(Last because it needs a new name now). While updating my master roster database with this year's NFL Draft results I produced a rather striking analysis: Harbaugh's players were getting into the NFL at about twice the rate as his modern predecessors at Michigan. The data are here for anyone who wants to check my work, or you can go to my tweet storm to see the lists for Harbaugh, Hoke, Rodriguez, Carr, and Moeller.

Anyway today's goal is to explain this:

(Here's that same table if you're having trouble with the interactive version.) Blue means drafted, shaded by round. Yellow shades refer to undrafted free agents, with designations for guys who had full, long NFL careers (UDFA+), actually played in the NFL (UDFA), or just signed but never made a roster (UDFA-) with this year's guys in their own category of don't know yet. The sample includes counts scholarship players, transfers, and the type of walk-on who ascends to the Kovacsian Order of Glasgow. I also removed Xavier Worthy, though other non-enrollees who signed with Michigan are included, just because I didn't think it was right to count Worthy; YMMV.

Not counting guys still in college—and Hoke guys that Harbaugh's program probably deserves the credit for—Harbaugh's recruits are about twice as likely to sign an NFL contract, twice as likely to play in the NFL, twice as likely to be drafted, and twice as likely to be drafted in the first three rounds.

The social media explanation for this has been "player development," and there's truth to that, but it's hardly the whole truth.

What I'd like to do here is to use what we know of the players' stories to see if development was truly the big story. I suspect there's a lot more nuance here, that they were better at developing players than most, but also had some strategies for finding underrated talent, and geared their program in certain ways to make the players coming out of it more valuable to NFL teams.

[After THE JUMP let's talk about this.]

Before we delve into spots that Harbaugh got more NFL talent than he should have, we have to identify ways a hypothetical non-Harbaugh coach at Michigan would have also put guys in the league without Harbaugh-specific factors.

THEY WERE PICKY ABOUT BLUE CHIPS

Aubrey Solomon is Harbaugh's only disappointing 5-star, and also the only Harbaugh recruit to ever say "Fuck Michigan." [Marc-Grégor Campredon]

Almost always when a school starts producing more NFL talent than its historical norm you can show a direct correlation to an uptick in their recruiting of consensus top-100 recruits. Alabama under Saban, Clemson under Dabo, Georgia under Smart, Oklahoma under Stoops, USC under Pete Carroll, Ohio State under Urban Meyer, Miami when they were relevant, FSU under Bowden, Notre Dame under Holtz, etc., were all built the old fashioned way, IE outbidding other competitors for five-stars.

A five-star, by definition, is a class of player the recruiting sites thought most likely to become an NFL player. This doesn't necessarily translate to team success (see: Ole Miss), the recruiting industry has known holes, and the further down the rankings the cloudier and curvier the relationship to collegiate performance becomes. But by and large recruiting ranking correlates to draft position. This is both the intent of the rankers, and subject to a feedback loop: When NFL teams are considering whether to draft the 5-star from Ohio State or the 3-star from Iowa, they'll overlook a lot of discrepancy in college production because they think (Kerry Coombs is an idiot and) NFL coaching can teach Jeff Okudah to play football, whether or not that's true.

Harbaugh is unique among all recent national champion coaches in that his recruiting, on the aggregate, actually came in under his school's historical average. Harbaugh guys whose college careers have ended averaged 3.96*s, compared to 4.05*s for classes from 1990-2014. That doesn't look like much, but when you plot it out Harbaugh classes were replacing a top-100 guy and two top-300 types per class with a couple of top-600 three-stars (or transfers).

Harbaugh reeled in a program-average number of five-stars over his tenure. As their profiles said they would be, these guys were pretty good.  Daxton Hill, Cesar Ruiz, JJ McCarthy and Rashan Gary were 1st rounders, with Will Johnson and perhaps Donovan Edwards on track to join them in a year. DPJ and Christopher Hinton were still longtime, high-level contributors, meaning Aubrey Solomon is the only Harbaugh five-star not in the NFL or well on his way.

That's a *substantially* higher hit rate on top-rated recruits than Harbaugh's predecessors. Though one imagines the recruiting industry was better at selecting five-stars has improved in general, only five of the 26 five-stars recruited by Moeller, Carr, Rich Rod, and Hoke made it to the 1st round: Woodson, Terrell, Marlin, B.Graham, and Jabrill. I'll give them 2nd rounders Amani Toomer, LaMarr Woodley, and Chad Henne as well, but there's a big dropoff from there, with Ryan Mallett the median 1990-2014 class five-star. So many stud running backs came through here without moving the ball that we thought there was a curse.

