M made some more top lists for 2021 prospects
Wallingford (CT) Choate Rosemary Hall offensive tackle Tristan Bounds named Michigan to his top 8 (LINK). He's a 3-star, the #56 offensive tackle, and #627 overall.
Bolingbrook (IL) Bolingbrook linebacker Tyler McLaurin named Michigan to his top 5 (LINK). He's a 3-star, the #26 outside linebacker, and #406 overall.
Arlington (TX) Mansfield Summit wide receiver Hal Presley named Michigan to his top 10 (LINK). He's a 3-star, the #80 wide receiver, and #481 overall.
There are no crystal ball picks in for any of these guys.
Their predictions changed from Michigan to foggy. Trieu said that MSU is rising. Would be pretty disheartening to lose him to Sparty given where the 2 programs are at and how long we have been recruiting him compared to Mel Tucker.
New coach smell is real.
I think this is also going to be a uniquely weird recruiting year both for rankings and commitments. A lot of rising and falling happens because of 7-on-7 and the various camps from Nike and the recruiting services because of the chance to get real metrics, see them perform against elite competition, etc.
Add in that a lot of elite athletes wait to see how the season goes in a year where there’s talk the season won’t start until November, this might well be the most uncertain class in memory. The top 100 is well-scouted because they were early risers/camped as underclassmen. The rest is based on individual scouting and on film against existing competition.
This is a good point. I predict there will be a lot more randomness in on-field player success relative to recruiting ranking for this class, across all college football. There have been significantly fewer opportunities for these kids to both be scouted and to develop their skills. People who are making certain prognostications on what these kids prospects are because of their current ranking (1.5 years before they'll get to college, anyway) are being over-confident.
I'm also very interested to see how many decommitments there are. There are lots of guys committing to schools based on virtual tours. When they finally get a chance to visit campus and see if they like the weather, the campus, their future teammates, etc., we might see a lot of flip-flopping.
3-star, 3-star, 3-star...lather, rinse, repeat. Seems to be about all we get any more. And it doesn't seem to matter. We're 9-3ish for the foreseeable future, not matter who we recruit.
LOL. Michigan has had three 4-stars commit (Crippen, Hansen, Anderson) in the past five weeks or so.
At least on a virtual tour us midwest teams can avoid the freezing rain and ice outside that sometimes gets in the way of campus visits.Give OSU credit they saw an opportunity and really jumped out front with the virtual visits they are using. Every tragedy has opportunity for someone thinking outside the box. They've signed over 10 kids during the pandemic.