How Mike Macdonald could approach recruiting the 2022 class

On this week’s Future Brew, the guys talk about Mike Macdonald and how differently the recruiting approach might be right off the bat.

Von: In terms of recruiting, Jon I will start with you, this is going to be a big difference from Don Brown. Obviously, he recruited the Northeast section of the country extensively, landing a ton of guys from that area. He’s pretty much done that since he had been in Ann Arbor, but now with Mike Macdonald in town, it seems like it’s going to be a little bit different.

Jon: I don’t know, Von. You might have to be careful there. His hometown is Boston. But I think he’s more well-versed in Georgia, the southern U.S. He has a lot of experience with that area. He was never an assistant coach at Georgia, so I don’t think he has as much experience recruiting like Don Brown did, but I think it’s notable when Georgia had a coaching change, Macdonald is the first guy they pulled from the graduate assistant spot onto the field to be their recruiter in the interim. Georgia clearly thought well enough of Macdonald to be the first man up to get on the phone and contact these guys, so it’s a good sign. It’s kind of just a big question mark right now, we’ll see. I like that he’s young. He’s an out-of-the-box hire, which I think Harbaugh kinda needed to do to save his job, and has the best chance of turning the ship around here. He’s young, he’s energetic, he’s seen how a big recruiting operation like Georgia works, so hopefully he picked up some knowledge there and can pair it with some good coordinating skills.

Von: Macdonald’s specialty is with linebackers — he’s been coaching linebackers the last several seasons with the Ravens. Obviously, they’ve got a lot of good linebackers at U-M currently. Under Macdonald, do you think it’s going to be linebacker dependent, or do you think they’re going to try and bulk up the defensive line and try and hit that position hard in 2022?

Stephen: It depends. It depends what direction you want to take. Are they going to try to instill a scheme and recruit towards that? Coming in, they have to evaluate what the roster looks like, and I think a lot of the youth, you have a lot of those in between defensive end/outside linebacker types, so that should, in my opinion, dictate what you do with your defense. I think a big direction in which Michigan will go will be dependent on what they decide to do with the defensive line coach. Are you sticking with Shaun Nua, who hasn’t shown a whole lot of pedigree recruiting the position. And with how many hats Macdonald will have to wear, maybe he won’t be hitting the road recruiting too hard, but he has to manage not only the schemes, but the position coaches, as well as the player personnel. There are just a lot of different things he has to do.

Listen to the entire podcast below.

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