Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Michigan Tuesday: A Hat Trick of Leaving

I was starting to think things are pretty boring around the program right now as the sub seems pretty deep at the moment, then Monday happened. 


Monday was a interesting day for the Michigan Football team for it's current and future roster needs.   Michigan had one current player transfer and a de-commitment from the 2017 and 2018 classes.   The strange thing is, all of it was "sort" of expected.   Let's start with player that left the program. 


Kicker Andrew David:  Many programs handle kickers and punters differently.  Some don't even offer scholarships to those positions and expect walk-ons to cover it.   An example is, Michigan's top kicker and punter right now, Kenny Allen.   He was a walk-on but probably on scholarship now.   Andrew David the kicker with two first names was a red-shirt freshman or sophomore (depending on how you look at it) as he didn't see any game action last year.   He was originally a Brady Hoke commit and Jimmy kept him in the class when he took the job.   Michigan recruited hard the #1 kicker in the nation in Quinn Nordin in the last class and it was clear there was not much confidence in Andrew.  The practice reports were also pretty rough on the young man and going into last year there was serious concern with the place kicking before Kenny took the role.  With Kenny as a senior and Quinn looking to take the job after that, the writing was on the wall for Andrew and he decided to transfer to TCU.   Good Luck to him in Texas!


Next to jump off the boat was Ohio 2018 recruit, Leonard Taylor.   It is really a long time before signing day 2018 and it's not surprise that Leonard de-committed.   He committed very early to Michigan and insiders believed that Michigan would have to pretty much lock him in a room to keep him from de-committing in the future.   They were right and most expect him to end up in Columbus.   He is a very good player but Michigan has a ton of time to replace him in the 2018 class. 


To finish off the day and the hat trick of leaving was DT Aubrey Solomon.   Same as Taylor above, when he made his surprise commitment to Michigan this summer, most insiders believed he would not be in Michigan's class come signing day.   As expected, he pull the trigger on his de-commitment last night but will still take an official to Ann Arbor.   Insiders feel he is headed to Georgia.   It also seems that Michigan's recruiting team had a miss step with him as they sent his mom a thank you letter for attending the BBQ and miss spelled his name.   The issue is Aubrey didn't attend the BBQ.   Yes, that was a decent sized mistake and the loss of Solomon in this class is significant.   I also expect that the Michigan coaches understood his commitment was never written in stone and have plenty of backup plans.  With what I expect to be the best defensive lines in the country this year, I think a few players will be interested in getting coached by Brown and Mattison. 

8 comments:

Scott K said...

Jalil Irvin (2018) OG commit from GA just decommitted as well.

Losing these 2018 kids isn't really that big of a deal, there is a ton of time to replace them. I think unless they're hometown kids who grew up Michigan fans, keeping a recruit in class for 18 months prior to signing day isn't that common.

Of course those in the media who are looking to sling mud at Jimmy, will try running with it like its a sign of major issues for the program.

11 days til kick off, GO BLUE!!!!

ScottyDoggs said...

That's inexcusable what happened to Solomon... do not they have a quality control man; kick him in the shins! Any letter should be hand written, say something personal to him only, and have the guy(coach) that is recruiting him write the letter,,, I hope Michigan is beyond using a "canned" letter. Michigan "beach slapped" a great recruit.
Todd Maravich (spelling?) for the Trojans, beat Michigan his freshmen year in the Rose Bowl. He was controversial, because his Dad raised him like a robot to play football. Now I am surprised that the media has not picked up on it, but back then; Todd's nick name was "Frankenstein"
The reason I bring this up is that recently Todd was found wandering the street's in only his "birthday suit", hopelessly strung out on Meth. Some people do make it... Art Shlister (Ohio State), can not keep out of jail.. the quarter back we beat in Rose bowl 1981 is now a permanent guest at the "gray bar motel". World's a crazy place...

ScottyDoggs said...

Oop's the quarter back from Washington State that we beat in the Rose bowl might have been when we won National championship (which would be Jan 1998)... anyways he was caught breaking into a pharmacy to feed his drug habit.

Voice of Reason said...

You know, for what it's worth I am not convinced that it was fully Aubrey's decision to de-commit, I think his mom who wanted to be a vital part of the process and was surprised and upset when he committed early without her input used the letter as the tool to say, "see, they can't even get this right...they don't care about you, you shouldn't go there." When the family of a kid has that type of pressure at home it can take all of the joy of the decision that they’ve made.

Granted that it wasn't smart for the office staff to send out the letter without knowing who was in attendance and also misspelling his name, but let's be real here, if the kid and family really had their hearts set on coming to Michigan they would have had a big laugh about it and told the coach about the clerical mistake because the relationship is with the coaches and not the clerical staff. However, I would also say that when a kid commits very early and thereby surprising their family like in this case, I think the coaching staff should go out of their way to embrace the family (in this case mom) and do whatever they can to develop a relationship with her as well.

Some families don’t fully understand the magnitude of a Michigan scholarship while others do. You're talking about a scholarship to a very special and elite school academically, with a very special coaching staff that is making a special impact on the college football world, and here you're willing to let an innocuous clerical error offend you enough to walk away from that. There has got to be IMO a lot more going on than what we know. We've seen top level students change their minds and go elsewhere when it made more sense for them to go to Michigan...but like I said, there are things going on behind the scene that we don't know about (e.g. boosters extending special benefits to family members if they can extend influence for a favorable decision and so forth). We all know those institutions that practice recruiting that way, when they get caught they get probation and then they continue on doing the same exact thing. To them, the risks and penalties are worth the long term rewards. Nevertheless, no matter what we have to respect the families’ decisions that are made as a result.

When you're trying to run a clean program competing with slimy programs then you've got to realize there are just some battles you're not going to win. This "may be" one of them, we don’t know. However, this is not to say that if a kid doesn’t come to Michigan that they are victims of unethical practices, however, it makes you wonder what's going on when you see a pattern of very highly rated players that are in other high profile schools backyard and your competing against them and the kids have expressed a strong committable interest in Michigan and then suddenly they change their minds, it makes you wonder about the backstory with these kids. In any case, I wish these kids the best. IMHO

Scott K said...

well said VOR.... Imagine a kid who grew up in Brighton, family were life long U of M fans, and he took a visit to USC as a HS Junior, and committed before he came home and talk to his family about it. You can bet he would be under a tremendous amount of pressure from his family, friends, classmates, etc, to reconsider.

It'll be ok, and there's no doubt that the cleaner the program, the more recruits they're going to lose to those who play in the $100 handshake arena.

10 days till Kickoff, GO BLUE!

Scott K said...

Another scholarship opens up, Ahmir Mitchell is leaving.

ScottyDoggs said...

At the current rate of attrition within a month Michigan can not field a team unless 22-25 players go both ways (not the kind of Bruce Jenner way of course). Offense/defense that is.

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