UM Football Recruiting - by WM Wolverine

[iam416]

LBs are worthy of the brash talk; the secondary not so much.

[WM Wolverine]

Agree on the secondary, I like Jarrod Wilson a lot and Dymonte Thomas even more. Allen Gant seems like a tweener type of LB/S, Mattison likes to bring one of his safeties up for support against the run so maybe he could play the Kovacs position. Jeremy Clark is more athlete than footballer at this point... Only Tamani Carter FS/CB redshirted from the previous class...

Those are M's five safeties in the last three classes, a strong and deep enough group but not one that I'd particularly brag about...

At cornerback M landed only Terry Richardson in '12 and Gareon Conley (potential safety imo) & Jourdan Lewis in '13; all four stars... In front of them Blake Countess, Delonte Hollowell, Raymon Taylor (all four stars, Taylor as an athlete) all played as true freshman... I like this group and think they'll do well for M but M didn't land many of their top targets here and M is still recruiting the CB position for '13.

[WM Wolverine]

DL class in '12 I really like; Wormley, Strobel, Pipkens, Ojemudia, Henry & Godin... So far in '13 they've only landed Taco Charlton... In the '11 class only Keith Heitzman redshirted...

Class of '12 is a large group but its going to have a decent amount of guys play as true freshman so it'll need to be complimented by another good sized class behind it. M is on the outside looking in at many of its top targets in '13, but barring a large collapse in '13 recruiting, I see the two classes together as an excellent and deep group...

[iam416]

Yeah, I like their DL recruiting better than their secondary recruiting.

[WM Wolverine]

Front seven is where you win games;

1. It stops the run and forces 2nd and 3rd and longs...

2. With pressure on the QB, he makes throws before he wants to which leads to incompletions and INT's.

M's corners/safeties recruits from '12/'13 are talented enough, with a Kendall Fuller type I might say they are likely one of the top 1-2 DB groups in the B10.

[iam416]

Heh. Well, a Kendall Fuller type would do a lot for a lot of classes. He's pretty good.

And I agree with what you're saying, especially when it comes to B10 football where the best teams are still fundamentally smash mouth teams.

[SeanB]

where the best teams are still fundamentally smash mouth teams

Not trying to be a smart ass here....so how does that factor into what you think meyer is going to do? He openly states that osu will look like Oregon, and I think we all would agree (to some extent) that Oregon is not smash-mouth on the offensive side of things. Or is your comment above related more to the defensive side of the ball?

I would never go so far as to lump meyer and Rodriguez in the same grouping (meyer's success negates that right off the bat), but one can't deny the offensive similarities, the approach to a program change/philosophy and the overall offensive agenda (go, go, go, the hell with TOP, get as many snaps as possible, etc).

For M fans, it's a weird switch from roughly 3-4 years ago, I would say. Rodriguez replacing the old, stodgy Carr and getting it handed to him by old, stodgy Tressell. Now it's meyer replacing stodgy Tressell (in a game plan sense) and going up against Hoke and other B10 programs one might consider "smash mouth".

I do not think meyer will turn into the smoking hole that Rodriguez's time at M turned out to be, but the potential comparisons are unmistakable.

[WM Wolverine]

I'm guessing he's thinking a strong front seven is important to beating up on smash mouth type teams in the B10. Its important to beating any team, but less so teams that throw the ball nearly 40 times a game.

[hack]

The comparisons are there, and some months ago Talent expressed some reservations about a spread. Agreed that Meyer is a real football coach and not a promoted coordinator as RR kind of is, so that's a factor. Should be very interesting, but before really digging in to the topic my guess would be that what Meyer wants to do will work just fine.

[SeanB]

Oh, I agree. meyer will do just fine. It's just that certain comparisons are definitely there.

[iam416]

I'm guessing he's thinking a strong front seven is important to beating up on smash mouth type teams in the B10. Its important to beating any team, but less so teams that throw the ball nearly 40 times a game.

This is what I was saying. There are teams in the B10 like Wisconsin and Michigan State that, if you let them, will run ISOs out of double tights all f'n day long. Penn State is principally a power team, too. The spread teams in the B10 aren't the overly talented teams, so OSU usually has such a big talent advantage that it doesn't matter.

As for what UFM will do, he'll run the ball. He's going to use Hyde a lot -- a big back -- and Smith and Dunn are next -- two more big backs. But he's not going to go double tights and run an ISO, which happened to be Tressel's favorite play, more or less.

As for the comparisons to RichGOD, the thing is that UFM is easing into his sytem with Braxton Miller while RichGOD had Threet and Sheridan. So, while their may be comparisons, it's clear the results aren't going to be the same. And UFM seems to care about defense, too.

[UMStan White]

"As for the comparisons to RichGOD, the thing is that UFM is easing into his sytem with Braxton Miller while RichGOD had Threet and Sheridan. So, while their may be comparisons, it's clear the results aren't going to be the same. And UFM seems to care about defense, too."

Absolutely true. As i watched OSU's spring game i couldn't help but believe that Miller would have run out of at least 75% of those plays where he was whistled down. As the commentators continuosly pointed out what we saw is far from what will be on the field in the fall. Guion certainly looked better running Meyer's offense than Gardner did running Borges's offense.

[lineygoblue]

I ain't skeered ...

[Hannibal]

Levenberry announcing today.

[SeanB]

He's probably going to Fat Stacks U...I mean, Florida State University, right?!