your dt recruiting panic wasn't premature afterall
The freshman class that Michigan signed last week is ranked 17th in the 247 composite rankings, 17th to Rivals, and 19th to On3, The class has, pending their pursuit of 5-star Nyckoles Harbor in the later signing period, zero top-100 players. This is quite clearly below the level Michigan normally recruits at.
To have a class like that after a second straight year of beating Ohio State by three scores, winning the Big Ten championship, and going to the Playoff is, without question, a disappointment. I'm one of the people who kept saying over the first half-decade of Harbaugh that beating Ohio State was the key to unlocking a higher level of recruiting. So far, it has not.
This has led to two major questions about the 2023 class, which might be seen as the optimistic and pessimistic versions of the same question:
- Pessimist: Why is a 13-0 Michigan recruiting like 8-5 Michigan?
- Optimist: Is this class like the 2018 class?
Every other question is another form of what this all signifies. Is Michigan doing something wrong? Is Michigan systemically disadvantaged in a new pay-for-play world? Was this wound self-inflicted, bad luck, overstated, or even worth discussing? Is Warde Manuel a second Fritz Crisler who's too cheap, too conservative, and too obstinately attached to outdated ideals of amateurism to keep up in a landscape rapidly reshaping to a new more capitalist order, while simultaneously too revered to be dispensed with?
I can't answer all of that. But I can tell you what happened with the 2018 class, and what that means for the very similar 2022 class.
[After THE JUMP: the 2018 recruiting tag is revived]
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]
Well this sucks for the team that's been fretting about defensive tackles and natural interior pass rush since Mo Hurst was unleashed on the NFL.
— Michael DwumFour (@HON5H0) January 14, 2020
Dwumfour caused a medium panic when he was spotted at the Detroit Lions game instead of bowl practices a few weeks ago, until it was announced he didn't travel with the team for a medical issue. Those medical issues held back a breakout that was always just around the corner, never more so than the 2018 offseason when more "Mo Hurst but big" hype was emanating from Schembechler Hall than even we could disbelieve. A potential breakout that season and this one were derailed by a nagging plantar fascia issue that apparently bothered him all 2018. Tweaking that held him out of the Peach Bowl, the entire 2019 offseason, and the beginning portion of this year. When Dwumfour returned for Big Ten play, he was decent against Iowa and still mistake-prone against Illinois. Late in the season Michigan went to more three-man lines or, when that wasn't an option, freshman Chris Hinton.
At his commitment in 2016 Dwumfour was unfairly considered a carrot for luring best bud Rashan Gary. In truth the defensive tackle depth chart after Hurst's graduation was reason enough to flip Dwumfour from a Penn State verbal. Like Hurst, Dwumfour was a quick first step they hoped to grow into a penetrating nightmare. We got glimpses, but the injuries kept their DT a development project even through this, his redshirt junior season. The hope for next year, as it has been every year since 2018, was that Dwumfour could remain healthy long enough to pick up the finer points of run defense. The first step was as advertised, and there were moments here and there that certainly made you wonder what he might look like as a senior:
Michigan is out that opportunity, and running short on chances to rebuild a DT depth chart like the Glasgow/Hurst/Henry/Godin group that Don Brown enjoyed his first two seasons here. While the Wolverines bring back Kemp and Hinton, that's an undersized warrior and a true sophomore for a position where talent, experience, and depth all directly correlate to team production (see: LSU, Ohio State, Clemson, Alabama, and the two times Harbaugh teams fared well against Urban Meyer). Well-regarded freshman Mazi Smith, who redshirted, is the only other guy on the roster next year expected to able to take on a larger role. Rising junior Donovan Jeter disappeared from the rotation after a miserable debut, Phil Paea never even cracked that rotation, and if the 2020 class produces any DTs they're all a good few years of training table away. With Kemp and Dwumfour injured, Michigan started walk-on/converted OL Jess Speight in the Citrus Bowl. Various developmental SDE types down the roster like Julius Welschof and Michael Morris might also have grown into DTs since last we checked in.
If doing so didn't already precipitate Dwumfour's decision, Michigan is almost certain to hit the grad transfer market. Grad transfer Michael Williams, a 6'2"/290 nose type who's fleeing Stanford after a season of six TFLs and a sack, had Rice, Vandy, and SMU appear to be the competition. Teammate Jovan Swann (7 TFLs) is also in the portal. Via 24/7's Brice Marich, Michigan is pursuing those two as well as Uche type Quincy Roche from Temple.
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