Recruiting: 247 Updated Rankings.
Today, 247 released their updated rankings on the class of 2020, making it notable because it's the first major re-rank of either of the 2 reliable recruiting services since Michigans mega recruiting weekend. All updates I post are strictly 247, not the composite. This update was a pretty serious mixed bag for Michigan. Some really good things, some disappointing drops. Not early enough to get concerned yet since a solid amount of targets havent camped extensively yet.
Michigan target RJ Moten from New Jersey is widely expect to commit to Michigan by the end of the week moved up 84 spots to 93 overall. I think he'll end up in the 60-75 range by the end of the cycle.
Braiden McGregor fell 79 spots to 107, which is a little confusing, but not surprising bc he hasn't gone to too many camps. I expect him in the top 50 again barring injuries.
Jordan Morant fell 68 spots to 115, which is a little more concerning considering he camped pretty extensively and never showed off that breakneck speed. I think the 100-125 range is pretty accurate for Morant.
AJ Henning fell one spot to 128. Basically stayed the same, Henning is a guy that could go up to the top 30-40 with a good season, but also a guy with enough history with injuries that could drop him in the 200's if he has some bad luck. I think he's in the top 50 in terms of pure talent.
Michigan target Maliq Carr (WR/TE) from Oak Park moved up 90 spots to 136. Haven't watched any of his film, no opinion on him.
Michigan Target and Stanford Commit Myles Hinton (OT, and Chris Hintons brother) dropped 134 spots to 191. Missed most of last year with an injury, not surprising. Will probably work back up into the top 100 if he's healthy.
Michigan Target Makari Paige (Safety) is at 203. Probably an accurate spot for him.
Roman Wilson is at 219, and I think he probably gets to the 150-175 range by the end of it all.
Kalel Mullings dropped 54 spots to 240, and Aaron Lewis is at 243. Both are pretty accurate, but I wouldn't be shocked to see Mullings drop to around 300.
Matt Hibner moved up 800(!!!!!!!) spots to 249. I think he's a top 150 guy, he's a bonafide 4 star on 247 now. Major Win for Harbaugh getting him so under the radar. Shoutout to Maizen for ordering his Hibner jersey today.
Reece Atteberry fell 80 spots to the mid 300's, and 247 is still really low on Andre Seldon and Blake Corum imo. No other major moves, but this class is looking pretty deep, probably in the 8-11 range when it's all said and done.
Just keep rubbing, it’ll get hard eventually
- a maizen motto since puberty
I gotta admit I did chuckle at this
I would say context is important when evaluating recruiting rankings, especially rankings before players even play a single snap of their senior seasons. There are a lot of multi sport athletes in there, and a lot of guys that moved up big time performed very well in camp settings. Michigan has also recruited a lot of guys from places that you wouldn't expect to be as heavily scouted. 3 Massachusetts, Hawaii, Spencer Rattlers backup in Arizona, rural Michigan, and a lot of undersized space/gadget guys. I'm not saying this is a top 3 class, but it's definitely really good and its important to understand context when evaluating. I have plenty of opinions on what I don't like, but I choose not to share those because I understand plenty of prospects and families google their names and read the blogs attached to it.
And here comes the caveating to explain something as straightforward as recruiting rankings. Spare me.
Spare all of us more of your bullshit.
On this very site, Seth does a feature called stargazing that shows how "un straight forward" recruiting rankings are, you should check it out and learn something.
What's wrong, you didn't get the responses you were looking for in your earlier response, saying the same thing? Concerning, upsetting, disheartening, whatever you want to use, I don't know what people want or expect posters to do or say? Would we like Clemsons and Alabama's class, hell yeah. Is bitching and moaning about it going to get it? I don't think so. It is what it is. If they don't win with the players they are bringing in, the pressure will continue to build until something changes.
I would say Michigan should hire you, because you were such a great recruiter back in the 90s, except Michigan back then had a worse record than Harbaugh.
This is how it works. Guys move up as they hit the camp circuit and then players get moved around over the season. These players dropping means almost nothing. Let’s see where they are at near seasons end. A guy like Hibner moving up as much as he does obviously helps moves others down. This is how it works.
Replied to wrong post :(
This class isn't looking too great. We got some big targets like McGregor, Henning, and Morant but outside of a few guys at the top its just very very MEH. Seemed like Harbs just wanted to fill the class and get it over with which is why we seen a flood of lower ranked recruits commit recently
Its beating a dead horse but some people still don't understand that you cant be very successful with classes like the one we have in 2020 so far. Doesn't matter if you think these 12 3 stars and counting are "Diamonds in the rough". The chances that enough of them blossom into stars for the team to put out a contending roster in the future isn't good
I know its taboo to ever criticize a recruiting class on here so go ahead and downvote the truth
It's a top-10 class. Look up "truth."