Harbaugh recruited fewer blue chips, but those he got were 56% more likely to play in the NFL, 75% more likely to be drafted, and more than twice as likely to be Day 1 or 2 draft picks. More interestingly, that hit rate was much higher late in Harbaugh's Michigan career. His non-NFL players were all from the 2016 and '17 classes: Solomon, Kareem Walker, Drew Singleton, Jordan Anthony, and Lavert Hill (who was still a fine college player).

If there's a knock on the 17 blue chips Harbaugh recruited after 2018 it's that they're in a great hurry to leave. The three who played out their eligibility were Ben Bredeson, Mike Onwenu, and Lavert Hill, IE two linemen who had to burn their redshirts and a 5'9" cornerback. Some were understandable NFL departures—Hutch, Gary, Ruiz, Ambry, Dax, Mazi, Colson, JJ. But this is also where we find some head-scratchers like Hinton and Cam McGrone who could have used more time in college, and almost all of the contributors who left seeking larger roles: Devin Asiasi, AJ Henning, Darrius Clemons, Zach Charbonnet, and Keon Sabb.

Judging this against Harbaugh's lower signing rate of top high schoolers and I think we see evidence, especially after 2017, that he got a lot more strategic about which blue chips to pursue.

The case example here is J.J. McCarthy, a five-star quarterback from Chicago with some connection to Michigan's staff at time of his recruitment. People know about QBs pretty early, and Michigan was fighting the likes of Ohio State, Notre Dame, Tennessee, etc. What made him a five-star was his arm, his performance, his evident talent, etc., and what made him a Michigan target was his reciprocal interest. But what made Michigan lock in on McCarthy relative to other five-stars was how well his personality (described as Harbaughish) fit the program, and that McCarthy's family was financially secure. The latter was important because in the pre-NIL era Michigan knew they a commitment had to survive the bag, which was more likely if a sudden upfront cash infusion wasn't going to change the player's life. The personality thing was a big deal too. Recruiting guys told us the early Harbaugh teams had certain (e.g. Ben Mason) players who were "Harbaugh guys." By 2020, via Lorenz, the program had decided everyone they recruit, without exception should be that type of guy. This was about the time they were pursuing McCarthy.

2. THEY PREFERRED HARBAUGH GUYS TO MICHIGAN GUYS

The University of Michigan tends to attract certain kinds of players no matter who's coaching. These are legacies, locals who grew up Michigan diehards, and the academic-athletic types with Stanford and Yale offers. Depending on circumstances, Michigan's natural advantages might translate more or less to the NFL without the coach's direct intervention.

Raheem Anderson was a four-year starter at Cass Tech whose family had a Michigan tailgate. Erick All, Joel Honigford, and Brad Robbins were Ohioans whom Michigan knew from the local camp circuit. Josh Ross, Jon Runyan Jr., Ty Wheatley Jr., Jordan Glasgow, Caden Kolesar, Max Bredeson, and most recently Jacob Oden had fathers or brothers who preceded them. To a degree this also applies to players like Cornelius Johnson, Trevor Keegan, Grant Newsome, and Tyree Kinnel who were the children of academics or professionals.

They're also, as a group, far more likely to have NFL careers than the legacies, locals, and bookworms that came before them, which means something was probably different about Harbaugh's Michigan men. But why? Was Aidan Hutchinson destined to go 2nd overall, or did Harbaugh's program make him that way? I think...both? Hutch was ranked about right as a recruit. Adam went out to see Chris's kid play in high school and reported Michigan had a gamebreaker. But it's not like Hutch was unranked; the sites had him in the solid to high four-star range, and considering he wasn't a major contributor as a true freshman (202 snaps) that's defensible. Hutchinson was performing at an All-American caliber by 2020, then returned from his leg injury in a different, more outside-focused role in a Ravens-style defense. Hutch was also prime examples of a "Harbaugh Guy" as were fellow highly ranked in-state linemen Mazi Smith and Braiden McGregor.

Those guys were also all exceptions in years that Michigan did not get a majority of the 4- and 5-stars in the state of Michigan. And this brings us back to that "Harbaugh Guy" inflection point. As with the five-star recruiting, Michigan's in-state focus recruiting seemed to back off after 2017, when 7 of the state's top-8 players signed with Michigan. Part of that was simple reticence to play the bag game, which was why they were never in it for 5-star Justin Rogers in 2020 and Belleville 5-star Damon Payne to Bama in 2021.

