Exit Daxton Hill
Michigan's 2019 class just took a heartbreaking blow, as five-star/top commit Daxton Hill flipped tonight to Alabama.
Respect it pic.twitter.com/4jalHMrF50
— Dirty30 (@daxhill5) December 8, 2018
Hill is the consensus top safety in the country and likely would have helped Michigan immediately in its quest to suffocate all possible offensive options with more talented players. It especially hurts because of how well Hill would have filled the one hole in Don Brown's system. It triply sucks because #3 overall safety Lewis Cine, a former teammate of Michigan commit Mike Sainristil, appeared to lose interest in Michigan shortly after Hill committed. It quadruply sucks because it's further evidence that our entire reality is some awful child's NCAA 2014 Alabama dynasty.
Hill is the fifth decommit of this class but the first that was truly surprising, and the most impossible to replace. Michigan still has four-star safety Quinten Johnson in the class, as well as viper prospects Joey Velazquez and Amauri Pesek-Hickson, and a slew of lanky prospects from last year. In the past Don Brown has found NFL safeties (John Johnson, Justin Simmons, Obi Melifanwu) in under-scouted athletes but there's no Melifanwus on the board at the moment, unless you count Pesek-Hickson.
With the loss of its only current five-star Michigan's class has dropped out of the top ten in the 247 composite. Michigan is expected to reel in one of its top receiver prospects and one or two giant offensive linemen, and remains the crystal ball leader for five-star DE Zach Harrison.
December 8th, 2018 at 10:40 PM ^
sigh...
At least the BBall team is playing lights out
December 8th, 2018 at 10:41 PM ^
No one should be surprised. Alabama wins national championships. We can’t even win our own division. Alabama shows up on the biggest stage and delivers. When Michigan takes its turn on the big stage, it shits it’s collective pants.
Until we beat OSU, expect more of this. I don’t blame the kid at all for going to Alabama.
December 8th, 2018 at 10:51 PM ^
Yeah I won't believe we get Harrison until I see it
December 8th, 2018 at 11:18 PM ^
Exactly Brutus. I didn't believe this one either and I am so unhappy to have had my suspicious confirmed. There's been enough precedent for sudden flips like this that I am even more grateful that Rashan Gary turned down the cash to come to Michigan.
December 8th, 2018 at 10:55 PM ^
Ugh. More nuclear fallout from the Game
December 8th, 2018 at 10:55 PM ^
December 8th, 2018 at 10:56 PM ^
:::sob:::
December 8th, 2018 at 11:09 PM ^
Directly correlated to the osu game.
December 8th, 2018 at 11:16 PM ^
Directly correlated to bagmen.
December 9th, 2018 at 1:20 AM ^
Alabama had bagmen before the OSU game. The Game was the pivot point.
December 8th, 2018 at 11:30 PM ^
It is no longer fun coming to this site. So much negativity.
December 9th, 2018 at 12:03 AM ^
Michigan football is not fun right now.
Coming to grips with the fact that this program is never going to get there is not fun.
December 9th, 2018 at 10:37 AM ^
College football isn't any fun given how lopsided recruiting has become. And this CFP structure just reinforces it getting worse. Soon enough it will be the same 4 teams that play each other every year.
December 8th, 2018 at 11:43 PM ^
I don't know why there is all the crying here. I am a life long Michigan fan but our football program has never been "elite".
We have had one NC in what - 1/2 a century?
Bo has been our best coach in that time an he never won a NC and also lost 1/2 his games to OSU and 1/2 his bowl games.
We are a great program at a great school. Beilein hasn't won a NC either.
I am glad we have these quality coaches that excel with what they have that I would feel proud to end a son or grandson to play for.
December 9th, 2018 at 10:10 AM ^
Bo also beat OSU half the time, and actually won a LOT of Big Ten Championships. Harbaugh...0-4 says it all. No championships of any kind, not a single signature win in 4 years. What you've seen is what you get under Harbaugh.
December 8th, 2018 at 11:53 PM ^
Harbaugh’s teams have gotten better every year. He isn’t going to hit a home run on every pitch. The offense is what’s killing us and it was much further behind than the defense when he got here. It will be better next year. So stop whining you fucking daisies.
December 9th, 2018 at 10:07 AM ^
Bullshit. They didn’t get better in 2016 or 2017.
December 8th, 2018 at 11:58 PM ^
I get so tired of the bagmen excuse. Bama has had lots of high 4 stars that never saw the field or got benched or anything like that, but never blew the whistle. Someone who feels they would have been slighted by Saban and crew would have thrown him under the bus in his tenure if that was actually happening. They aren’t paying cast offs to be quiet. We are talking about 17, 18 year old kids, how has one never slipped up and given it away?? Because it doesn’t happen! Saban sold the program to some elite guys right when he got there and then they started winning and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. Bama is the best at preparing kids for the NFL, winning championships and everything else. It doesn’t take a genius to see where Bama’s program is and where Michigan is. It’s not even close. If there was lots of money involved with these kids it would have gotten out on social media this day in age. Just face it, Saban and Bama are what we will always hope to be.
