nose tackle

There are a lot of clever things a clever coordinator can do on defense to cover up for a weakness. Programs unable to recruit enough of the kind of defensive backs who can play man will commit to zone (Iowa). Those short on athletes in the second level can add hybrids and blitzes to make up for it (Indiana). Slower ends can be supplemented with 3-4 OLBs (Wisconsin), smaller ones can be covered by DTs and a good thumpin' Mike (MSU), and if you don't have a 3-tech, well, half of football bases out of a three-man front for a reason. Nose tackle, though:

The nose thing is probably my biggest "just watch the games, nerds" take. It's just so obvious when you watch good defenses that the Nose/iDL is the lynchpin.

— RichardJohnson (@RJ_Writes) December 31, 2020

Things happen too fast in the A-gaps to take a loss there. If you don't have a guy who can both stand up to doubles and demand them, all of your Winoviches and Garys get doubled, your secondary gets abused, your linebackers get blocked, and your clever coordinator is spending all of his time dreaming up mitigation strategies instead of stopping the opponent. This is why for years Michigan fans have been imploring our program to add at least one gettable nose tackle-shaped nose tackle to the end of the class in case the more dynamic options at the top don't work out. Failing to Moneyball this problem with build-a-bears and the odd competition-averse blue chip is the reason coaching legend Don Brown just got fired. Here in January 2021, Michigan's current class has zero plausible NTs signed, one local four-star on the hook, and a lame duck DL coach who has little hope of finding more.

The good news: the state of Michigan has at least one nose tackle-flavored nose tackle who projects to nose tackle, and he's game to play for Michigan when he graduates in 2022. The better news is he's got a lot of athletic upside. The bad news is he's never played nose tackle.

GURU RATINGS

As you'll see in the scouting, Miles is a nose tackle-sized person River Rouge has been playing at end, sometimes as far out as a stand-up SAM. That speaks highly of his agility, but hasn't made projections easy:

Rivals	ESPN	247	247 Comp
3*, 5.5, SDE, no rank	no profile	3*, 86, NR OVR #45 DT, #17 MI	3*, 0.8466, #671 OVR, #49 DT, #23 MI
3.40*	n/a	3.58*	3.47*

Bottom row is my conversion of the above to a 5-star scale. Links are to profiles.

As with fellow recent commit Connor Jones, Miles has barely been seen by services. ESPN doesn't have a profile up. Rivals lists him as an SDE and slapped him with a 5.5, which is Rivals for "I'm working on something but I'll get to it I swear." 24/7 has little more than that, but put Miles down in the MAC/MSU portion of the in-state rankings. They also show an apparently more recent 6'5"/275; Rivals has Miles at 6'4"/265. His high school roster still says 240. So he's grown.

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

The problem with Michigan's defense against Ohio State the last two years was pretty simple: they didn't have the dynamic defensive tackles they had in 2016 and 2017 and had to weaken other parts of the defense to compensate for it. In 2018 they couldn't generate pressure versus single-man blocking with Kemp and Mone, giving Dwayne Haskins time to sit in the pocket and OSU's receivers and backs time to shake defenders who weren't designed to last that long against elite speed. In 2019 they couldn't hold up physically with Kemp and true freshman Chris Hinton, and got pasted with Inside Zone and Duo until the linebackers stopped acting responsibly. It also forced Michigan to leave Josh Uche, one of their best players, on the bench for standard downs because they needed their DEs to play interior gaps. As we've said before, that was a "we need DTs" problem not a "why aren't you playing him?" problem.

Take those two games out of the equation and everyone feels just fine about the Harbaugh era. But that's not how we measure things here. I think most people see that if everything else can hold where it's at, getting the DTs back to 2016-'17 level gives this Michigan a shot to beat what's quickly becoming the strongest program since Point-a-Minute. Then we see Michigan not even a factor for any elite DTs in two straight classes (2020 and 2021) and the despair creeps in.

Can Michigan build a competitive defensive tackles depth chart with what they have now? Sure. They also could have had one in 2019—they just got really unlucky on a relatively standard roll. Can they have one in the future? It's harder to say.

Recruiting Elites: A Question of Can, not Will

Will Carr almost cost Eddie George his Heisman. [Jed Jacobsohn via Burnt Orange Nation]

Just as some of you were giving up the diaries section for dead, AC1997 wrote a treatise on elite (top-105) defensive tackle recruiting at Michigan and the various playoff competitors.

Wait a minute….I can math.  You said 18 for 6 schools, which means an average of 3 per school over a three year period.  That’s not as much as I thought.  What gives?