But this was also the era of the "Belleville Wars" when for whatever reason the Detroiters moving to a high school 30 miles west down I-94 could never seem to complete the next 15 miles to Ann Arbor. The rift with one high school was a topic because so many other in-state 4-stars were going elsewhere. In Hutchinson's class Michigan took him and two TEs to bulk into OTs, but left Belleville's Davion Williams to MSU and Oak Park's 380-pound DT Marquan McCall to Kentucky. In 2019, five-star OL Logan Brown went to Wisconsin, Penn State got West Bloomfield's Lance Dixon, and Belleville's duo of Julian Barnett and Devontae Dobbs went to MSU. The bottom was 2022, when legacy Will Johnson was the only one of the nine 247 four-stars to sign with Michigan.

At the time this caused a lot of hurt feelings, but was it a mistake? You won't find many of the names above on NFL rosters, and the one who's going to be one of the first off the board at his position next year—Deone Walker—will be competing with 2022 DT classmates Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant.

When I was eyeballing the list of "Michigan guys" earlier I noted something interesting: the hit rate was much higher, but Michigan's natural recruiting footprint made up a substantially smaller proportion of Harbaugh's classes. We can see this writ large by how much more national the Harbaugh rosters became (viz).

[* = MI, OH, IL, IN, IA, PA, MN, WI, or Ontario]

And we see a selection bias from this mirrored in the NFL hit rates of the players from the in-state and regional footprints that Michigan did take.

This still doesn't tell us whether players who went to Michigan were better prepared for the NFL or if Michigan was better at selecting players who would be of interest to the NFL. But without having to fill in the details, I think we can say Devontae Dobbs wasn't NFL material, and Michigan saw something about him in high school that the recruiting industry and Michigan State did not. I also don't think this was unique to Harbaugh—Rodriguez also got ripped for letting in-state talent go elsewhere, and most schools experienced a shift towards more out-of-staters in general. Neither do I think Harbaugh intentionally got out of Ohio so much as Ohio State was doing a very good job of locking them out of the state.

But it's also true that Harbaugh did not prioritize the Midwest like previous Michigan coaches, mostly because he had assistants who were turning up better players elsewhere.

ASSISTANTS HAD A CONNECTION

The secret to Harbaugh's success in identifying and recruiting underrated talent from lowly recruited areas isn't a secret to anyone who's been following their recruiting: Most often the staff are connected to the local trainer or 7v7 coach. A trainer in Missouri helped keep athletes Ronnie Bell and Hassan Haskins complete secrets from the recruiting industry, and was the reason Ernest Hausmann was already familiar with Michigan when he chose to leave Nebraska. A trainer out West notified Jay Harbaugh early about Idaho's Colston Loveland. An OL guy in Colorado got them Reece Atteberry, Connor Jones, and Andrew Gentry, and had them out in front for George Fitzpatrick before OSU dropped the bag.

This doesn't just apply outside of the footprint. Deon Johnson is an alum as well as Will Johnson's father, but as the coach of Sound Mind, Sound Body's 7v7 team he's also been a critical asset for Detroit recruiting. A relationship with Rod Moore's trainer was a big reason Michigan didn't overlook him when Ohio State did, and the same circle of Western Ohio/Indiana football guys were key in establishing early connections with Kenneth Grant and AJ Barner.

He's not in the survey because he's still in college, but Mason Graham is a prime example of the kinds of late-risers Harbaugh's staff knew about early because they had good scouting and connections well afield. Graham was playing ironman, wrecking everyone in his path in a California league that's arguably the toughest in high school football. The recruiting sites got to him late because this explosion took place after COVID, when their mostly calcified. Michigan got word early because they Courtney Morgan on their recruiting staff, and Morgan knew a lot of people out West from his time at Fresno State.

Graham was a scouting victory—people knew he was better than his ranking before he got here, and they were talking about him starting in spring. That doesn't mean he hasn't developed, because his game took a jump into "he's our Heisman candidate next year" level in 2023. Moore too was able to prove himself capable as a true freshman but then developed on track from there to All-American caliber.

ASSISTANTS WERE THE CONNECTION

How was that Biff? [Bryan Fuller]

Harbaugh made enemies with the NCAA early, most loudly with his call for player compensation out of TV money, but also by strategically expanding his recruiting borders through satellite camps, and hiring three high school coaches who'd built programs out of nothing as analysts in 2016: Devin Bush Sr. (Flanagan), Chris Partridge (Paramus), and Biff Poggi (the Gilman School). Other schools flipped out, and the NCAA passed rules to ban the practices.

