offer every rutgers running back commit

In our slack chat I was making a point about how P.J. Fleck's hard pursuit of Andrel Anthony is a good sign for Andrel's prospects, and we got on to some of the meme-ish "always offer [position] if [school] is after him" recruiting rules.

The Rules: The internet has no lack of "Position U" articles. They come in three varieties: too focused on a point in the past when only a few teams threw the ball (hi Purdue), too focused on NFL careers (hi Miami), or too focused on the present because the author's real intention is Oklahoma should get an extra trophy for two recent Heisman winners they ganked from Big 12 rivals. Getting consistent stardom out of five-stars (USC) and five-star transfers is harder than it sounds, but that's soft content for sites that go for peak clicks-per-neuron ratios.

The point of this exercise is to identify serial scouting over-performance, ie schools that get more out of less at a position with such frequency that an offer from that school reflects positively on a guy Michigan recruited. Also things will be biased to the Midwest, because that's what I'm most familiar with. This is MGoBlog, where we use copious amounts of research to bring you the real, sometimes counterintuitive answers.

Like for example this one that was stupendously simple:

Oregon Quarterbacks

via NBC's twitter

Pro-Style Era: Bill Musgrave, Danny O'Neil, Tony Graziani, Akili Smith, Joey Harrington, Jason Fife, Kellen Clemons
Spread Era: Dennis Dixon, Jeremiah Masoli, Darron Thomas, Marcus Mariota, Justin Herbert

There is ONE. One damn year since Mike Bellotti came onboard has Oregon had less than awesome quarterback play, that in 2015 with a D-II transfer sandwiched between three years of Mariota and four of Herbert. Almost none of these guys were major recruits. Herbert was #659 in his class, barely higher than the highest Michigan State commit. Mariota was #491 and the #3 player in Hawaii. Darron Thomas was the relative blue-chip at #280, the #5 Dual-Threat to the composite. Masoli was an unheralded JuCo transfer. You have to go back to Dennis Dixon, the #2 dual-threat in the 2003 class (#53 overall) to find a guy who cracked a top-250. And that followed an insane streak by Bellotti going back to the late 1980s.  Onetime expected-to-be-a-Michigan-commit Tyler Shough is expected to be the next guy.

They have had their whiffs but a lot of their transfers were good elsewhere—Johnny Durocher at Washington, Braxton Burmeister is expected to start at VT. Bryan Bennett went to SE Louisiana but made an NFL roster. Jake Rodrigues, the half-decent SDSU guy we faced, was an Oregon transfer too.

2nd Team: Jim Harbaugh Quarterbacks

It's had its moments. [Bryan Fuller]

I really tried not to do the homer thing, but after spending half a night trying to find any other answer, the guy who was the subject of a two-parter on under-the-radar QB recruiting by me in 2015 is the guy. Harbaugh really had quite a streak going before Michigan, and that's not even counting guys like RGIII, Taysom Hill, Brock Osweiller, Tanner Price and Connor Shaw who decommitted from Stanford when he couldn't get them in for some reason or another.

As for those he did get, start with two USD pros, Todd Mortensen and Josh Johnson. At Stanford he recruited Andrew Luck and successors Josh Nunes and Kevin Hogan. He drafted Colin Kaepernick. At Michigan however he's so far mostly played transfers. Grad transfer Jake Rudock worked out great, after about half a season. John O'Korn did not work out, and Shea Patterson was a mixed success. Two attempts at inserting home grown redshirt freshmen in hopes they'd take four years to dislodge were ended almost immediately by a pair of Wisconsin headshots, one to Brandon Peters in 2017 and the other issued to Dylan McCaffery in 2019, so those are mostly incomplete. Peters got recruited over by Patterson, bailed, and was a decent starter for Illinois last year. McCaffrey would be a redshirt sophomore this year.

HONORABLE MENTION

Michigan State under Dantonio. Brad Salem(?) had a string of good ones from Kirk Cousins to Connor Cook, to early career Brian Lewerke, with less-than-serviceable Andrew Maxwell and Tyler O'Connor thrown in between. NC State has more quarterbacks in the NFL today than any two schools, but they're mostly transfers and from other regimes.

[Hit THE JUMP for shorter writeups because getting tired of Wisconsin takes less time than trying to outright my bias]

Why yes we are bad at keeping up with this. Sorry.

Quarterback

Mr. McCarthy went to the Elite 11, which doesn't really give guys enough reps to get any worthwhile scouting from, but did give us a pro day workout reel:

…and the opportunity for some quotes from Trent Dilfer:

“J.J. is really good,” Dilfer said. “The kid is charismatic, he’s competitive, he has juice, I was really impressed with J.J.”

And SI's Tennessee guy:

The Michigan commitment’s quick release combined with the pop off his right hand resonated as others’ began to wear down. He remained strong in his overall performance throughout, and he did not struggle at any level of the field.

And from JJ's personal quarterback trainer:

“It’s noticeable,” Holcomb said. “I don’t want to say each time I see him, but there are aha moments. He’s filling out nicely, it’s healthy and good and he’s growing into his body. He might be the youngest kid (at the Elite 11) and he’s growing. He measured 6-foot-2¾, and matches up physically with some of the bigger kids.”

And a glimpse into those aha moments:

“They had a competition at the end where they had to throw into a window high and tight at the goal line. It was a seam down the left side of the field and they had to throw it high up where only the receiver can get it,” Newkirk said. "He didn’t win it, but he made it to the fourth throw where half of them probably got eliminated after their first throw. He’s pretty consistent and even when he makes a mistake, he learns from it.”

Rivals' EJ Holland talked with SI's director of football recruiting, John Garcia, who thought McCarthy had the second-best week of anybody at the event. Holland unloaded a lot of his own thoughts in there. He and Garcia teamed up again for a scouting bonanza that described a Manziel type who sometimes gets too sped up:

JJ was consistent from an overall performance on a daily basis. But each day he had a couple of really bad throws. JJ does get antsy at times, and Dilfer said as much after the event. He’s definitely not erratic, but he does need to settle himself down sometimes.

The impact of J.J. McCarthy at IMG on other recruits can be discussed below; the short version is it's good to have the IMG quarterback.

[After THE JUMP: Trickling up except where we're not]