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.