If they had a point it was hiring Devin Bush Sr. as an analyst. Bush the elder came with Devin Bush Jr. and his teammates Josh Metellus and Devin Gil. The complainers were madder—and had less call to be—about Chris Partridge, who built Paramus Catholic into a nouveau superpower in the New Jersey Catholic circuit. In 2014 Partridge players Jabrill Peppers and Juwan Bushell-Beatty were the 9th an 10th players from New Jersey to end up in Ann Arbor since 1990. Michigan has recruited 17 in the nine years since. The 2016 and '17 classes had eight between them, including #1 overall recruit Rashan Gary. Partridge's first stint at Michigan left them 2021 starters David Ojabo, Brad Hawkins, and RJ Moten, and his second was the reason they had Keon Sabb at the top of their 2022 board for that entire cycle. Cesar Ruiz was another NJ-to-IMG guy.

Biff Poggi came to coach his son, bringing smart lineman Stephen Spanellis with him, then returned to high school at St. Frances Academy, which he made into the clearinghouse for East Coast talent before returning to Michigan for 2021 and '22. At St. Frances Poggi had more five-stars than Harbaugh, and dutifully sent most of them on to the powers that buy such things. But more than a few St. Frances players had Michigan high on their lists. That resulted in Blake Corum, Nikhai Hill-Green, and Osman Savage in 2020, Derrick Moore in 2022, and transfers Eyabi Okie in 2022 and Jaishawn Barham in 2024.

More recently of course has been the effect of bringing back former receiver Ronald Bellamy in 2021. Thanks to Bellamy's efforts, West Bloomfield High replaced the closed Farmington Hills Harrison as the premier football program among Oakland County's elite public school districts. By selecting for Detroit talent that highly values education, WB immediately became a natural  Makari Paige and Cornell Wheeler came to Michigan before Bellamy followed them, which undoubtedly helped Michigan get Donovan Edwards, Semaj Morgan, and Amir Herring. In the future we'll also be talking about Steve Clinkscale's Ohio invasion.

Of all these guys, Blake Corum best exemplified the turn towards the football-obsessed, self-motivating, "Harbaugh Guy" they wanted to build around. Poggi did too. But people knew Corum was good—Ohio State was after him too remember. As much as Poggi probably influenced Corum's decision, knowing and trusting Poggi probably helped Michigan to better understand what kind of person Corum was, and decide to make him the cornerstone of their 2020 class.

There are plenty of busts in the names above, but also a lot of guys who played early and guys who developed late. You have to look at Paige, Hill-Green or further back, Josh Metellus, if you want to talk about major scouting wins relative to recruiting pedigree, but Corum was a different kind of scouting win: Michigan knew from Poggi what kind of guy he was. Blake Corum was awesome in 2020, and a very different kind of awesome in 2023. Bush, Ruiz, D-Mo, Edwards and Sabb each needed the standard year, but were clearly top prospects that were likely going to succeed wherever they went. Or maybe it looks that way because they went somewhere that developed them well? Or maybe (other than Bush) they were playing for high school coaches who were college material because they were the kinds of football-obsessed self-motivators that make for good football prospects. The only thing that's pretty well evidenced is Michigan had a leg up in recruiting them. We're going to need a larger sample of players if we're going to find more. Like what if Michigan hired a guy who was the de facto head coach of an entire region.

DON BROWN MADE NEW ENGLAND OUR SECOND HOME STATE

At least Everett is a real high school name; how does the same 5'9 slot receiver get to #86 in the composite by going to 'Captain Shreve'? [Bryan Fuller]

The Harbaugh assistant who by far most shaped Michigan recruiting in his image was New England legend/2016-2020 defensive coordinator Don Brown. Recruiting cycles being a year removed, from 2017 to the class of 2021 if there was a prospect coming out of "Michichusetts" or a neighboring commonwealth, the kid would probably have Michigan as his leader. The most Don Brown guy was Kwity Paye. A low 3-star/#800 type recruit, Paye was listed at 6'4"/235 his senior year in Rhode Island. Brown had a long history of finding these kinds of edge prospects and turning them in to "Anchors", a type of strongside defensive end who had some pass rush with an excess of strength of intelligence to direct Brown's constant stunt-option games and take on doubles from tackles and their neighbors.

But if we're going to pick a player to exemplify the expanded Brown Universe, Zak Zinter is your man. Hailing from the Buckinghame Browne & Nichols School of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Zinter was a guy the recruiting sites (other than Rivals, late) didn't scout much, but both Michigan and Notre Dame had him at the tops of their respective boards. This was undoubtedly a scouting win, since Zinter would start as a true freshman in 2020 over some older options who turned out to be pretty good. Was there any player development going on from March 2020 to October 2020? Scouting. Zinter played with a club on his hand in 2021 and was injured against Ohio State in 2023, but was otherwise one of the best guards in program history.

