One of the most common discussions you’ll find on this blog lately centers around fan base frustration associated with football recruiting – and specifically that of defensive tackles.  Watching Michigan struggle against Ohio State the past few years has altered most narratives around the program and this one in particular – especially watching spread offenses attack us up the gut.  In 2019 we all gnashed our teeth watching an undersized Ben Mason try to convert from FB to DT and actually join the rotation!  Naturally…we’re not happy.  We don’t see a path to the expectations we have for Michigan without some high-impact players all over the field, but especially not at the important position of defensive tackle.

The purpose of this post is to try and apply data and information to the problem facing the program at defensive tackle.  As much as we all enjoy yelling on the internet, shouting “get off my lawn” only gets us so far.  What does the data tell us?  Is Michigan failing to do something that other schools are?  Is Michigan actively ignoring a position of need?  Are all of the good DTs going to the elite programs?  We’ll never know what happens in the football offices and whether Michigan has aggressively reached out to every high school kid in the country.  What we can learn is what the talent pool looks like and where they’re going. 

We’ve all seen the various arguments here about Michigan’s failures at DT.  I won’t get into all of them, but the general theme is that we need more 5-star talent to compete with the elite programs.  So let’s try to figure out what is going on with this talent.  Word of warning – this post got quite long…but it isn’t like we have much else to do with our time these days.

First, some rules of engagement:

• This will focus on DTs only…even though taking 5-stars at any position would help.
• While everyone focuses on 5-stars, the reality is that there are very few of them each season so we’re going to look at the top 105 players from 2018-2020 in their database.
• The player data includes any DTs rated in the top-105 each year as well as anyone listed as a SDE who weighed over 260 pounds.  (Yes, there are stories of smaller DE’s bulking up to play DT, but I had to draw a line somewhere and 260 felt like a good starting point.)
• I relied on 247 for the rankings of the players.  Some of these guys listed at DT or SDE may end up playing a different position and I’m sure there are some players listed on the OL who will play DT in college.  I have no way of knowing that, so we’ll go with what 247 says. 
• You’ll see in the data that I grouped players into “regions” for their recruiting geography.  Admittedly this is a little fuzzy in some places (Is Virginia in the East?  South?  Midwest?)  I’ll try to address some of those fuzzy areas where appropriate. 

Now let’s start breaking this down into some useful chunks of data via the use of an alter ego voice.

There are so many good DTs out there that Michigan is just not after, right?

There were 39 players over the past three recruiting classes in this category, for an average of 13 per year.  While we want multiple top players at this position every year, the fact is that we’re fighting with all of the power-5 schools for just 13 players in each class.  (None of the 39 players left the power-five in case you’re wondering.)  That’s a HIGHLY competitive battle to fight…though Michigan needs to be in it. 

So the elite schools must be taking all of these DTs and that’s why they’re in the playoff and Michigan isn’t, right?  Clearly Michigan can’t match up to those elites.

Well, let’s start by defining these elite schools.  I think that Alabama is at the top of the heap in their own category, but right behind them would be the other consistent playoff contenders – OSU, Clemson, Georgia, LSU, and we’ll throw in Oklahoma.  You can nitpick that list, but let’s go with it for now. 

Looking at the data, you do see a lot of these 39 DT prospects going there for sure, which isn’t a surprise.  A total of 18 prospects went to those elite programs, confirming what we believe to be true – that they’re dominating recruiting with 46% of available prospects going to six schools.

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

Whoa – hold on a second there.  I see two schools on that list that aren’t “elites”.  Explain.

That’s right, we’ll start with the one on the list that jumps out most….Michigan.  In the same time period that these elites grabbed 2-3 of these players, Michigan grabbed two themselves (Chris Hinton & Mazi Smith).  So each of these teams is building their DT depth chart with essentially the same number of top-105 players headed into next season.  As for Washington…

Stop right there.  Are you trying to argue that Michigan’s DT situation is fine and they’re no different than the other elites on this list?  I call shenanigans on that!  You must be making this stuff up! 

Easy alter ego…I am not.  The fact is that Michigan has recruited essentially the same number of top DTs as everyone in the country (except Alabama) over the past three years.  So when you rage about DT recruiting, make sure you understand that context. 