December 9th, 2018 at 12:04 AM ^
People say bagmen because it’s a convenient excuse so they don’t have to deal with reality. And that reality is that Michigan hasn’t been a top tier football school since world war 2. We are a tier 2 football school and have been for a while even when bo was the coach, hence the zero championships. Tier 2 is a solid place to be but it’s not where this fan base thinks it is
December 9th, 2018 at 6:04 AM ^
This is such an ill-informed take that it becomes amusing. Prior to the BCS, how exactly do you define a school being "elite"? If you say it's by the convoluted system of human polls at the end of each season, go a head and look at who was being placed in that position during that half century - it includes the likes of BYU and a 2 loss Minnesota team. Also, it was not uncommon to have multiple loss teams at/near the top of the poll. Michigan was an elite school during that period since it was almost always near the top, consistently won its confetrnce, and would have 10+ win seasons - which is about as much as you could say for other programs during that period. Are we back yet? No. Are we far? No.
December 9th, 2018 at 9:25 AM ^
We're just as far now as we were three years ago. Harbaugh has peaked. It's pretty clear that we're going to be somewhere between 8-4 and 10-2 about 90% of the time. He is not an elite coach, and giving him more "time" is not going to change that.
December 9th, 2018 at 10:29 AM ^
During the timeframe of the polls you are shitting on plenty of teams had more impressive runs than Michigan under bo. Woody Hayes and osu won 3 titles. Nebraska, Florida State, and Florida all have spent more time in the top 10 and top 5, have more championships and a better winning percentage. So does usc. Winning a lot of games is nice. Winning championships is better, we compare ourselves to the teams that won lots of championships over that period, we don’t belong with them
December 9th, 2018 at 12:57 AM ^
well there's lots of slipups, some of them well publicized, and the school was officially caught cheating and had to dial things back for a while.
The cheating didn't go away, although the optics certainly had to be addressed....so don't kid yourself about Bama's inherent and untouchable excellence. That's on par with Urban "redemption."
They are good at what they do and cheating is part of it. The thing is, with today's money machine there is an honest debate as to what it really means to be cheating.
December 8th, 2018 at 11:58 PM ^
The December signing day can’t get here soon enough. Keep Charbonnet, Hinton, Mazi, etc....and add a handful of others and call it a day. Extremely disappointing to have a 5 star talent flip on you this late in the game, but ‘Crootin.... Lots of good work has been done in recruiting this class. Let’s get them signed and move on.
December 9th, 2018 at 11:09 AM ^
That will barely be a top 15 class and mostly because of volume. In terms of average stars it may not even be top 20. Not a horrible class but not nearly the level we need it to be.
December 8th, 2018 at 11:58 PM ^
This program is a Fucking joke. Can't blame the kid. Win a Damn game when it matters.
When was the last time this team won as an underdog? How many times have they lost as a favorite since then?
Not an elite program. Could have gotten there but shat the bed with everything on the line.
When Harrison goes to OSU and Charbonnet decommits you'll know the writing is on the wall for this program ever getting there under Harbaugh.
Who here has any faith that JH can get next year's team past Ohio on the strength of the offense? Didn't think so.
December 9th, 2018 at 12:04 AM ^
Any chance of getting Cine interested again?
December 9th, 2018 at 12:05 AM ^
He was never that interested.
Why would he get interested now?
December 9th, 2018 at 12:32 AM ^
What a fucking fuck
December 9th, 2018 at 12:57 AM ^
See you later Daxton. Get the fuck out.
December 9th, 2018 at 12:57 AM ^
See you later Daxton. Get the fuck out.
December 9th, 2018 at 1:30 AM ^
Honestly whatever not going to get hung up about it. Sucks but Harbaugh needs to prove to the top recruits we can win the big game. OSU and Notre Dame turned me out to be the big games this year. Florida may actually have some cachet due to SEC and it would get us to 11 wins and put us back on track.
Harbaugh has enough talent to beat most teams on that talent with an ok to poor game plan. He’s beaten superior teams before and he’ll have to do so again with slightly weaker talent to prove to the highest recruits they can win big at Michigan.
Again this sucks but all is not lost and this class can still be good.
December 9th, 2018 at 2:07 AM ^
Honest question, when was the last time that we beat a team with superior talent?
December 9th, 2018 at 2:40 AM ^
It’s been awhile, but this feels a bit like moving the goalposts.
Michigan had a seven year stretch of puking all over itself following a fairly underwhelming close to the Carr era. Just getting to a point where they can expect to beat the teams they should has been an accomplishment and it’s not one we should sneeze at.
There just aren’t that many teams with more talent than Michigan and Michigan basically cratered during Rodriguez/Hoke, the OSU game was horrifying and sobering and expectations reducing and all of the bad things we are putting on it, there’s no way it wasn’t as bad for the program as we’re making it out to be. And yet, nothing lasts forever and the pendulum will swing back again, it just feels stuck. Give Harbaugh time and maybe be a bit more grateful for 38/39 wins in four years. It could be so much worse and Michigan is in a good spot, there’s only one Bama and we got fucked by them today, it’ll stop eventually once Saban’s gone and the college football landscape smoothes out a bit.
