Note that we'll have our signing day podcast starting at 5, although without yours truly because the only thing I'm good for right now, audio-wise, is rapid-fire coughing. Traditional Signing Day-ish TWO should run tomorrow.

Let's get it out of the way

This isn't the Catch Ohio State class, if such a thing exists. A version of the 2021 class that's spearheaded by 5* QB JJ McCarthy in which he plays pied piper to various other high-end prospects would be more along those lines. The Columbus Death Star will have a top 5 class anyway, and things will likely proceed as they have. Ah well.

Moving on from the omnipresent "but" of Michigan football…

Housekeeping notes

Folks Michigan is waiting on:

• 4* CB CB Darion Green-Warren, who will announce at his all-star game. Bunch of Michigan crystal balls came in for him but there is USC talk, because who wouldn't want to sign up for the #76 class in the country?
• 3* NY QB Dan Villari, who appears to be Michigan's CJ Stroud fallback. He's announcing later today.
• 3* VA OL James Pogorelc. Pogorelc's crystal ball is 100% Stanford but maybe the Cardinal having 12 guys in the portal after a 4-8 season, including four starters, could push him away from what's hopefully David Shaw cratering. He intends to sign late. 

More names may pop up in the late period but if the last couple years are any indication that'll be a whole bunch of nothing. UT DE Van Fillinger is probably ticketed for Utah--not sure Michigan really needs a WDE type in this class anyway.

LOIs still un-faxed:

• 3* OL Micah Mazzccua. We've heard that Mazzccua won't be signing anywhere today.
• 3* TE Nick Patterson. Decommit rumors have swirled around Patterson for months and he did take fall visits to GT and Memphis.
• 3* RB Gaige Garcia. Garcia's school has a ceremony scheduled for 6 PM.

Mazzccua probably won't be in the class, especially given how Michigan was searching around for another OL for the past month or two. Patterson remains a mystery.

[After THE JUMP: I give this class 3.5 stars.]

The 3.5 star class

Makari Paige is just above our 3.5 star cutoff [David Nasternak]

Around these parts we frequently refer to players as "3.5 star" prospects despite no recruiting site offering rankings of that variety. We've done that because there are qualitative differences between recruits with a recruiting site or two going to bat for them and a fair selection of high end (but not elite) offers and guys towards the tail end of the top 1000, or even deeper down.

Grade inflation has made a three-star designation a catch-all for damn near everyone with a D-1 offer. There are 130 D-1 schools; the composite lists 103 QBs as three stars. Their own rankings are barely better, with 91 QBs getting three stars or better. Three stars meant little and now means nothing.

Thus 3.5 stars, which we've generally applied to guys from the 250-500 range. And that is this class, to a remarkable extent. If we set aside Mazzccua and Garcia (who has a different cost/benefit equation since he doesn't count against football unless he plays) and the only guy significantly outside the top 500 is Patterson. MA WR Eamonn Dennis and MD DT Kris Jenkins are 508 and 510. Villari will also be in from the wilderness; the guy he is replacing, JD Johnson, is 458th.

So except for one tight end and one QB flier imposed on Michigan by JD Johnson's heart condition there are zero flier recruits in this class.

The unfortunate half of the 3.5 star class: Michigan has one top-100 recruit, IL WR AJ Henning, and he checks in at #92. Only six guys are more than a dozen or so slots from 3.5 star status. There are no slam-dunk guys, and Michigan really could have used some slam-dunk guys at spots like CB and DT.

This all adds up to the #11 class in the country and the #2 class in the Big Ten, as Michigan is currently pipping Penn State by 0.16 points. It's good, it's fine, as the roster meat between the 2019 Dax Hill/Chris Hinton/Zach Charbonnet class and the JJ McCarthy/Please Recruit Some Five Stars 2021 class it should give Michigan a very high floor. But it's not a high ceiling class, and… I mean… Michigan needs some ceiling right now.

Roster trends

Henning is one of a few fast guys [Nasternak]

The most obvious one: Speed in Space™. Between Henning (4.46 40, 4.08 shuttle Opening Regional), Dennis (4.52 40, 40 vert), and Wilson (4.37 40, 3.96 shuttle, 39 vert) Michigan has a strong claim to the fastest WR recruiting class in the country. The other teams in the running generally have higher-ranked WRs because their guys are able to put up similar numbers while also being 6'2" or taller. Michigan's guys are 5'10", 5'11", and 6'0". The priority: speed.

You can throw MD RB Blake Corum in this bucket too. He's 5'8" and runs a 4.4 40, pretty much the polar opposite of the Haskins/Charbonnet thunder and thunder combination Michigan went with this year. The skill position recruits this year are exactly what Oregon would do.

