The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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ing year. Comparatively, in the three seasons before Harbaugh arrived in 2007, the Cardinal coaches offered an average of 55 recruits, so the sheer volume of offers speak to his recruit- ing philosophy. This strategy allows the coaching staff to begin the recruiting process early, eliminating the need to play catch-up later — prospects can handi- cap a school's chances, or reject them completely, because they feel the coaching staff didn't offer a scholar- ship early enough. In today's climate, with a majority of recruits making decisions before they even begin their senior seasons — 103 of the Rivals.com top 250 pros- pects for 2016 have already commit- ted — it is imperative to have an offer on the table to juniors and sopho- mores to make their first cut. The flip side, of course, is there may be prospects holding an offer from Michigan that may not be a good fit in the long run, and that issue reared its head for Harbaugh at Stanford, where the Cardinal saw 18 players decom- mit in the 2010 recruiting year. "By offering so many kids, you ob- viously increase the pool of candi- dates, and I think from where Har- baugh was sitting — and this is true of a lot of coaches — that was just the start of the vetting process," Cardi- nalSportsReport.com publisher Andy Drukarev said. "In many cases, Har- baugh ultimately changed his mind and decided they weren't what he was looking for." It's uncertain if a similar trend will unfold at Michigan, but with so many offers out there, the coaches will have to decide how to proceed if they re- ceive more pledges than they can ac- cept. How did the Wolverines' position groups grade out in the spring? The beat writers for The Wolverine — John Borton, Chris Balas and Mi- chael Spath — and our analysts, Doug Skene and Marcus Ray, each assigned a grade to Michigan's individual posi- tion groups following spring practice. No single group received an "A" mark. The secondary and defensive line graded out the best, both earning a B+. Linebacker got a B and tight end merited a B-, while offensive line (C+), running back (C+) and quarterback (C) were considered average. The wide receiver position is the biggest concern heading into the sum- mer, drawing a D+ after the receiv- ers dropped six passes in the spring Head coach Jim Harbaugh is hard at work on the recruiting trail, already having offered 98 2016 recruits, 58 2017 prospects, four 2018 players and one 2019 talent from Feb. 10-May 6. PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL