The problem with Michigan's defense against Ohio State the last two years was pretty simple: they didn't have the dynamic defensive tackles they had in 2016 and 2017 and had to weaken other parts of the defense to compensate for it. In 2018 they couldn't generate pressure versus single-man blocking with Kemp and Mone, giving Dwayne Haskins time to sit in the pocket and OSU's receivers and backs time to shake defenders who weren't designed to last that long against elite speed. In 2019 they couldn't hold up physically with Kemp and true freshman Chris Hinton, and got pasted with Inside Zone and Duo until the linebackers stopped acting responsibly. It also forced Michigan to leave Josh Uche, one of their best players, on the bench for standard downs because they needed their DEs to play interior gaps. As we've said before, that was a "we need DTs" problem not a "why aren't you playing him?" problem.

Take those two games out of the equation and everyone feels just fine about the Harbaugh era. But that's not how we measure things here. I think most people see that if everything else can hold where it's at, getting the DTs back to 2016-'17 level gives this Michigan a shot to beat what's quickly becoming the strongest program since Point-a-Minute. Then we see Michigan not even a factor for any elite DTs in two straight classes (2020 and 2021) and the despair creeps in.

Can Michigan build a competitive defensive tackles Depth Chart with what they have now? Sure. They also could have had one in 2019—they just got really unlucky on a relatively standard roll. Can they have one in the future? It's harder to say.

Recruiting Elites: A Question of Can, not Will

Will Carr almost cost Eddie George his Heisman. [Jed Jacobsohn via Burnt Orange Nation]

Just as some of you were giving up the diaries section for dead, AC1997 wrote a treatise on elite (top-105) defensive tackle recruiting at Michigan and the various playoff competitors.

Wait a minute….I can math.  You said 18 for 6 schools, which means an average of 3 per school over a three year period.  That’s not as much as I thought.  What gives?

Good catch.  We know that just about every power-five team rotates three DTs regularly and that the success rate of even the top DT recruits is not perfect, so it is a position you would expect to over-recruit to ensure there is depth and insurance on your roster.  I would have expected that over a three-year period these elite schools would be stocking up on this talent, even if there were only 39 prospects to go around.  In reality, only one school (Alabama, duh) over-recruited from this list with a whopping SIX signees.

All of the other elite schools had just two or three:

• Clemson = 3
• Ohio State = 3
• Washington = 3
• Georgia = 2
• LSU = 2
• Oklahoma = 2
• Michigan = 2

The short version is Michigan and Ohio State have the same disadvantage: recruits tend to stay closer to home and the Midwest doesn't produce that many 300-pound monsters. Ohio State overcomes that by being the #1 destination for the kind of recruit who doesn't care about region because he just wants to make the playoffs. Michigan isn't recruiting better than any program in football history and so can't keep up with OSU in that regard. If you want more details I recommend you read the diary.

Growing Dudes: How to Find a Renes

Recruiting services don't tend to send scouts to your nightmares. [Patrick Barron]

In the comments AC asked me what Michigan's hit rate is on grow-your-own DTs. The answer is it depends a lot on the profile of the recruit.

• Dudes (since 1996): Mo Hurst, Ryan Glasgow, Willie Henry, Rob Renes
• Guys: Eric Wilson, Grant Bowman, Ben Huff, Shawn Lazarus, Matt Godin
• Playable but missing a key component: Carlo Kemp, Jibreel Black, Michael Dwumfour, Gannon Dudlar, Jess Speight, Alex Ofili, Kerwin Waldroup, Larry Harrison
• Whiffs: Phil Paea, Richard Ash, Jason Kates, Ray Edmonds, Brion Smith, Donovan Jeter, Deron Irving-Bey, Brady Pallante, Renaldo Sagesse, Terry Talbott, Vince Helmuth, Marques Walton, Paul Sarantos, Dave Spytek

If you bring in a pair of lightning feet attached to an excellent brain and just need to add 40 pounds to get to 300, your chances are pretty good. If you need to add 70 pounds, or he lacks the athleticism, or he needs to drop 40 pounds of one type of weight and put on another, or he doesn't have that one in a million brain that can process how a team wants to block him from minute details while in a trench battle, your chances are not great. Once you're moving guys over who were never expected to grow past defensive end you're hitting a ceiling.

