback. He certainly has culpability for this defense.