December 9th, 2018 at 11:25 AM ^
As the fog is being lifted from the beat down, I realized some very successful coaches (in the long run) had to get past their nemesis after all too many years of crapping the bed vs. their rivals.
Tom Osborne - couldn't beat Oklahoma unless he had Turner Gill. Finally Barry "retired" and then he took over. He had the lull vs. Colorado but then had to beat the southern teams (FSU, Miami) - which swarmed his option offenses for a while. Speed became the recipe for success. He won 2.5 titles in 4 years and lost 2 games total.
How many times did we hear about Bowden not winning the big game? Couldn't beat Miami and sometimes got embarrassed (1988 shutout on national TV). I remember watching when he finally beat Miami in 1993 and beat them soundly.
Steve Spurrier and Florida - couldn't get past Alabama, then finally did but got beat worse by Nebraska for the NC than we did vs. OSU.
Saban had to get past Florida and Urban.
Before I consider JH to be our Cooper, I think he has to get a chance with a roster full of his recruits and lessons learned from a beat-down to beat OSU at home with a team with a good QB and WRs and TEs.
December 9th, 2018 at 12:54 PM ^
We always say "next year". It gets old and a little pathetic.
But I'm going to say "next year" anyway.
Not that it's the magical year that we are going to win everything, but that it will be a very instructional year about Harbaugh's plan and trajectory for the offense.
We debate among ourselves what his "preferred" offense is, and how well he can implement it at the college level . . . and how appropriate it even is for the college level. He's somewhat vague about it.
Within the first few minutes of his introductory press conference, Ryan Day came out and explicitly said that his approach on offense will be "Spread the field and make the opponent defend every yard of it." He's not worried about time of possession or ball control. He's not worried about a particular stat. We know what he is going to do.
Harbaugh is a little more vague and elusive about it. We know he would like to run the ball and control possession. But there are many different ways to get there. It's not necessarily Stanford 2.0.
Is he as dogmatic as some people think? Or is he just in transition?
Next year will force the issue a little bit. The defense won't be as good, so it won't be able to be used as a crutch for a tepid offense. The offense is going to need to win some games on its own for a change.
Next year Harbaugh will also finally have the experienced and talented players he needs to be able to run a variety of offenses. He can run more of what he wants to run, not what he feels he has to run.
We'll see what that looks like. It might be surprising.
December 9th, 2018 at 8:18 AM ^
Probably Florida ‘08. A team sandwiched between two national titles but had a QB that still won the Heisman that year.
December 9th, 2018 at 9:47 AM ^
Probably 2011 vs. OSU or the Citrus Bowl from 2015. Thankfully those two opponents had horrible coaching.
December 9th, 2018 at 10:31 AM ^
Bama has never won a game against superior talent. Take that saban
December 9th, 2018 at 1:43 AM ^
Just start paying these guys. Fuck it.
December 9th, 2018 at 2:03 AM ^
Alabama flips a big recruit from us at will, but we can't flip a recruit from Purdue.
FML.
December 9th, 2018 at 3:09 AM ^
No more decommits and landing Harrison would go a long way in pointing this recruiting season in the right direction. I can’t imagine Harrison isn’t in Tuscaloosa or Columbus right now tho.
December 9th, 2018 at 3:45 AM ^
Well this sucks, the rich get richer and the clean get to lose more.
December 9th, 2018 at 6:34 AM ^
Clearly, losing Hill is a huge deal-the kid is that good. There are no comparable replacements out there. I do hope this bring Sanguinetti back into play. This class does, however, remain very solid and is built from the inside out across the OL and DL.
The repercussions from that pathetic performance at Ohio State are in full swing. Harrison can provide a significant reprieve but otherwise...WOW!
December 9th, 2018 at 6:47 AM ^
Meh. If there’s one thing I don’t do, it’s sweat the final choices of these kids much. You don’t get to be ‘Bama until great talent starts to come to you. And if you ain’t got the guts to help stem the, well, tide... and go to an awesome school like UM... one very much on the brink of being elite... well, screw it. On to the next kid.
Sure, Harbaugh took a nasty black eye. It happens. Although if someone truly has your back, they double down and step into the fight for you.
December 9th, 2018 at 7:38 AM ^
See yah .... late decommits equal NO class anyway.
December 9th, 2018 at 8:15 AM ^
Whatever. Don’t blame a kid for looking out for himself.
If you were a top defensive recruit and you saw the shitshow Michigan put on down in Columbus a few weeks ago, would you want to come here when you had a better option? Try and remove your maize and blue tinted sunglasss before you answer.
If I’m being unbiased I’d rather go somewhere where I know I’m going to win more national title games than I will rivalry games. I’d rather go somewhere that I know for a fact will put me into the first round of the NFL Draft. Harbaugh is past the point where he can sell hope to top recruits and reasonably expect them to come. He needs to sell results now. And right now, he has no results worth selling to a player like Daxton Hill.
December 9th, 2018 at 7:39 AM ^
Could the Finebaum-Carter-NFL effect be working?
December 9th, 2018 at 8:12 AM ^
I'm not sure this was surprising. He said last month that he didn't plan on signing during the December signing period. I had a feeling that he was gone then.
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