If you look at the Dudes they came from all over the 3-star spectrum. Hurst came out a 4.01 on my 5-star scale, Renes a 3.83 (what we generally call a "3.5-star"), Henry a 3.48 (really low) and Glasgow was a walk-on. But they also fit a certain body type. Hurst was 6'2/282 as a true freshman, Renes 6'1/275, Henry 6'2/270, and Glasgow 6'4/294. The Guys showed up smaller: Wilson was 6'4/255, Bowman 6'3/258, Lazarus 6'3/245, Godin 6'6/277, and Huff a 6'4/234 linebacker.

The whiffs group has a lot of guys we would call reaches. Of those who came in with some sense among the fanbase that they were better than a shot in the dark, Ash, Kates, and Sagesse were tear-down/rebuilds, Brion Smith (medical), Ray Edmonds (dismissed) and Irving-Bey (transferred/dismissed) failed to materialize for non-scouting reasons. Dave Spytek was 6'7".

[After THE JUMP: a trip through Michigan DT memory lane to see how classes translated into lines]

The Window Theory

My theory is all DTs suck as freshmen, the elites are usable as sophs, and a reasonable timeline for a project 3-star you plan to break down, build up, or Barwisize is not before he's a redshirt sophomore. That means what determines if you'll have a good interior DL in 2020 is any elites you recruited from 2016-'19 who are still around, plus any projects from 2016-'18 who panned out, plus whatever you can scrounge from transfers, walk-ons, and position switchers.

Let's study those windows for recent DT groups and see how similar recruiting crops panned out. My cut-off for "elite" was a 4.25-star in my database, because I didn't want Mike Martin and Alan Branch to fall into the "project" range, but understand there is a gray area here. I included DEs who were recruited with bulking up to DT in mind, but didn't feel the need to include the RVB DE/DT types who were recruited for and played at strongside end or something like it.

2004

Gabe Watson was somehow underrated as a legit All-Big Ten DT. Pat Massey was an issue. [via MGoBlue.com c. 2005]

Ingredients:
1 elite (Gabe Watson) from 2000-'03
3 projects (Dave Spytek, Alex Ofili, Larry Harrison) from 2000-'02

Depth Chart: Watson was everything you could ask for but Michigan played 6'8" Pat Massey next to him in a 3-4 defense because of a lack of DTs. Massey was a top-20 player to Tom Lemming but there's a reason guys his size aren't on the DL. Ofili was an okay backup but had no pass rush. Harrison might have been but was booted off the team. Spytek was 6'7" and should have been moved to tight end like his brother John (the current director of player personnel for the Tampa Bay Bucs who just signed Tom Brady). Alan Branch got on the field the second half of the season as a sometime replacement, and was effectively raw--for those too young to have seen it, think Willie Henry when he first got on the field.

Lesson: Fortunately 2004 would be the last time Michigan underrecruited the position or expected a guy tall enough to play wing for the basketball team to be a DT. Right?

2007

The ideal, basically [via]

Ingredients:
6 elites (Marques Slocum, Will Johnson, James McKinney, Alan Branch, Terrance Taylor, Adam Patterson)
2 projects (Marques Walton, Andre Criswell)

Depth Chart: Will Johnson and Terrance Taylor ably held down the fort after Alan Branch left early for the NFL (they played beside him a lot too), with some help from Brandon Graham moonlighting at DT and three-man fronts because depth was an issue. But that 3/6 hit rate on elite DT recruits is troubling for down the road. It was more annoying that big-time recruits like Slocum, McKinney, and Patterson also didn't work out for various reasons. Their two projects were major reaches and didn't pan out.

Lesson: Yes, recruiting six top-100 DTs in a four-year span will net you two or three really good ones. –Alabama. But be careful which "elites" you're going after—Slocum and McKinney came with red flags (Patterson had a sophomore knee injury that sapped his ability). I would much rather see Michigan go after a guy like Hurst (a Massachusetts late-riser with an Ohio State offer) than Slocum.

