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Welcome back in to another Tuesday Michigan Recruiting Roundup at Maize N Brew. The football staff just had a big recruiting weekend, hosting most of the best in-state talent Michigan has to offer. We’ve got reactions from two local studs and some more interesting developments on the trail this week, so dig in.
No. 2 RB building relationships at Michigan
A pleasant late addition to the weekend’s visitor list was West Bloomfield four-star Donovan Edwards. As the No. 2 running back in the country, he’s quickly become one of the top overall targets for the Michigan staff. Following the visit, he spoke with The Michigan Insider’s Sam Webb, sharing some glowing remarks ($).
One of the highlights for Edwards was speaking with current 2021 commits JJ McCarthy and Giovanni El-Hadi, along with his former teammate Makari Paige. “We feel like we could just build a powerhouse,” said Edwards. “J.J., Gio, and the other guys being committed to Michigan… and that’s home for me, so it’s like, ‘dang, y’all are building something special right there.”
Along with the players already on board, Edwards also got the chance to chat with some fellow targets who were also on campus, especially the Clarkston duo of Rocco Spindler and Garrett Dellinger. “We’re (all) actually real cool,” Edwards added regarding the in-state recruits. “We’ve been playing against each other for three years now. Me and Garrett played on the same (youth) basketball team for like four years. Sometimes we talk about Michigan and sometimes we talk about other schools.”
This looked to be an eye-opening visit for Edwards, who already has 86% of his Crystal Balls pointing towards Michigan. This will be a national battle, as his next trip will be to Georgia this weekend.
Michigan visit impresses mother of top target
One of the tenets of recruiting is to not only convince a prospect to buy into the school, but his mother as well. It looks like the Michigan staff did just that with three-star OT Caleb Tiernan, he revealed while speaking with TMI’s Brice Marich ($).
“My mom really liked it. She had only seen pictures of everything, so it was good for her to see everything in person and she said it was amazing.”
While it was her first visit to campus, Tiernan has been in Ann Arbor several times already so he was looking forward to talking more with the players and other recruits.
“Nothing really stood out from like the facilities or coaches because I know most of them pretty well, but something that did was being able to meet some of the other Michigan linemen that they are trying to get to play for Michigan,” explained Tiernan. “I talked with pretty much all of them like Rocco, Giovanni, and Garrett. I was also able to meet J.J. I really liked all of them they seem like really genuine guys.”
There’s nothing that’s happened to suggest that Michigan has slipped from the top spot in Tiernan’s recruitment. He doesn’t have a decision date in place yet, but it looks like it could come at any time.
Four-star DE excited after offer
Michigan dipped into the state of Texas a couple of days ago to offer one of the top defensive ends in the country in four-star Landyn Watson. Watson recently spoke with TMI’s Marich about how he already has a visit date in mind ($).
“The defensive line coach called and told me that all the coaches loved my film and that they wanted to offer me,” Watson explained. “I was just feeling blessed and excited that my talent is being noticed at a national level and it meant a lot to me.”
Watson already has started to formulate visit plans, telling Marich “I plan on trying to visit 3/17. I want to see the campus life, the environment, and see how the coaches are.”
LSU has two-thirds of the Crystal Balls right now, with the other two sitting at undecided. Watson will be visiting Virginia Tech this weekend.
Multiple coaches drop in on New Jersey defensive linemen
Losing Anthony Campanile and Chris Partridge isn’t stopping Michigan from recruiting New Jersey, as Shaun Nua and new face Brian Jean-Mary stopped by the state to check in on some of its top talent.
According to TMI’s Marich, the duo stopped in to perennial powerhouse St. Peter’s to see a pair of highly-touted defensive linemen, 2021 four-star DT George Rooks and 2022 four-star DE KJ Miles ($).
Rooks is the No. 11 defensive tackle in the country and has held an offer from Michigan since June of 2018. His two listed recruiters are Partridge and Campanile, so it’s definitely good that some coaches are stopping by to mend the relationship.
Miles was ranked in 247Sports’ initial 2022 rankings as the No. 45 player in the country and 5th at WDE. Both Rooks and Miles are the No. 3 players in New Jersey in their class. Funnily enough, Miles was offered before Rooks despite being a year younger.
That’s it for this week’s edition of the Tuesday Michigan Recruiting Roundup. Check back again in a couple days for more of the latest recruiting news.