Denard Robinson will help Michigan football’s recruiting department in more ways than one

The Michigan Wolverine’s coaching staff has finally been settled, but there has still been some shuffling in the front office. The latest and most exciting news was former Michigan superstar quarterback Denard Robinson as assistant director of player personnel.

In this position, Robinson will have a role in recruiting and scouting prospects for Michigan’s recruiting classes. After finishing up his brief career in the NFL, Robinson gained experience in this field at a couple destinations.

Robinson joined the Jacksonville University football staff in 2019 as an offensive and special teams analyst. When they discontinued the program after that season, Robinson returned to the Jacksonville Jaguars, who had drafted him out of college. In 2020, he served as an offensive quality control coach.

This past season, Robinson moved from coaching to the personnel side, working as a college scouting assistant. This is the most relevant experience to what Robinson’s position at Michigan will be.

Even without experience in the field, expect Robinson to have no problem connecting with recruits and their families while pitching the Michigan experience. Robinson is part of a continued effort to bring back alums of the program, which now includes Jim Harbaugh, Mike Hart, Ron Bellamy, Mike Elston, and Grant Newsome on the current staff.

More importantly, Robinson is easily the most recognizable to current prospects. As scary as it is to think about, most recruits in this class were born in 2005/2006 and were probably gaining awareness of college football as Robinson was setting records on the field.

There’s also the fact Robinson is the last cover athlete on the NCAA Football video game, which was discontinued after the 2014 edition. That comes with plenty of name recognition, and it’s probably not a coincidence Michigan has been sending out edits with the video game cover to recruits recently.

Specifically, Robinson should help Michigan with prospects from the state of Florida. He’s from Deerfield Beach, which is north of Fort Lauderdale and Miami. In addition, the large majority of his playing and coaching career up to this point has taken place in Jacksonville.

This also gives Michigan another connection with 2023 five-star quarterback Dante Moore. Moore trains with fellow former Michigan quarterback Devin Gardner, who overlapped with Robinson in college and remain close to this day.

This move should help inject more youth and energy into Michigan’s personnel department and help boost recruiting efforts with players from Michigan all the way down to Florida.