On defense: Hybrid Space Everything. NJ S Jordan Morant, NJ S RJ Moten, MI S Makari Page, MA LB Kalel Mullings, and NY LB William Mohan are all at least plausible vipers. Mohan is the cleanest fit and the only guy likely to be placed into the Barrett/Velazquez/Solomon + freshman melee to replace Khaleke Hudson. The others will be flung across the back seven as Michigan seeks to maintain the flexibility they had this year, when Hudson could be dropped to free safety without trouble and Josh Metellus or Brad Hawkins could pop up into the box with little dropoff.

Defensive tackle scramble

Michigan took zero guys listed at defensive tackle immediately after a football season in which their defensive tackles got obliterated in their two worst losses of the year. DT should be spot like QB where not taking one guy for each starting spot is not an option.

Michigan was unfortunate that the biggest DT prospect in the Midwest was Justin Rogers, who signed with Kentucky. As a general rule highly-rated prospects who sign with Kentucky cannot sign with Michigan even if they want to. This extended into an incredible DT dearth across the Big Ten footprint. Rogers was one of only three only four-star DTs in the Midwest and even if you expand the boundaries of the footprint to include NJ/MD/DC and the entirety of New England you only pick up three more prospects.

One, Brian Bresee, was one of the top guys in the country and ticketed for Clemson from the start. A second, Tre Williams, also went to Clemson. The third, though: Dominic Bailey of St. Frances Academy, who signed with Tennessee. Michigan didn't even kick the tires. Nor did they poke around Tonka Hemingway, the younger brother of Junior Hemingway.

Instead Michigan appears set to embark on multi-year beefening projects with Kris Jenkins and Aaron Lewis. Jenkins is actually a pretty good bet for a guy who's still listed at 239 on his 24/7 profile. His dad, also named Kris, was a four-time Pro Bowl DT, and at 6'4" leverage shouldn't be a big issue. Lewis is more of a question.

Corner issues

Seldon is a wee bit wee [Nasternak]

Michigan does have a highly ranked CB in in-state prospect Andre Seldon, but at 5'8" he seems to have a hard cap. There are no other corners in the class, and that's a nervous situation when the 2017 class seems to be petering out into Vincent Gray and nope. Adding Green-Warren would help a lot, but you have to wonder why Michigan's had a such a struggle to get touted corners in after this Jourdan Lewis/David Long/Lavert Hill/Ambry Thomas run.

CB is the spot at which recruiting rankings seem to live up to their billing most often. Falling back to the pack here will have consequences.

State of the state

Michigan picked up the #2, 5, 6, and 13 prospects in Michigan. Guys they didn't get:

• #1 Justin Rogers, DT. As mentioned, I assume that any legit top-100 prospect who signs with Kentucky is not an option for Michigan.
• #3 Enzo Jennings, S. Jennings signed with Penn State. Michigan offered in April but there never seemed to be any mutual interest. Michigan ended up with about 4 Enzos in this class.
• #4 Maliq Carr, WR. Signed with Purdue. Michigan had an on-again, off-again recruitment with Carr. The "on" part was about three weeks long, but I liked those three weeks. Michigan apparently wanted him as a TE and he wanted to play WR. A jump ball guy would have been nice to add to the fast mighty-mites.
• #7 Cameron Martinez, ATH. Committed to but did not sign with OSU. Michigan has various Martinez-alikes on the roster and in this class.
• #8 Rashawn Williams, WR. Set to be Indiana's next ponderous but effective jump-ball guy; seemed like most big schools backed off midway through his recruitment and Indiana swooped in.

They didn't pursue #9 or #10. Michigan did offer #15 Grant Toutant (OSU) and #18 Bryce Mostella (PSU) and maybe #14 Dallas Fincher (MSU).

Notably, Fincher was MSU's top recruit in-state; more alarmingly for AXE enthusiasts with no sense of decency they only got two other guys, #20 Ian Stewart, a WR, and #23 Tommy Guarjardo, a TE. MSU damn near got shut out in-state.

Tim Drevno, star recruiter

We've given Tim Drevno a ton of crap here over the years, but let's recognize his heroic effort to get a four-star recruit to the University of South Dakota-Codington. It can't be easy to get a guy from California to relocate to a county whose largest city is 20k Watertown

[is handed note]

*THAT* USC?

[whispering]

Well even if we are talking about the University of Southern California, he still brought in their only four-star recruit…

…and five other OL. USC could field a football team with what Tim Drevno's bringing in. The rest of the coaches not so much. The other five guys in USC's 11-man class(!!!) are 3 DTs, a kicker, and a wide receiver.

I was going to say this is the nation's #76 class, but Bowling Green must have picked someone up because Scot Loeffler's Lloyd Carr tribute band just moved in front of USC. That USC.