2010

A Quebecois project, Sagesse might have developed into more of a player with better coaches. [via clf.ca]

Ingredients:
3 elites (Adam Patterson, Mike Martin, Will Campbell)
4 projects (Jason Kates, Steve Watson, Vince Helmuth, Renaldo Sagesse)

Depth Chart: Campbell wasn't even playable as a sophomore, Mike Martin came on until MSU purposely blew out his knee, and Adam Patterson after his sophomore knee injury wasn't playable. The projects were all reaches and none really panned out; Michigan played Sagesse and Greg Banks with Ryan Van Bergen, backed up by Patterson. It was a disaster.

Lesson: Don't let Greg Robinson, Rich Rodriguez, or Dantonio's angels near your defense, ever.

2013

Has your BWC frustration subsided yet? [Eric Upchurch]

Ingredients:
2 elites (Will Campbell and Ondre Pipkins)
3 projects (Ash, Talbott, Wilkins)

Depth Chart: Best DT was DE-sized DE convert Jibreel Black. Campbell was a Guy in 2012 but playing early meant he wasn't around for 2013. They moved Quinton Washington from OG and took Willie Henry out of the oven well before he was baked. They probably gave up on Ash too soon—he ended up an undrafted free agent in the NFL.

Lesson: Freaking out about Brady Hoke not recruiting enough DTs in 2012 was correct. Also: coaching transitions can really screw with your futures so try to avoid those.

2016

I would like to rub bellies again. [Bryan Fuller]

Ingredients:
2 elites (Pipkins, Mone)
4 projects (Godin, Henry, Hurst, Pallante)

Depth Chart: 2 DUDES (Glasgow, Hurst), and a guy (Godin) even after Henry left for the NFL. It's hard to overstate what an incredible job the staff did, weathering injuries to Pipkins and Mone to hit on every project recruit except the real reach (Pallante), plus getting a star out of a walk-on.

Lesson: Sure if you can turn every 3-star into Matt Godin, Willie Henry, or Mo Hurst, you'll be unstoppable, especially if the Glasgow family is still in production.

2019

Moving Hudson to OT was a gamble the staff probably wishes they had back. [Patrick Barron]

Ingredients:
1 elite (Solomon)
5 projects (Hudson, Dwumfour, Irving-Bey, Jeter, Paea)

Depth Chart: Best DT was DE-sized DE convert Carlo Kemp. Solomon was a Guy in 2018 but transferred. They probably wish they didn't move James Hudson to offense. Dwumfour did not develop. Jeter was awful, Irving-Bey was a total whiff, and Paea was a reach with a fair ceiling at guard and a low one as a nose tackle. Michigan had to use their DEs as quasi-DTs to make up for the lack of DTs. At the end of the year they had Hinton out there but freshman DTs always suck. When Kemp went out they rolled with walk-on Jess Speight, who's a recent OL convert, not a Glasgow.

I think you would expect one of those five projects to hit. Michigan extremely unlucky that their rare elite sucked AND they rolled 0/5 on their other recruits. Since the same guy (Mattison) was developing them as the 2016 crop it's hard to put that on coaching.

Lesson: Luck can work against you, so don't burn your other opportunities. Not much they could have done about Solomon, but the staff should have been able to make something of Dwumfour and foreseen Hudson's need at DT, especially when his family members were openly hostile to the move.

2022

Freshman DTs always suck; Hinton's play in 2019 suggests he's a likely hit. [Bryan Fuller]

Ingredients:
2 elites (Hinton, Smith)
5 projects (Welschof, Lewis, Morris, Newburg, Jenkins) plus any other elites they can recruit for 2021.

Depth Chart: Who knows. They could be the best DL in the country with Hinton, Smith, and Jenkins, or none of the guys above could be on the team anymore. They only have a marginally better shot at a great DL than the 2019 team or the 2016 team. We have no idea what Nua is as a recruiter, talent evaluator, or developer.

Lesson: Michigan is simply not in a position to recruit like Ohio State, but they can end up with a good or even elite line if they continue recruiting as they did through 2019. What that would look like is a guy like Jenkins emerging from the grow-a-tackle pool, and Shawn Nua using his background to tap into a vein that's been sending so many good players to schools like Utah.