Michigan Thursday: The Day After Prespective

That was a unique and fun NSD, which has been pretty boring around here for the last few years.  

During the final weeks of the recruiting season and NSD it's hard to have perspective of where we have been.   Michigan had a disaster on the field last year and pretty much cleaned the entire staff out.    Michigan's best recruiting was to land one of the best coaches in football with the hiring of Jim Harbaugh.   If you remember, we all said we would throw away the 2015 recruiting class to bring Jimmy home.    This ended up being much more then a "throw away" class.  

The new Michigan staff had a month to recruit kids that other schools had been recruiting for two years.

What didn't go well:

I thought recruits would be lining up to play for Harbaugh, Durkin, Mattison, Devno/Fisch.    I thought the NFL experience this staff has would bring a ton of interest from the top players in the country to prepare them for the next level. 

I still believe this to be true.   It just wasn't possible to flip the top kids in such a short window.  Let's see what this staff does in the 2016 class.   By the way, they are already behind in that class as well.  Though they certainly have time to make up the gap there.  

What did go well:

Michigan missed out on most of their top targets.  Wheatley wouldn't have come to Michigan if Harbaugh and Wheatley Sr. weren't hired.   So that was a net gain. 

The staff did get a bunch of guys in a very short window, when it seemed like they might be shut out.   The commitments of Higdon, Washington, Perry and Johnson were pretty much out of blue and very nice last minute pick ups.   A week ago, we were even tracking these guys. 

The staff also pulled a very good "Mallett" type of QB in Zach Gentry.

The Super Bowl had more two star recruits in it, then five stars.   The development of these guys is what's important, we now have a staff that can develop players. 

Michigan in the last month got 3 players from Florida, 1 from Texas and 1 from Alabama (also NY and Mich).  It is nice to see Michigan having recruiting success in the south again!


Look what Urban did after he was hired?

That was a completely different situation.  Urban was up and running in early December.   He hired his staff and got special permission to recruit kids while the other staff prepared the team for a bowl game.   Penn State was also imploding at the time and Urban picked off a ton of kids heading to Happy Valley.   That wasn't exactly a tough sell.  Extra month and PSU on fire lead to his great recruiting success right off the bat. 

How did we finish?

Michigan had the #36th class to Scout and #38 to 24/7 (jumped 33 places on NSD)


Now what?

Michigan is still in the top group for Roquan Smith but he will probably go to Georgia.  There are some thoughts he would prefer to leave the state, so there might be a small chance.    Roquan was expected to have a discussion with DJ last night.  Not sure if that happened or not.

Michigan might also look a couple graduate transfers that could play right away.

I would also keep an eye on some preferred walk-on offers that we will try to track.   I would look for some FB and TE's as walk-on's.  I bet there are some kids out there that could play both positions.


BTW:

On the off chance your feeling bad about losing Weber on NSD to OSU because Michigan signed another RB in the class.  Please read this post by Karan Higdon's coach on Mgoblog.   I think you will agree with me, we got the right RB.   One player did all he could to visit Ann Arbor in a snow storm and understood right away the Michigan difference.   The other grew up in the area and re-committed to Michigan's rival because another RB signed that morning.   We got the right kid.