Nature vs. Nurture: How Much Did Our Draft Class Benefit From Harbaugh's Development?

Submitted by stephenrjking on

Michigan saw 11 players get drafted, a terrific testament to the players and to the program. An exciting day.

Of interest: All of these guys were recruited by Brady Hoke. They've had two years of Jim Harbaugh coaching, but they were Hoke recruits and had Hoke coaching early in their careers.

So I would like to (baselessly) speculate: How much of the success of this class can be attributed to Hoke for bringing the guys in, and how much can be attributed to Harbaugh's staff? Keep in mind that three guys from the D-Line got picked, and they had Greg Mattison in one way or another for their entire tenure. 

How many of these guys are drafted if they finish their careers in the Hoke regime?

 

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MichiganMAN47

April 29th, 2017 at 10:36 PM ^

A lot. I think Butt, Darboh, and Chesson would have been borderline picks. Jabrill would have been first or second round regardless. I have to think that one of the d line guys wouldn't have been picked as high either... those guys improved a lot too. As was said above, I think 5 or 6 would have beenHoke's ceiling.

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Albatross

April 30th, 2017 at 12:21 AM ^

How Harbaugh developed his own players vs Hoke players. You will find that in his 4 years in Stanford 16 players that he recruited were drafted. That is 16 total. We just had 11 in one draft. So either Harbaugh decided to develope Hoke's players more than his own or Hoke might have left him more to work with. Seems like a fairly simple conclusion, but I learned nothing is too simple here. And to be clear I think you need both great recruiting and great coaching. Hoke was a great recruiter and Jimmy is a great coach, but he is not a miracle worker. You need the talent and Hoke left him a lot of it.

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Albatross

April 30th, 2017 at 10:32 AM ^

Yes! But let's not fall into the trap (like I hear a lot of fans do) and believe that any high school player that laced up clears would be an NFL player under our staff. What the numbers bear out is that if you have NFL talent, the staff can get it out of you. But having the talent is important, otherwise we would have seen Stanford put 11 guys in the draft in one year under Jimmy and we didn't. So what we saw with this that Hoke's recruiting was validated. As was Hwrbaugh's development. After next year, where is is likely that 4-6 more Hoke recruits get drafted, Jimmy will be developing his players. So time will validate his recruiting as well. I hope we get used to double digit draft picks :)

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UncleWeasel

April 30th, 2017 at 10:45 AM ^

I wonder if more so than "development" it was "putting guys in a position to succeed" - both in terms of a scheme that worked and also position switched - i.e., Clark at corner.

An inept game plan might make talented guys look less so.

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