OL Recruiting Numbers

Submitted by rbgoblue on

It's pretty obvious that after going light on the OL in the past couple recruiting classes (attrition and Jacob Fisher be damned), Hoke and Co. probably arrived at Michigan following Brady Hoke's crawl across the country, only to ask, "Where's the Beef?"  Numbers clearly necessitated a large recruiting class of offensive linemen, but looking at where we are now, and hoping to add one more (please, please, please be Josh Garnett), did we go a little overboard this year?

  • Kyle Kalis
  • Erik Magnuson
  • Ben Braden
  • Blake Bars
  • Caleb Stacey
  • AJ Williams (TE convert?)
  • (hopefully) Josh Garnett

Clearly, when you take potentially 7 linemen in a class, some will be starters, and others career backups, but doesn't this just create the same problem 4-5 years from now when this entire class graduates?  I'm just left feeling that after this class moves out, we will be left with the problem of replacing 4+ starters on our offensive line, which certainly doesn't bode well for a strong 2016 season.  Am I thinking too far ahead, or would it have been more judicious to sign 5 this season, and 4 or 5 more next year?

funkywolve

January 11th, 2012 at 3:00 PM ^

Some of those olineman might redshirt, some might not.  So they end up having their eligibility expire in different years. 

While all of these are highly rated recruits, not all recruits pan out - even the highly rated ones.

Most programs try to sign 4-5 olineman every year.  Maybe with the haul this year, UM only looks to sign 3-4 next year.

 

bacon1431

January 11th, 2012 at 4:58 PM ^

This class essentially doubles our scholarship OL (almost). Which shows you how pitiful our OL recruiting has been the past few years (and a few unlucky departures/injuries).

GoBluePhil

January 11th, 2012 at 5:11 PM ^

To develop so the possibility is high that some will red shirt. Then injuries are always an issue with linemen because of big bodies on small legs. Wouldn't be surprised if we take 3 or 4 next year. Depth on the lines is critical to any program.

BrewCityBlue

January 11th, 2012 at 6:17 PM ^

I can find more reasons to take 7 (that's right, SEVEN!!!!) OL than to only take 4 or 5 this year. And, not counting AJ as OL, but instead as a TE, which he needs to be counted as, we are at 6, looking to sign a 7th (Looking at you Garnett).

See redshirts/injuries/flameouts that everyone else has already mentioned. You can NEVER have too many capable scholarship lineman, and since all scholarship linemen don't pan out... I think you get where I'm going.

But basically, due to the lack of OL recruiting for literally a 5 year span, it is going to take a while to build that back up. I like your idea of 4-5/ year once we've restored normalcy and don't have such depth issues there in the future. 

 

joeysos33

January 11th, 2012 at 11:25 PM ^

ELITe offensive lineman every year. They will continue to grab 4* guys every year because the Midwest is so deep with them. Hoke and co. put a lot of sight on the Trenches. Im not worried about reloading lineman for the pen will be stocked.