Is Hoke a good evaluator of talent?

If he's not a good evaluator of talent then no top tier program coach is. Just look at the offer sheets some of the guys we've pulled had, they're not all bad at evaluating. You can make an argument for developing the talent, but evaluating at the high school level is not his problem.

I heard an interesting comparison of Hoke and John Blake from Oklahoma. He was a great recruiter (OU won the national championship two years after he was let go), but not a great coach. 

about anything about Hoke now.  I don't see much that excites me other than his love for Michigan.

It is the nature of the interwebs to be reactionary.  If the majority of people on this board had been level-headed there would have been a lot of "we are accepting mediocrity" on here.  

It makes us feel better to get mad because that shows people how much we care.  Then we calm down and sober up and people create 1000 threads about what we can do to right the ship or what is wrong with the ship in the first place.

I said this in another thread, but

"it's one thing to whiff on a couple of players (it happens in every program, every year), but there's no f*cking way we whiffed on 2 whole classes of O-Linemen. That's the part that's confusing to me. Because it can't be that we are misevaluating ALL of these players, beause we were close to landing Josh Garnett, and he's balling at Stanford. Just poor player development all around here."

I usually hate going straight to coach-blaming (a la Bill Simmons), because it's usually just lazy rationale to why said team isn't playing well...but in this case, I really don't see any other answer. For whatever reason, guys just aren't developing here.

Let's get to the real question:

Does Hoke wipe his ass properly? I've yet to be convinced that he does. Hold on guys, I'll start a new thread up.

i actually think this might be the best of the endless snowflake threads.  and it doesn't just apply to hoke, it applies to the entire staff.  i think the real message isn't that he's a poor evaluator of high school talent, but of the talent on his own team. 

consider:

• QWash played very little last year, for no apparent reason;
• Furman and Avery played over Wilson and Gordon even though they were demonstrably worse;
• Bolden over Morgan this year even though it's obvious that Morgan is better;
• Believing that JMFR can be a good MLB, while also taking away a strength of the defense with that move;
• Twice believing Jack Miller could stand up to large DTs and NTs, last year and again this year, even though the evidence is clear that he cannot;
• Not playing Pipkins much this year even though every time he gets on the field something good happens;
• Believing that Magnuson can play LG.

those are just some examples.  it appears that this staff does a poor job of evaluating their own players relative to one another.  particularly because they rotate on defense so much, this means that low caliber players are on the field all the time.  they seem too reliant on what happens in practice and insufficiently reliant on what has happened in previous games.

If you exclude the top 30 or so kids in the nation you are going to get a very similar type talent anywhere from #50 to #300.  These rankings are not science.  Comparing a kid from the PSL in Detroit to the 2nd division in Texas to the 1st division in Virginia to Utah to Arizona to New Jersey to Georgia to Florida... it's a crapshoot.  Development is the issue, not identifying talent.

Identifying talent is an issue for Wisconsin, Michigan State, Virginia, Arizona, Illinois, Kansas State.   Those programs dont get the pick of the litter.   They are recruiting mostly players ranked 400-800 or whatever.

UM, LSU, OSU, Texas A&M, Texas, USC, ND, Florida, FSU, Georgia are all picking from the same group of 400 kids.  Yes you can barf on 4 of your 18 kids but we are not picking the 18 sucky ones out of 400 every year.  You have to do something with these kids when they get on campus - they are still raw projects in most cases who need a lot of teaching - again excluding the Bosas, Peppers, Gurleys whatever.  If you throw all those teams classes together they are going to be more or less the same excluding the top 30-40 kids in the nation.  I am excluding Bama since they get so many of those top 50 but every other top tier program gets the same raw material.  What they do with that material is what sets them apart.

IMO OL recruiting is a crapshoot and teams that can develop OL will always fare better than teams that just recruit OL well.  Wisconsin under Bielama comes to mind.  Not alot of "talent" starz! wise into the program but NFL caliber OL on the way out. Eric Fisher from CMU comes to mind too. Went from 2 starz! to first overall pick in 5 years at CMU.  It is all about development.

the talent just fine.  The question is if he can bring them to their full potential (and beyond) or not.  That quesiton will truly be answered next year when his recruits become upper classmen.

Yes.

He is playing Devin Gardner instead of Shane Morris.

TROLLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Player talent, seems like a "Yes".....coaching talent, seems like a "No". Ask again in about 5 weeks.

Considering they have one of the top-ranked recruiting classes by a number of recruiting sites whose jobs are based on identifying top players, I'm not sure what to tell you.  Now, he might not be able to develop those players, but if he's "wrong" about guys like Peppers and Green then everyone else is screwed as well.