However, there are a few other things at play here that are worth mentioning.  I extended the list of players to 105 for this data set because that’s what Mazi Smith was ranked.  Initially I started at <100 for the ranking so I’m cheating in a way.  If you went back to the players ranked less than 100 the total sample size drops to just 34 kids (about 11 per class) and the five players ranked 100-105 were not going to the elite schools (though Clemson, OSU, and LSU have players ranked in the 90s so they’re not far off).  There’s a difference between LSU getting guys ranked #40 and #95 while Michigan’s guys were #31 and #105…but it isn’t significant.

The other thing that I’ll point out again is that this analysis is focused on quality of the DTs out there, not quantity.  Part of our frustration is that we aren’t recruiting top guys but the other part is that we aren’t getting planet sized 3-stars either.  I’m not getting into that here – but it is a valid concern. 

Now I’m on to you.  See, Michigan is still behind.  Heck, you just showed that WASHINGTON of all places got more of these kids (3) than Michigan did (2).  How can you argue that our coaches don’t suck at recruiting DTs?

First of all, I’m not making any arguments about the coaches.  I’m simply offering data for consumption to understand what the coaches are trying to overcome when they do recruit.  But let’s talk about Washington for a minute.  They are tied with OSU and Clemson for second on the list of schools here.  How is that possible?  

That gets into the next challenge with these guys…geography.  The three players Washington signed were from California or Hawaii.  There were only FIVE players in this data set that went to high school outside of the Eastern or Central time zones.  Three of those went to UW, one went to USC, and one went to OSU (groan…). 

Yeah, yeah….I get it.  Pulling players from the west coast is hard for all schools.  But Michigan should be getting all of the best players in our region!  Explain that! 

Valid point – while we want Michigan to be a player with any of these recruits, we should absolutely start with the ones closest to home.  Let’s start with players from Michigan during this time period – which is a whopping TWO.  Michigan signed Mazi Smith (#105) and lost out on Justin Rogers (#51 – Kentucky).  So we’re batting .500, which isn’t great, but isn’t terrible.  I don’t know what the story is with Rogers and why the #51 player at a position of need didn’t end up at an elite program, a local program, or even a top-half-of-their-conference program.  I did some quick research and learned that he may play guard in college anyway, there never seemed to be much mutual interest between us and him, and he also shunned all the other big programs that wanted him.  Discuss in the comments I guess. 

The bigger point is that there were only TWO players from the state that even fit this criterion.  So let’s look outside the state into the Midwest region.  Michigan should be key players in the local big ten footprint, right?  Well, there were only FOUR players in the entire Midwest during this time period – the two from Michigan, one from Ohio (Jowon Briggs - #75 – Virginia) and one from Indiana (George Karlaftis - #59 – Purdue).  Before we talk about them, let’s take note of just four players in three seasons that even made my list and none were even in the top fifty.  We’re playing in a shallow pool of talent at this position in the Midwest.  

Now let’s look at Karlaftis, who Michigan definitely wanted and put on the full court press for.  They didn’t lose him to OSU, Bama, or Clemson….they lost him to Purdue!  Is that a failure of our coaches?  Perhaps.  But clearly the kid wanted to stay home and play for the local school.

Okay, I can see that Michigan didn’t have a lot of local options now.  But they should still be able to pull kids from other regions.  Karlaftis is unique in wanting to stay in state. 

Actually, he’s not.  This is something else I tracked – the likelihood of these recruits to leave the state for college.  A pretty staggering 41% of the players stayed in state for college.  Put another way, there were 39 players in the list, only 23 decided to leave their state. 

While that fact itself is staggering, let’s go a little further and remember the Washington example from before.  We know only 23 kids left their home state and that our state had few to offer.  But what about leaving their region of the country?  This is where it gets eye-opening.  Only 7 players in three years left their region….SEVEN. 

Wow…I’m starting to see why this recruiting stuff is so hard.  But if the elite programs had most of these recruits and you just said that none of them like to go far from home….that must mean…..

Yep, all of the talent is located right around most of these elite programs.  By my count, an incredible 21 of the 39 players came from the Southeast.  All other regions (East Coast, Midwest, West, Mid-South) had 4 or 5 each.  So you can start to see why all of the elite programs located in the Southeast like Alabama, LSU, Clemson, and Georgia keep getting richer – they have access to over half of the talent in their backyard. 

