markus allen

Michigan loses a three-star wide receiver:

... pic.twitter.com/9vBj5v0FHn

— Markus Allen☆ (@MarkusAllen19) September 9, 2020

If you're curious, and I know you are, a twitter search for #FreeFatTay did not turn up any results. We are in the dark about Fat Tay and his freedom or lack thereof.

Michigan still has three WR commits in this class: MI WR Andrel Anthony, CA WR Xavier Worthy, and CA WR Christian Dixon. Michigan swooped in late on Anthony and seemed to change his destination from Michigan State; I wonder if they knew Allen was either departing or wobbly when they changed course on Anthony.

Dixon and Anthony are in the same vein as Allen—large-ish outside receivers—while Xavier Worthy is Gattis's annual attempt to recruit Usain Bolt.

There is no content after the jump.

I track how recruiting rankings of Michigan's commits move over the course of the recruiting cycle, because it's useful to have a record of this stuff, and because the way the rankings change often tell us more about the player's prospects than the rankings themselves.

Previously: December 2019 offense and defense. July 2019 offense. Feb 2019 offense/defense, July 2018. This class mostly came together this year, meaning except for McCarthy and El-Hadi (who haven't changed much) I didn't get comprehensive snapshots until March, so we'll start there.

There were few camps this summer for re-evaluations but Rivals and 24/7 have been updating their rankings. ESPN has been so laissez-faire that you can see how everybody moved up one spot in their rankings after former CB target Tony Grimes reclassified to 2020. We're not going to have much fall football either (the state of Michigan just announced practice can resume), and a lot of these guys would have opted out if there was, so this class is probably staying where it is. They're also going to show up on campus with the same eligibility as this year's freshmen, who get a year in college weight programs to get ahead of them. For that reason many are planning to enroll early, perhaps even this fall.

Also: My rosters have been updated with the new eligibility rules, latest recruiting ratings, and new weights, along with the recruiting comps list.

Gravity: Players will naturally drop as more players are evaluated; a few spots relative to their previous ranking is standing still.

Ratings: My star ratings are on a curved 5-star scale and based on a composite of available national, state, regional, and position rankings, as well the sites' individual ratings and stars. A quick table of what the scores mean:

I'll use the larger font for guys with interesting changes. Let's go!

[After THE JUMP]

I've been lapsing while I get the book out so here's a big update again. The recruiting board also got one. Offense covered here, defense tomorrow, and I'll try to be more regular until we find someone to take this off my plate.

Quarterback

If your buddy tells you "Check out our future quarterback at the pool," what do you think is going to be at the link? Right? Well when my text alert sound went off, I saw that much of the message on my lock screen and decided I could look at abs later. Then I forgot to open it for a few weeks. This is what was inside:

Bored at the crib .@overtime pic.twitter.com/qXKkNQ2H9q

— J.J. McCarthy (@jjmccarthy09) April 6, 2020

There is no pool anywhere in that video. Bad text, friend.

Angelique spoke to McCarthy this week as he prepared for IMG's season opener this weekend. That included a better description of the low-amplitude Elite 11 performance than I think we got from any of the sites covering it:

“I performed not perfect the first day, but I only missed probably two balls the whole night, so it was really good,” he said. “And the second day, we had a 20-throw pro day script that we had to do. I was the first one to go voluntarily and I didn't feel I got through as well as I wanted to. But I did all right, still placed top 10 in the final standings for that day. And the third day, we had this conditioning drill where it was like eight targets and we had hit all of them in a certain amount of time and the fastest time wins. I performed top five in that.

He's also Jim Harbaugh:

“I decided that football was going to be my everything around right after we lost the state championship (last season). That was the breaking point. Fifth grade is when I knew I loved football and I just wanted to play for as long as possible, but after we lost state, I knew I had this clear vision of where I want to be. I'm just running with it, and I'm working as hard as I can to get there.”

The Freep has an article behind a subscriber wall, and I don't know anyone with a login to get into it, but the clip looks promising:

[After THE JUMP: They can't poach our recruits. Only WE can poach our recruits.]