Again....Its a top 10 class due to sheer size. And simply Top 10 isn't GREAT like I said. Its a solid class but classes like these wont produce contenders. That's the truth.
Im sorry you have such a hard time understanding this
Why not? Our classes have been comparable to Clemson's over the past several years.
Getting top-10 classes puts us within firing range for conference championship and playoff contention. You'll see this year, I'm confident.
Its a solid class but classes like these wont produce contenders. That's the truth.
This is unequivocally NOT the truth, and is 100% conjecture because it has NOT HAPPENED YET. You and your ilk usually conflate truth with opinion — to me, that’s what’s so infuriating about you. You’re attaching significance to an arbitrary “rating” and projecting future results before they occur. Nothing could be farther from “the truth”!
No one is saying don't criticize a recruiting class, but at this point in last years cycle, Zach Charbonnet was ranked 222. He finished at 28, Trente Jones was ranked 453, he finished at 109. Karsen Barnhart was at 240 and finished at 160, David Ojabo was at 561 and finished at 221, Erick All went from the 500's to 4 star status, and a few other recruits made some significant leaps. It's important to understand how and when the scouting is done, and Michigans class makeup leaves a ton of room for upward growth. If this were the end of November, I'd say yea, you should criticize this class a bit.
Clemson just called, they told me to tell you "U r an idiot" .
Lets recap the latest rankings update in terms of the most significant movement:
McGregor: falls -79 spots
Morant: falls -68 spots
Mullings: -54 spots
Patterson: -453 spots
Atteberry: -80 spots
Hibner: +800
We now have 1 composite top 100 commit. After OSU adds Robinson and Knighton they will have 11. Harbaugh was supposed to close the talent gap, instead it's getting wider. If UM doesn't beat OSU this year it's going to be A LONG time before they do again.
You will die alone. No one will remember you.
You're half right. Maizen will be unkindly remembered on here until the end of MGoBlog.
The incessant where's Maizen posts when he gets banned lead me to believe this is untrue.
It kinda sucks we can only neg you once per post
Anybody fall 1201 spots?
That's Mr 1201 Spots
I believe if we can beat OSU this year and make the playoff, we will recruit at an elite level for 2021 and 2022. Who knows after that but it’s going to take one breakthrough season to recruit at an elite level. Do you think our coaches don’t want the highly rated recruits? I’m sure they do, but you can’t expect them to consistently win recruiting battles with OSU, Alabama, Clemson and Georgia without some success on the field.
I agree this has to be the year. If we lose this one, it may be a couple more years. I think we were in the same situation in 2016. We didn’t get the breaks because we were playing in Columbus. So lose and it will probably be a couple of years before we have the talent to beat them again, but win and we will have a chance to reclaim the top of the Big Ten.
Do you know anything about the game of football? Have you ever been directly responsible for evaluating athletic talent? Have you watched any of the clips of McGregor? Do you believe he can contribute to Michigan's performance? If any of your answers are "no" then you are simply another pejorative fool making insignificant noise.
Now is not the time to wring our hands about rankings. How about waiting for HS football season?
On second thought, how about never?
Setting reasonable expectations is an important maturity step.
I see lots of problem statements in today's recruiting threads but no reasonable solutions.
What should we do here? Reduce Harbaugh's salary until he reaches OSU's recruiting level? Ramp up on the shady stuff? Fire Harbaugh and hire Scott Loeffler or Curt Mallory?
I'm all ears.
no reasonable solutions.
Uh... beat OSU? Seriously, that's about all it takes. Michigan was in line to get Harrison last year until the game happened. 2018 they lost out on Friday and possibly NPF because of the OSU outcome.
They've knocked on the door 2 out of the last 3 years. Have to break the door down to push through both on the field and in recruiting. Michigan is the clear #2 team in the Big Ten right now. PSU had the good 1 1/2 seasons, but they're still coming from behind so there's 1 thing standing in the way.
I think all the naysayers want the football program to do is:
- Recruit only top-100 prospects, even if the coaches don't like them,
- Build a time machine and go back and change all the losses of the past four seasons to wins,
- Get the naysayers better jobs and better families, and
- Tickle their fannies throughout the process.
Good question Jasper. Granted it was a million years ago but I actually recruited from Michigan from 92-94 so I have a little bit of extremely dated experience. Here's what I would propose as a solution:
1. Recruit Ohio MUCH harder. We've barely looked at the kids down here as opposed to Hoke, Rich Rod and certainly Carr, Moeller and Bo. Ohio used to split about 60-40 OSU/Michigan when we went head to head and it wasnt until Harbaugh decided he'd rather spend that time trying to pull kids from down south (remember the satellite camps) that we significantly de-emphasized Ohio in our recruiting approach.
