Michigan State football recruiting - yikes
I was just sifting through the team recruiting rankings and noticed that MSU was way, way down this year. Then remembered that they were not very good last year either. Curiosity caught me, and i had to dig a little deeper.
Year - Class ranking national - class ranking big ten - number of recruits rated 90+ in composite
2014 - #26 - #4 - 3
2015 - #23 - #3 - 3
2016 - #17 - #3 - 9
2017 - #36 - #6 - 1
2018 - #31 - #6 - 2
2019 - #30 - #7 - 2
2020 - #47 - #10 - 1 * this class of course not comlete yet, but does NOT look good *
I would initially say recruiting tank coincided with the hire of Harbaugh, but really, Harbaugh has not recruited the state very well either. More and more of our states top kids are just leaving the state. But holy shit things are looking bleak in East Lansing. Since the tank started in 2017 the results should now begin to be reflected on the field this year, and definitely next year. In closing, fuck MSU!
MSU's time to recruit well has come and gone. They peaked with making the CFP in a more down Big Ten and didn't capitalize. Now it's boring Mork and probably the 4th best program in their own division. They'll probably be a 7-9 win program till Dantonio retires and they're probably ok with that as long as he beats Michigan every few years
They've had 9 total 4*s in the past 3 recruiting class and zero 5*s. All the more reason we should be beating them on a more consistent basis though
2 out of the last 3, soon to be 3 out of the next 4
Mike Da'antinio will NOT be happy.
I'd push back on the "Michigan doesn't recruit the state well" line a bit. In 2016 they got Onwenu and Hill (they missed on Corley but...well...that sort of ended poorly for MSU) and Michael Jordan, who went to OSU and turned out fine. But that was a weird year with Harbaugh dealing with transitions and rebuilding relationships. 2017 he basically ran the table in state, and 2018 was a down year in-state but he still got 3 of the top 5. 2019 is really the only year where stuff fell apart, but really it's just a couple of Belleville guys going to MSU. 2020 is still early but other than Rogers going to Kentucky (!) it's Michigan being the leader or signing a lot of the top guys (or in the case of Williams seemingly every major program giving him a pass for some reason).
That said, MSU's big problem is that they aren't getting those sleepers anymore, or at least not to the degree that they have two first-round NFL cornerbacks and maybe the best RB in college from the 2/3* bin. That's how a program like that stays above the 8-9 win barrier they will probably settle into.
Michigan hasn’t recruited well in Michigan. It’s kind of obvious.
Honestly, doesn't matter. For the past two decades, more or less, MSU has performed at a level higher than the quality of their recruiting, OSU has performed at the level equal to their quality of recruiting, and unfortunately we have performed, consistently, at a level lower than the quality of our recruiting...
People on here never learn. Their D will be very good and the game against them will be a fight to the death as usual. Last season Lewerke was playing hurt. May not have mattered because the Michigan D was locked in that game. If Michigan wins it will be by 10-14 points and will be close going into the fourth quarter.
A few things from my perspective:
- The 2020 class is too far out to really know. MSU is traditionally a slower recruiting team. They put a huge emphasis on summer camp offers.
- While their recruiting star rating isn't great either, their overall class ranking is also generally held back by the fact they rarely take big numbers. For whatever it's worth, MSU does tend to retain players at a bit higher clip than many other schools, and they redshirt a lot of their players as well.
- While I don't spend nearly as much time on other B1G schools recruiting, generally, when I did, I found I was higher on a lot of MSU recruits than the services, especially when factoring in how they would be utilized in MSU's system. Looking specifically at their 2019 class, I was much higher on Spencer Brown, Nick Samac, and Tre Mosley than their composite rating. I really think Barnett was a great get for them, and they have a lot of solid core type players in the class like Fulton and Fletcher.
- Where MSU tends to struggle is with depth. They compensate lower rated recruits with having to build them up and into their system. When MSU suffered injuries last year, they really fell off. The biggest issue for MSU last year was OL. While that isn't easy to drastically improve, they do return the vast majority of their team. The offense should see a slight uptick with the return of White and supposedly healthy Lewerke, they'll still likely be inefficient on the ground, but the reality is that will be paired with a top 10 defense and they will be a dangerous team.
People get caught in the record, and in the end, I get it from an outsider's POV. "You are what your record says you are." But the reality is that MSU overachieved 2 years ago and underachieved last year, and the quality of the team is somewhere in between 10 wins and 7 wins. They are likely an 8-9 win team that will be solid and dangerous as an opponent. They'll be hard to score on, and if they can get some breaks their way on offense, can pull an upset. As a rival, with it pulling the two teams closer, I give Michigan the edge and would predict them to win, but highly doubt it will be as much of a beat down as last year.
I think it was Bronxblue who said it in another thread and I added to his comment, but they're about a 7 win team over the last 3 years. They lost all the close games when they went 3-9, won them all when they went 10-3, and last year they split them. They didn't underachieve last year. They lost 4 games by 10 points or less, but they won 4 games by 10 points or less (and won a 5th game against Western by 11 points). They hit expectation on the nose.
They had injuries that hurt them last year, no doubt. But having better injury luck this year is mitigated by who's coming back and the loss of Felton Davis. Their OL had injuries, but remained decent at pass pro and terrible at run blocking. So you had bad starters being replaced by slightly worse 2nd stringers. This year they get them all back. Great, you return bad starters (and they're all older, so no first year to second year leaps should be expected). And without Felton Davis last year they lose two more games. Well, he's gone now. I would additionally argue that LJ Scott was their most talented RB. You couldn't see that because the OL blocking was so bad, but he's an element of danger (and I'd argue defensive game planning) that's absent in 2019.
