How good is the Michigan football staff at evaluating recruits?

After wrapping up his third top 10 class in four years at the helm of Michigan football, Jim Harbaugh has shown he has the recruiting chops to assemble a championship-level roster.

However, Michigan has approached recruiting slightly different than the other top recruiting schools in the country. It’s clear he trusts his and his staff’s evaluation skills and is not afraid to fire out an offer to a prospect that hasn’t gained much attention otherwise.

Anecdotally, it seemed to me the 2019 cycle was the epitome of this strategy, with Michigan’s staff noticing talent early and the rest of the recruiting industry catching up afterwards.

I decided to quantify this and see if I could find out how good the staff was at identifying talent early.

To do this, I used 247Sports’ handy rankings history tool to track where an eventual Michigan commit ranked when he was offered, and where he ended up in the final rankings.

For a few players, who kept their recruiting close to the vest like running back Zach Charbonnet, it was tough to find the exact date they were offered. But I was always able to get the date within a week, and the rankings weren’t updated often for it to affect the final numbers.

There were also a couple guys Michigan offered before they were even ranked, like Charles Thomas and Anthony Solomon. For those guys I just used their first ranking, which usually came soon after they were offered.

I found some interesting trends during this exercise, but first let’s look at the data.

From the bottom row, you can see the average 2019 commit rose just over 100 spots in the composite rankings from when they were offered to the end of the cycle. That really speaks to the excellent job the Wolverines coaches have done to scour the tape and not be afraid to take guys they’re high on.

The award for biggest riser goes to David Ojabo, who rose a whopping 674 spots since early April. Jack Stewart, Erick All and Charbonnet get honorable mentions for moving up more than 400 spots each.

Going along with this theme, eight commits were offered as 3-stars that eventually gained fourth stars during the process. Those recruits include Charbonnet, Trente Jones, Karsen Barnhart, Giles Jackson, Ojabo, Quinten Johnson and All.

On the flip side, the biggest faller was Joey Velazquez, the lowest ranked commit in the class. He was offered by Michigan before he was even viewed as a football prospect, and ironically his initial ranking was the highest he’d reach. 247Sports ranked him as a solid 3-star, but when other services jumped in it brought his ranking down and he continued to fall as others passed him.

The first commit in the class, Charles Thomas, was a close second among the tumblers. He fell 430 spots compared to Velazquez’s 462. Thomas debuted in the top 100 for the 2019 class, but fell to just outside 4-star range.

That was common with the players who fell. Among the four other commits who fell more than 100 spots, Nolan Rumler started at No. 40, Trevor Keegan started at No. 73, Mike Morris started at No. 151 and DJ Turner started at No. 289. Michigan clearly saw the talent with these players early on, and the recruiting services agreed. Over time, more players passed them and they didn’t quite stand out as much compared to their peers.

Of note, Turner and Morris join Thomas as the players to lose a fourth star.

Getting 4- and 5-stars is necessary to compete at the highest level in college football. But after looking at how well the staff can unearth talent, I’d keep my eye on the 3-stars they offer, as they could be the next prospect to blow up.