2. Lock down Michigan. Top 25 in-state kids this cycle and only TWO are going to Michigan. Granted Michigan is not known to be a high school football power state (best athletes usually play basketball) but we've got to shut down migration out-state and certainly keep the kids we want our of East Lansing. https://247sports.com/Season/2019-Football/CompositeRecruitRankings/?InstitutionGroup=highschool&State=MI
3. Focus on recruiting efforts on top rated players in the midwest and wait to extend offers to lower rated players until MUCH later in the recruiting cycle. Without naming any names there are quite a few players currently committed to Michigan who would definitely take an M offer several months from now. Why are we rushing to fill the class with players who would still be available to us if we strike out on our top targets?
That would be my suggestion for improvement.
Agree with all of this especially #2. Way too much in state talent not going to Michigan lately. Lance Dixon, Logan Brown, Devontae Dobbs, Julian Barnett, Enzo Jennings, Justin Rogers, etc are just a few to name. Word is 2021 Damon Payne is an OSU and FSU lean. This really needs to stop.
#3 is the smartest thing written about Michigan recruiting in the past year. The question is why. Why take "good" players now that you can get later in the process (or at least those types of players)?
Either the staff believes those players are better than their rankings/undervalued OR that they can develop those particular players they take early better than other high 3-star, low 4-star types of kids.
You seem to advocate for a more regional approach to Michigan recruiting by the way as opposed to the more national model they have adopted. I do think Michigan is a national name brand and can certainly succeed recruiting across the country. I'm curious why you think they should focus more closer to home?
1. We literally just signed 6 kids from Ohio, and came close to 7.
2. Looking outside the top 5-10 players for the state of Michigan is a waste of time. Of the current top 10, Rashawn Williams got dropped by the staff. There's a reason he's going to Indiana. Maliq Carr would be a Wolverine if he agreed to play tight end, Makari Paige will commit soon, Peny Boone was never seriously recruited, and neither was Grant Toutant. Cameron Martinez was the only one that was heavily recruited from start to finish. The 25th best player in Texas is better than the 10th best in Michigan. If we want to recruit more talent, we need to recruit nationally, because the state of Michigan alone isnt good enough to win 9 games consistently.
3. A lot of those guys have scholarships that aren't necessarily committable and will be processed if a higher rated target commits. Everyone offers a shit ton of scholarships, if the staff doesnt like a guy, it's really easy to get him to leave.
It is really weird that the coaches only select certain players from the state to really go after... its like they are scouting them or something.
Your first two points are insane and were maybe a good strategy in 1968 when Bo first arrived, but would quickly drive the program into the ground today. I'm honestly surprised Maizen is agreeing with you since it's the antithesis to his crusade, but it's probably because he's willing to jump on with anyone who is on his side. As for your points:
1. I don't understand the obsession with Ohio players. They are not intrinsically better than players anywhere else, and the studs are significantly harder to pull than players from any other state in the country because they've been brainwashed to hate our school their entire childhoods. The fact that two of Michigan's Heisman winners came from the state is a coincidence and the fact that the 2nd most players in program history have come from Ohio, not because there's some aura around them. Furthermore, there's 5 4-stars and 1 5-star in the state of Ohio this class. If you're all about stars, why would you waste time on such a low group of talent? Only two of those guys are ranked higher than 200.
2. Really? The top 25 guys in Michigan? The 25th best player in the state is ranked 924th in the country. How can you mock people pumping up 3-stars in other comments in this thread and then say Michigan should be focusing on Northern Illinois' quarterback (24th in the state). Again, there's nothing special about Michigan kids. They probably take less resources and effort to recruit which is good, but Ohio State has been wiping the floor with us kids from all over the country. If their guys are able to pick up the rivalry so well, so our guys Michigan would recruit.
Bottom line, it's ridiculous to want to narrow the talent pool Michigan should go after so much because of some nostalgia for an outdated ideal of recruiting. Michigan is one of a handful of schools in the country that can recruit nationally, it's baffling that you think strategy would lead to highly ranked classes or better results on the field.
Why wouldn’t we want to narrow it. Those 92-94 kids he recruited? They went 8-4, 8-4, 8-4, 12-0, 10-3, 10-2, 9-3. The next year Michigan went 8-4 again. So they obviously left a strong foundation too....