Lewerke can return to form if he's ready to take off and run. I think his passing will always be inconsistent because he's horrendous at setting his feet (it doesn't help him that he can often be incredibly accurate off his back foot, which has allowed him to ignore it). I'd say that can offset the loss of Davis and then some. But now you're adding a road trip to Madison. 7 wins should be the expectation for them this year.
I'm more into winning on the field than on the recruiting trail.
Let's do both!
Sparty D-Line is gonna be really good this year. Gonna be a tough battle
Dude throw the recruiting rankings out the window with MSU. No, Dantonio won’t ever win a national title with the #47 class, but he is an expert at finding underrated, #disrespekted guys who fit his schemes perfectly, and coaching them up to be good, sometimes great football players. That’s not going to change as long as he’s in town. And we are always, ALWAYS going to get their best game.
If nothing else, their defense will still be pretty good next year.
That would make sense if the 2 coaches werent .500 against each other
It doesn't have to make sense to be funny.
Harbaugh's two wins were executed in convincing fashion. Dantonio's were the result of sloppy play and blunders by Michigan.
Harbaugh has exposed Dantonio for the overrated paper tiger that he is. Fuck Sparty.
I don’t know the answer, but I would think another quality metric is who they sent to the NFL. I defer to my fellow MGoBloggers who know this stuff in detail.
Misunderstood what you meant by "Yikes" but feel better now after reading your post. Thanks for shaing. Hope it's not just disrepeckt.
Then we should beat them 49-0 annually from here on out. Can't wait!
Clear decline after 2016, the year they went 3-9. Could be a late career decline, a la Carr or Spurrier. Could also be that there's just more competition for the Ohio kids that OSU passes over. Probably both, to a degree.
My guess is that, as long as Dantonio is there, they'll have good years, but they won't have them as consistently as they did 2009-2015 if they are recruiting in the 30s rather than 20s and occasionally teens.
I'm seeing an awful lot of comments along the lines of "their D should be pretty good."
Let's take a look at the amount of points their D gave up last year by game:
31, 16, 21, 20, 29, 17, 21, 13, 3, 26, 9, 10, 7
And this is was an offense that constantly set the D up to fail. Pretty much everyone on that defense is returning. That is pretty scary to me. On offense, they had REALLY bad injury luck last year. Granted, injuries are part of the game and their offense being THAT bad is an indictment of their lack of depth on O last year. And that points to their recruiting.
A healthy O-line and a 2017 Lewerke and all of a sudden they have a functional offense. Not great by any means, but functional. Their '19 team is setting up very similarly as to how Michigan was sitting a year ago. Right now I have them as contenders for the Eastern Division.
Their D gave up 223 points on the season. Michigan's gave up 245. Strike the OSU game from our schedule and ASU from theirs and they gave up 192 and we gave up 183.
and that great 2016 recruiting class imploded #1 king #-2 Robertson # 3 Corley #8 Vance, #12 Lukusa all gone, some to jail
I'm not going to make too much fun of that, especially when you consider our 2012-2013 OL recruiting. That run of dominance on the recruiting trail absolutely imploded by the time it got to the field.
How many of those guys transferred, flamed out, were constantly injured, or never lived up to their recruiting hype? I think all of them. Only Kalis and Magnusson ever got any real playing time, and they were more or less just guys in their time here. Thankfully though, Kalis is finding some work in the league and has even started a couple of games.
Agreed, we have also lost quality pieces of recruiting classes however that was their best class of recent. the last couple, not so good that's all I'm saying
These rankings generally don't tell the entire story with any program, of course, and despite their meh recruiting, Mark Dantonio and his staff has been able to get more out of some of those kids than most people apparently thought was there. It's not a unique talent by any means, but it works well at a place like MSU where, under most other coaches, meh recruiting would churn right into meh play at best.
Dantonio has always been good at payer development, at least the ones who don't get kicked off the team. I think Harbaugh has really improved player development since arriving and our depth at key positions have improved, though RB and DL look a bit thin this season, but I think in the long run, Harbaugh will get a lot of production out of his higher rated recruits.
What would have happened if dantoino had this same Mich team since harbaugh had it? Be honest!!
MSU recruits pretty well. Year after year they field good teams. Rankings be damned
Dantonio has a lot of mediocre and bad seasons mixed in. Look it up.
He has had two seasons with losing records and 6 with double digit wins. He may be a douche-bag, but that's a pretty impressive run for anybody coaching at MSU. Saban never even came close to that.
All of Dantonio's success came when both Michigan and Penn State were down. The turn of MSU's fortunes for the worse are directly proportional to the arrival of Jim Harbaugh at Michigan and the end of clownshow management within the football program.
Review the history of MSU football, any period where it shows some level of dominance aligns perfectly with times when Michigan didn't have it's shit together. They rise and fall at our discretion, deliberately or not.
I said he has a lot of bad or mediocre seasons and you respond with “losing” seasons. As I said, he has 8 seasons with 7 or less wins in 16. At MSU he has 5 seasons of 7 or fewer wins in 12 seasons, including 2 or the last 3. So yes, as I stated before he has a lot of bad or mediocre seasons mixed in.
They use ROIDS to make up the difference.
Recruiting is not the end all. Coach B proves that one. Dantonio has shown he can coach. His assistants ....... that’s a different story.