For context, we saw earlier that Michigan missed out on three guys from their region during this time period.  Clemson, Georgia, and LSU lost out on TWENTY!  There were nearly seven times as many players available for them nearby who did NOT go to their schools as there were Michigan.  When you take that and combine it with the knowledge that only 18% of players left their region, you can see why these schools have such a significant advantage...even without the mysterious bag-men or academic considerations.

Holy crap!  That’s not fair!  But wait….I’m used to yelling about how far we are behind OSU.  How are they thriving in this unbalanced landscape?  They must be doing something right. 

Let’s look at OSU because there’s something to learn there.  We saw earlier that they only signed one player more than Michigan so they aren’t doing anything drastically different.  We also saw that there were only four prospects in the Midwest and OSU signed NONE of them.  However, unlike any other school on this list besides Alabama, OSU has been able to pull players from other regions. 

If we remember from before there were only SEVEN players who left their region to attend college.  Of those, THREE went to Ohio State.  They picked up players from Florida (#20 Taron Vincent), Idaho (#55 Tommy Togiai), and New Jersey (#93 Tyler Friday).  Michigan makes the list with Chris Hinton (#31 from Georgia) but obviously this is an area where OSU stands out. 

In fact, you could argue it is even more dramatic.  Besides the four players mentioned in the last paragraph, the others didn’t travel all that far out of region.  We mentioned Rodgers going from Michigan to Kentucky, which is arguably still in the Midwest.  Texas A&M signed a recruit from Mississippi – also only a couple of states away.  The only move as significant as what OSU and Michigan were able to pull off was Alabama getting a recruit from New Jersey. 

So let’s recap that again – only FIVE PLAYERS in this data set moved more than two states away from home and Michigan and Ohio State pulled in 4 of them!

Well….I’m still mad about recruiting and our lack of DTs, but this is pretty eye-opening.  Can you summarize for me?

Sure.  Obviously Michigan needs to bring in an adequate quantity of DTs regardless of ranking and that’s an area we didn’t get into.  We also want them to get as many highly-rated players as possible and especially at one of the most critical positions on the field.  Yet a deep dive into the data suggests that it is far easier said than done even without knowing what happens behind the scenes with the coaches.  Let’s run the numbers again:

Top-105 Recruits at DT/SDE over 260 pounds from 2018-2020…..

• Total = 39
• Total in Southeast = 21
• Total in Midwest = 4
• Total in Michigan = 2
• Total who left their state = 23
• Total who left their region = 7
• Total who moved more than two states away from home = 5

Are you trying to say that Michigan is better off than we thought?

Absolutely not.  I’m terrified of whether we have the bodies and talent to hold up at DT against most teams on our schedule.  The only point I’m trying to make is there are very, very few star recruits at this position who are even likely to consider Michigan.  The staff surely knows that almost all the talent is located in the southeast and that hardly any of them are likely to leave for Michigan or Ohio State.  OSU is dealing with this a little better than we are, but not significantly so unless you want to give them credit for signing the kid from Idaho. 

If we’re lucky this season (which seems unlikely since we’re Michigan fans) we would see a three-man rotation of Carlo Kemp and the two players who showed up on this list – Mazi Smith and Chris Hinton.  If those three are the rotation at DT and more than hold their own, we might not even realize there was something to scream about in the first place.  That’s a big “if” however.  It also doesn’t account for the fact that behind those three guys is a huge void – full of low-ranked, undersized, position-switching recruits. 

Okay – thanks for summarizing.  From now on when I shout on the message board about defensive tackle I will focus on quantity more than anything.  If we sign a top recruit or two and build depth with lower ranked guys I may even be content.

That’s very rational of you.  Hinton and Smith represent exactly what we’d hope Michigan would do by getting a couple of talented players who should be entering the rotation this season.  Had they signed just one more player from this list they would have matched OSU and every other non-Alabama school for both quantity and quality.  The focus of our worry should be where and when the next signees will come from and who rounds out the depth chart behind these guys. 

The path to matching the elite programs in the south is daunting, but the path to matching OSU (at least at this position) isn’t as scary as I thought when I started this.  We have to hope Hinton and Smith reach their potential, we need to sign a couple more of these guys in the next two cycles, and most of all we need to fill out the depth chart with lower rated guys that can play DT and hopefully outplay their ranking.  Easier said than done and optimism is hard to come by, but it wouldn’t take much to alter this narrative. 

But what about the QB situation?

Save that for another day