Good catch.  We know that just about every power-five team rotates three DTs regularly and that the success rate of even the top DT recruits is not perfect, so it is a position you would expect to over-recruit to ensure there is depth and insurance on your roster.  I would have expected that over a three-year period these elite schools would be stocking up on this talent, even if there were only 39 prospects to go around.  In reality, only one school (Alabama, duh) over-recruited from this list with a whopping SIX signees.

All of the other elite schools had just two or three:

• Clemson = 3
• Ohio State = 3
• Washington = 3
• Georgia = 2
• LSU = 2
• Oklahoma = 2
• Michigan = 2

The short version is Michigan and Ohio State have the same disadvantage: recruits tend to stay closer to home and the Midwest doesn't produce that many 300-pound monsters. Ohio State overcomes that by being the #1 destination for the kind of recruit who doesn't care about region because he just wants to make the playoffs. Michigan isn't recruiting better than any program in football history and so can't keep up with OSU in that regard. If you want more details I recommend you read the diary.

Growing Dudes: How to Find a Renes

Recruiting services don't tend to send scouts to your nightmares. [Patrick Barron]

In the comments AC asked me what Michigan's hit rate is on grow-your-own DTs. The answer is it depends a lot on the profile of the recruit.

• Dudes (since 1996): Mo Hurst, Ryan Glasgow, Willie Henry, Rob Renes
• Guys: Eric Wilson, Grant Bowman, Ben Huff, Shawn Lazarus, Matt Godin
• Playable but missing a key component: Carlo Kemp, Jibreel Black, Michael Dwumfour, Gannon Dudlar, Jess Speight, Alex Ofili, Kerwin Waldroup, Larry Harrison
• Whiffs: Phil Paea, Richard Ash, Jason Kates, Ray Edmonds, Brion Smith, Donovan Jeter, Deron Irving-Bey, Brady Pallante, Renaldo Sagesse, Terry Talbott, Vince Helmuth, Marques Walton, Paul Sarantos, Dave Spytek

If you bring in a pair of lightning feet attached to an excellent brain and just need to add 40 pounds to get to 300, your chances are pretty good. If you need to add 70 pounds, or he lacks the athleticism, or he needs to drop 40 pounds of one type of weight and put on another, or he doesn't have that one in a million brain that can process how a team wants to block him from minute details while in a trench battle, your chances are not great. Once you're moving guys over who were never expected to grow past defensive end you're hitting a ceiling.

If you look at the Dudes they came from all over the 3-star spectrum. Hurst came out a 4.01 on my 5-star scale, Renes a 3.83 (what we generally call a "3.5-star"), Henry a 3.48 (really low) and Glasgow was a walk-on. But they also fit a certain body type. Hurst was 6'2/282 as a true freshman, Renes 6'1/275, Henry 6'2/270, and Glasgow 6'4/294. The Guys showed up smaller: Wilson was 6'4/255, Bowman 6'3/258, Lazarus 6'3/245, Godin 6'6/277, and Huff a 6'4/234 linebacker.

The whiffs group has a lot of guys we would call reaches. Of those who came in with some sense among the fanbase that they were better than a shot in the dark, Ash, Kates, and Sagesse were tear-down/rebuilds, Brion Smith (medical), Ray Edmonds (dismissed) and Irving-Bey (transferred/dismissed) failed to materialize for non-scouting reasons. Dave Spytek was 6'7".

[After THE JUMP: a trip through Michigan DT memory lane to see how classes translated into lines]

please stop yelling at me about Gary starting, you win [Eric Upchurch]

Hi Brian,

Care to offer your guess on how the snaps will be distributed along the defensive line?

I would guess something like this:

Strongside End: 40% Gary, 20% Wormley, 20% Godin
Nose: 55% Glasgow, 45% Mone
3-Tech: 45% Wormley, 45% Hurst, 10% Godin
Weakside End: 65% Charlton, 25% Winovich/Jones/Kemp, 10% formations with only 3 down lineman.

Obviously this exercise assumes no injuries, and I ignored Lawrence Marshall who'll probably see some playing time.

Interested in your take,

-Andrew

Other than the fact that you project only 80% of the strongside end snaps that seems about right to me. (I assume that was meant to be 60% Gary.)

Over this offseason I've gotten a bunch of pushback about my assertion that Gary probably won't start, pushback that now seems on point after various insiders have asserted that Wormley will stick at 3-tech and Charlton will move over to WDE. But that was always a distinction without much of a difference. Even if Gary was nominally behind Wormley at SDE there would be sufficient snaps available when Wormley rests or Michigan goes to a pass rush package for Gary to make an impact. We're talking about a half-dozen snaps per game going to one guy or the other guy.

