2019 recruiting profiles

Previously: Last year's profiles. S Quinten Johnson, S Daxton Hill, CB DJ Turner II, CB Jalen Perry, LB Joey Velazquez, LB Anthony Solomon, LB Charles Thomas, DE David Ojabo, DE Gabe Newburg, DE Mike Morris, DT Chris Hinton, DT Mazi Smith, OL Jack Stewart, OL Nolan Rumler, OL Zach Carpenter, OL Karsen Barnhart, OL Trente Jones, OL Trevor Keegan, TE Erick All, WR Giles Jackson, WR George Johnson III, WR Mike Sainristil, WR Quintel Kent (probably), WR Cornelius Johnson, RB Zach Charbonnet.

Cade McNamara has been around the block. He became Nevada's all-time leader in touchdown passes after he showed up at Damonte Ranch his freshman year and deposed a returning all-conference starter by game four, and not without controversy:

The Damonte Ranch fans still chanted Vestbie’s name during games.

“It totally divided the team, it created a lot of stuff in the stands,” Gary McNamara said. “There were actually fights in the stands. Parents were yelling at him, booing him. We didn’t know until this summer it spilled over into the classroom. A lot of the older kids who didn’t know who this freshman was were treating him disrespectfully and giving him a hard time on campus.”

That is a coach with some cojones, and McNamara heard about it for the duration of his freshman season. Things got rough; McNamara stuck it out, and now he enters college with over 1300 attempts to his name. There are vanishingly few high school quarterbacks who can claim as much live-fire experience. And probably just as few have put in more time off the field. Local reporter Jim Krajewski:

[McNamara] started attending elite-level quarterback camps and training sessions all over the West coast starting about four or five years ago. … spends every day, year-round, working out and preparing to be a quarterback.”

Super-prepared guys can be a bit of a double-edged sword, popping up early in the recruiting cycle and then falling off once everyone else catches up. This is less of a concern at quarterback, where processing information is the most important thing. QBs learn into their 30s, so McNamara's occasionally maniacal tendencies…

“Last year when the season was over I told him, ‘Cade, I just need you to go be a kid for a month,’” Gary McNamara said. “He watches so much film. … When everybody else is taking a day off, my kids go work out again because Cade wants to clean one little thing up that he caught on film with his throwing mechanics.” …

Dupris joked he only gets half the play call out of his mouth before McNamara runs with the rest because he knows the playbook so well.

…make him a good prospect without necessarily capping his ceiling.

[After THE JUMP: the somewhat more finished product]

Previously: Last year's profiles. S Quinten Johnson, S Daxton Hill, CB DJ Turner II, CB Jalen Perry, LB Joey Velazquez, LB Anthony Solomon, LB Charles Thomas, DE David Ojabo, DE Gabe Newburg, DE Mike Morris, DT Chris Hinton, DT Mazi Smith, OL Jack Stewart, OL Nolan Rumler, OL Zach Carpenter, OL Karsen Barnhart, OL Trente Jones, OL Trevor Keegan, TE Erick All, WR Giles Jackson, WR George Johnson III, WR Mike Sainristil, WR Quintel Kent (probably), WR Cornelius Johnson.

I begged him. I implored him. I exhorted Steve Lorenz to keep Zach Charbonnet's final ranking out of the top 50. I was reasonable about this. Sure, shoot him up 200 spots. Just make sure that he's not a five star or anywhere close. Well, nuts to Steve. Does he have any influence on 24/7 rankings? No. But still!

The reason I held a boombox outside of Steve's house in a futile effort to depress Zach Charbonnet's rankings is Michigan's beyond dismal history with very highly touted high school backs. Seth has a spreadsheet about this. Since Anthony Thomas—the last good mega-recruit back—arrived in 1997 these are the highest-rated RBs Michigan brought in:

• Justin Fargas (1998): was pretty good and a third round draft pick… for USC.
• Kelly Baraka (2001): never enrolled.
• Kevin Grady (2005): converted to fullback.
• Carlos Brown (2006): never had more than 79 carries in a season, fell over if you told him a rumor about cheese.
• Justice Hayes (2011): 63 career attempts before transfer to USM.
• Derrick Green (2013): lost job to De'Veon Smith, transferred.
• Ty Isaac(2014): career backup.
• Kareem Walker (2016): transferred.

Busts, one and all.

Charbonnet slots in between Green and Isaac on Seth's recruiting spreadsheet. I'm going to ignore this and assert that Charbonnet is going to be good but secretly I think we are all doomed and it's Steve's fault.

[After THE JUMP: I'm going to play this straight.]

Previously: Last year's profiles. S Quinten Johnson, S Daxton Hill, CB DJ Turner II, CB Jalen Perry, LB Joey Velazquez, LB Anthony Solomon, LB Charles Thomas, DE David Ojabo, DE Gabe Newburg, DE Mike Morris, DT Chris Hinton, DT Mazi Smith, OL Jack Stewart, OL Nolan Rumler, OL Zach Carpenter, OL Karsen Barnhart, OL Trente Jones, OL Trevor Keegan, TE Erick All, WR Giles Jackson, WR George Johnson III, WR Mike Sainristil, WR Quintel Kent (probably).

It was imperative that Michigan got a big outside receiver in this class after taking just Ronnie Bell the year previous, and they did just about a week before the early signing day when Cornelius Johnson hopped aboard. Getting there was a series of ups and downs, with Stanford and Notre Dame the perceived leaders for much of the recruiting cycle. I would have felt a lot better if anyone had bothered to mention this approximately two years ago:

GREENWICH — Dr. Cassandra Tribble opened her jacket to display the unmistakable maize block M on the upper left side of her shirt.

“Right here,” she said. “Close to my heart.”

Tribble, an anesthesiologist at Greenwich Hospital, received her medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1990. She is a Detroit girl. She drops Bo Schembechler and Fab Five references.

So Johnson's mom is a doctor. Johnson's dad is an author and historian; Johnson himself sports a 1480 on the SAT; the worst school he considered was Penn State. This gentleman is a unicorn.

[After the JUMP: a unicorn with hands! Weird!]