Their overall win percentage? .672
Jim Harbaugh’s career win percentage at Michigan? .730 And he is projected to go at least 10-3 this upcoming year. Harbaugh had to get to his third string QB to ever have a season as bad as those classes had. And they had three seasons in a row like that. Harbaughs floor seems to be at least a game higher than all those awesome recruits they were pulling in, in the mid 90s.
It’s awesome to see these guys contradict themselves. Let’s recruits 80% of our class from Ohio and Michigan that way it would be barely a top 25 class right now let alone a top 10 class ever. But they insist that we only recruit top 200 guys. Of which there are barely a handful ever in the state of Michigan and Ohio. And of course most of the top 200 in Ohio are going to go to Ohio State. That’s just the reality of it right now. OSU has turned into a powerhouse that is willing to let their players get away with things that the Michigan staff is not going to. It’s much easier to recruit to OSU right now. Give it two years.
*slow, talking to a child voice*
now maizen, do you see how mGrowOld's post is different from yours?
I would say Harbaugh could start by not giving offers to any 3 star who wants to come to Michigan.
He could try not to fill out damn near the entire class by the end of June with low ranked players
Exactly, and then every year there is some kerfuffle involving a recruit or two who thinks he has an offer but then it gets pulled. Remember Pesek Hickson and Woods last year? The recruiting department feels unorganized, then again we are sending out thank you notes to kids who never came to BBQ's.
What’s your favorite thing to BBQ? I’m partial to ribs myself.
This may be one of my favorite Maizen tropes: that Michigan ONCE sent a thank you note to someone who didn't attend the BBQ THREE YEARS ago, then SIGNED the player that they accidentally sent the note to, and it is somehow an indictment of the entire recruiting department's operation.
You have Maizen agreeing with you.
Thanks for writing this up, OP. (Next time make all of our guys top 50 though)
Theo Johnson also moved up 169 spots to #75
Since we're discussing stars on recruits, and because just about everyone here agrees that we're "Clemsoning", I thought I'd take a look at Clemson's average star rating per class from 2008-2018.
2008 - 89.54
2009 - 89.81
2010 - 85.94 (Lower than Michigan's lowest class average in this same time span)
2011 - 87.17 (Won Conference Championship Game)
2012 - 89.03
2013 - 88.46
2014 - 88.69
2015 - 89.12 (Won Conference Championship Game | Lost National Championship Game)
2016 - 90.30 (Won Conference Championship Game | Won National Championship Game)
2017 - 92.10 (Won Conference Championship Game)
2018 - 93.45 (Won Conference Championship Game | Won National Championship Game)
In this same time frame, Michigan has averaged a higher star rating per class, hitting the 90s multiple times starting in 2009 whereas Clemson never made it to an average star rating of 90 until 2016.
I think it's fair to say that we unequivocally currently have (and have had) more than enough talent (from a stars perspective) to whip OSU, win the conference, make the playoff, and even win it. What we haven't had to match the talent level, is good enough coaching. We've had coaches with great offensive philosophy who also forgot that defense was even a thing, to utter incompetence and buffoonery, to the man himself Jimmy H.
If our coaching, scheme, game planning and prep, and play calling can finally catch up to the stars we're recruiting, then we should easily be able to get over the hump. It would appear that the Gattis addition is finally going to make this happen...we all hope at least.
But, if we're comparing recruiting stars, we've got more than enough and can't possibly lean on that as an excuse to our awful record in big games.
Now subtract guys like Solomon, Hudosn, Singleton, Irving Bey, Walker, Crawford, St Juste, Sims, etc and what's our average star ranking?
Well, considering we had a higher average star ranking than Clemson, I'd say it probably brings us down to their level.
No one here thinks that a low 4 star is better than a high 4 star or 5 star, and no one here thinks that all these ranking drops are "good news". And everyone here would LOVE to get more high 4s and 5s.
However, lack of talent isn't our primary roadblock. If Clemson can win the natty and stomp OSU with a similar average of stars, there's no reason we can't do the same. But stars can only do so much, it's up to coaching to do the rest...and that's where we've consistently fallen short since basically 2001 until now.
Remember that Clemson's "coaching" includes a dietary supplement that sure seems to make their players MUCH bigger and MUCH stronger during their time there.
I mean I know people have probably forgotten but there was a report that up to 20% of their players failed a test for that particular dietary supplement before the NCG last year.
You dont need to recruit at quite the same talent level when players enter the program looking like Tate Forcier and leave looking like Tony Mandarich.
Try to stay away from truths because Maizenichols doesn’t care what we have to do to win. Just win baby!!!
If it's happening at Clemson, it's probably happening at a lot of places. Though their overperformance given their recruiting rankings (which, prior to this year, were top ten... once, I think, in Dabo's tenure) does raise eyebrows that Alabama's performance given its rankings do not.