The only slight corrections I'd make would be to bump Glasgow up to 60 or 65% and bump Charlton to 70% at the expense of three-man lines.

Hey Brian-

No doubt there's been a recruiting uptick since Harbaugh came aboard....Rashan Gary is nice.  But what about our lower ranked pickups?  I seem to remember you comparing the success of Tressel 3-stars to Carr 3-stars, and the difference was stark.

Without the benefit of seeing how they pan out, how do you think JH's less-heralded guys will stack up to those of previous regimes?  vs. Tressell/Urban?  Curious if you've noticed a difference in talent/potential based on film and summer camp performance.

Cheers,

Joe 

BK, NY

I don't remember that post but there is certainly a difference in quality amongst the vast plain of three-stars, one that's relatively easy to discern. However, that difference isn't based on evaluations I make with my amateur read on Hudl highlight films. It's more about the shape of a kid's recruitment.

There are three stars who end up on the radar of major schools, and three stars who do not. Maybe a Josh Uche or a Nate Johnson comes with sufficient questions for a rating service to correctly peg them a three-star, but it's also correct for teams like Florida or Notre Dame to go after those guys when their plan A gentlemen are uncertain or head elsewhere.

When we're talking about Michigan commits the players in question have tautologically garnered big time interest. That's one vote of confidence; it's better to have other votes from top 25 schools. There's a set of three stars who are targets of multiple big schools and a set who are not. My read on how the 2016 composite three-stars fit in those bins:

• Multiple options: Nick Eubanks, Khaleke Hudson, Nate Johnson, Josh Uche, Eddie McDoom, Elysee Mbem-Bosse, Michael Dwumfour.
• Hard to tell: Kingston Davis.
• Not so much: Sean McKeon, Devin Gil, Josh Metellus, Stephen Spanellis.

I believe everyone in the "multiple options" section could have gone to one of PSU, Florida, Auburn, or Oregon, along with a number of other schools on that level. Davis almost certainly could have gone to Nebraska and maybe LSU or Florida but probably not. The four guys in "not so much" didn't field much if any interest from top-half Power 5 schools. Four guys out of a class of 28 is quite good.

It's hard to get a solid read on the number of comparable prospects in earlier classes. Awareness of the "offer"/OFFER distinction has crept across college football gradually and many earlier recruiting assessments take listed offers at face value when they probably shouldn't. There's more wobble in older assessments, but here's my estimate of the number of Michigan three-stars that didn't seem to get a whole lot of interest from top 20 programs. (I'm not counting MSU here since they only started recruiting like a top 20 team last year and are no longer.) You'll find some excellent players on these lists, but all told it's better to be noticed by more than one big program:

• 2012 (9/22): Matt Godin, Kaleb Ringer, Sione Houma, Jehu Chesson , Drake Johnson, Willie Henry, Ben Braden, Jeremy Clark, Blake Bars. Godin and Bars might have had real interest from Notre Dame.
• 2013 (7/28): Jaron Dukes, Csont'e York, Channing Stribling, Khalid Hill, Da'Mario Jones, Reon Dawson, Scott Sypniewski. I'm leaving out kickers but counting Sypniewski here since long snappers are usually walkons; Harbaugh just got the #2 guy in the country as a PWO. Dan Samuelson and Ross Douglas were Nebraska and PSU decommit three-stars and the only guys in that range who had big time offers.
• 2014 (6/16): Juwann Bushell-Beatty, Wilton Speight, Maurice Ways, Noah Furbush, Brandon Watson, Brady Pallante. Jared Wangler was a PSU decommit.
• 2015 (5/14): Karan Higdon, Grant Perry, Keith Washington, Jon Runyan Jr, Nolan Ulizio. Shelton Johnson was a battle against FSU; Reuben Jones against Nebraska.

Lone wolf fliers comprised over a third of the four Michigan classes before Harbaugh got a full recruiting cycle, and just 14% of the 2016 class. So yes, the 2016 class's three stars are a different caliber.

Given Harbaugh's tendency to rack up decommits it's too early to state with any confidence how many will be in the 2017 class. As of right now I'd put Joel Honigford (Oregon), J'Marick Woods (VT, maybe LSU), Phillip Paea (Oregon), and maybe Andrew Stueber (Tennessee) into the "major target" category" and Ben Mason, Carter Dunaway, Chase Lasater, and Kurt Taylor into the "not so much" category. (I'm assuming Benjamin St Juste ends up a composite four star.)

[After the JUMP: Notre Dame resumption!]