commitments come in seemingly endless waves

The portal additions will keep coming until either a) morale improves, or b) Michigan has more transfers in this class than their entire post-Bump Elliott history combined. This time we raided a division rival for tight end.

Barner should be able to make an immediate impact on a depth chart that was expecting to have Erick All back next year. A nobody recruit (ranked some places as a DE), Barner immediately earned playing time, though just one target, behind Peyton Hendershot during their 2020 run. He started the last two years, serving as a team captain as a true junior while almost never coming off the field. Thanks to the COVID year, he'll have two years left to play at Michigan. He's also from Ohio, a state Michigan recently annexed.

STATS

These come with major Connor Bazelak/Donaven McCulley caveats.

Play-by-play data from collegefootballdata show three penalties, two of those false starts at Rutgers. Without looking, I'm going to attribute those to Rutgers blowing their stupid train horn. PFF's grading isn't very meaningful lately, especially the blocking component, but they weren't particularly enamored; Barner got a 53.4 overall this year, 54.3 in the passing game, and 59.7 as a run blocker. They were kinder on his 2021: 60.9 overall, 61.9 passing, 55.3 run blocking.

[After THE JUMP: Indiana's best tight end]

No, this is not the 2022 WLB prospect who is transferring from Nebraska, but a bona fide 2023 WLB prospect who visited Michigan during the Night of All the Commits and promptly decommitted from Nebraska.

At that point this point seemed a foregone conclusion:

We are sorry, Nebraska. If it makes him Rhule feel any better, Moore was talking to Wisconsin a lot after Frost was fired, and Michigan got the Denver linebacker/starting pitcher to cancel a visit in College Station, Texas, in favor of snowy Ann Arbor.

You wouldn't know he's a linebacker with Wisconsin/Iowa/Texas A&M offers from the way Moore slipped under the raters' radars. There seem to be two reasons for that, other than his whole class's sophomore season being wiped out. For one, Moore is a dual-sport prospect who wants to play baseball at the next level, and stayed in pitching shape during the season, which explains why he sometimes showed up to camps closer to 200 than a more linebacker-ideal 220.

The other reason is he grew into a linebacker (and tight end) later in his high school career; Moore's COVID season workout videos all show him running routes, not covering them, and he was still being listed as a receiver on recruiting lists as late as September 2021. His junior season was good (11 TFLs, 5 sacks), but he came a long way as a senior. That A&M offer hit in early October.

A third may be his position at St. Regis was kind of a hybrid OLB in their 3-3-5. Moore often had his hand in the dirt as a DE, and collected quite a few of his prolific sack numbers coming off the edge, not doom squirreling through an A-gap. But he did that too. In fact, other than tackling everything in sight, the versatility seems to be the main theme.

GURU RATINGS

Last row is my conversion to a five-star scale. Links are to profiles.

[After THE JUMP: Sorry, I was thinking about how Michigan uses Junior Colson]

And we are now caught up. I had this whole conversation with a guy who follows recruiting really tightly where he was like “We got Damani!” And I was like “For real?” And he was like “Yep, he’s going to announce!” And I was like “Oh wow that’s huge! Is he coming as a safety or a cornerback?” And he was like “At safety, specifically Dax Hill’s position, but he could play anywhere in the secondary!” And I was like “That’s amazing, all glory to Courtney Morgan!” And he went “Actually all glory to George Helow—he’s the dude who recruits Jacksonville and was recruiting Dent to Maryland before.” And I was like wait, what?

I may have confused an ‘a’ for an ‘o’ but the rest of this conversation holds up, and as soon as the recruiting rankers get caught up themselves it seems there’s a good chance that Michigan finally managed to reel in one of these late-breaking, hyper-athletic safeties they kept finding on their way up the rankings last year. I’m thinking of Donovan McMillon, Daymon David, D’Arco Perkins-McAllister—you know, a D guy!

And yes, Courtney Morgan and Ron Bellamy were of course highly involved, as was the head man himself. Michigan clearly made Dent a priority. Meanwhile the people who do the recruiting rankings were determined to make sure that twit who thinks recruiting stars are the only measure of a life’s value would burn another $5 MGoBlog account to say so.

GURU RATINGS

Arrows show trend of recruiting rankings. An arrow is like a third of a star.

So yeah, we were expecting there to be quite a few players in this class (and many more in the next one) who popped late because a crucial year in their scouting was wiped out, and Dent fits the bill. 247 went from 81 to 84 in late July, then up to 86 (still a middling 3-star) at the end of September. ESPN doesn’t have a rating yet. Rivals recently slapped a 5.6 on him without ranking him among his position or state. FWIW, their #50 (last ranked) safety right now is MSU commit Quavian Carter, who’s a 3.56 on my 5-star scale, and their #100 player in Florida is DT Jordan Phillips, the guy from Ocoee who nearly committed to Michigan earlier this cycle, who would be a 3.53.

With all due respect to Michigan State recruiting and Phillips, neither of those guys were getting heavy interest from Oregon and Georgia when they committed.

[Hit THE JUMP for scouting, video, and the rest.]