Brown's connections helped Michigan identify a lot of future NFL players in the morass of New England recruiting. Paye was the only 1st rounder, but every one of his 2017 New England classmates Tarik Black, Hunter Reynolds, Ben Mason, Brad Hawkins and Andrew Stueber would sign an NFL deal, with walk-on Reynolds the only one of them not to see the field. Brown's connection was how Michigan knew to pursue Luke Schoonmaker, Mike Sainristil, his Everett teammate Josaiah Stewart, Greenwich's Cornelius Johnson, and some guys still projected to play big roles in 2024 like Kalel Mullings, TJ Guy, and Greg Crippen. Not every New Englander was a gem; Louis Hansen, Tristan Bounds, Eamonn Dennis, Kechaun Bennett, Alesssandro Lorenzetti, and Jack Stewart either didn't or have yet to make a major impact. But considering even walk-ons from Brown country like Reynolds, Jake Thaw and Peyton O'Leary have made an impact, the Brown Effect was like having a second home state.

MICHIGAN WAS A DESTINATION FOR BORDERLINE TRANSFERS

One imagines Barner wasn't going to be drafted if he stuck it out in Bloomington. [Barron]

One trend that emerged during April's Draft was some of the schools claiming a lot of draft picks were taking credit for rentals. Eight of FSU's ten draftees started their collegiate careers somewhere other than Tallahassee, and seven joined the team as upperclassmen. Tamperin' Texas had 11 players drafted, but Ohio State, Georgia, Alabama, and Michigan fans were doing a bit of Leo DiCaprio pointing when familiar names were called. This isn't to besmirch FSU, but if we're trying to determine how much "development" happens at a school we should at least check if they're actually developing them or recruiting fully formed Keon Colemans from other peoples' rosters.

There were 18 transfers from the Harbaugh era whose college careers are over, compared to seven combined from all of his predecessors. These players had a slightly higher NFL signing rate than the pre-Harbaugh Michigan norm, but the highest pick among them, 121st overall, was AJ Barner. Considering where Barner fit in the mock draft pecking order, it's reasonable to assume he wouldn't have been a 4th rounder if Jay Harbaugh wasn't on the Seahawks staff. Still the grad transfer tight end from Indiana exemplifies Michigan's portal strategy. Barner wasn't a high-profile acquisition and was coming in knowing he was going to be behind Colston Loveland on the depth chart. But the more you looked under the hood the better Barner came out. He was arguably Michigan's most effective blocker in 2023, as well as an underrated receiving option who caught more of the routine JJ McCarthy passes than you remember. The point is Barner came in to play a certain role—the inline tight end—that he wasn't playing at Indiana, but was perfectly suited for.

You see this theme played out with a lot of Harbaugh's portal guys. Fifth rounder Mike Danna wasn't a starter but played an important role before moving onto the same role for some Super Bowl runs. The other transfer draftees were Olu Oluwatimi (5th), Jake Rudock (6th), and LaDarius Henderson (7th). Three of the guys we hoped would get drafted—Drake Nugent, Josh Wallace and James Turner—are trying to make NFL teams, Daylen Baldwin did so, and Shea Patterson signed didn't survive the first round of cuts. That leaves eight transfers who had no NFL careers: Eyabie Okie, Wayne Lyons, Willie Allen, John O'Korn, Jordan Whittley, Cam Goode, Casey Hughes the Utah transfer that you'd forgotten about again until just now, and Blake O'Neill.

If there's a pattern here it's not Michigan stuffing their NFL rate with portal guys but the other way around: players on the edge of draftability were coming to Michigan in hopes of playing NFL competition in an NFL system, whereupon Harbaugh's Known Friends and Trusted Agents in the NFL would be more likely to take them. This was explicitly stated in a lot of their recruitments. Henderson wanted to show he could play tackle. Olu came from a team that never ran the ball. Barner was running WR screens in a Walt Bell offense, Nugent on a Stanford team running the "slow mesh" that negated any chance to block the second level. Wallace had three years of Cover 3 and one of Don Brown press man at UMass that got aren't in his highlight reel because he had to squeeze in more Ravens-style switches against 1st rounders from Ohio State and Washington.

MICHIGAN IDENTIFIED UNDERRATED MARKERS

Roster still says I'm still listed at 255 coach. [Barron]

Another way Michigan might have identified better players to recruit was to figure out any commonalities among players who go on to be excellent pros, but were not rated highly by the recruiting industry.

The first trick they used was to recruit the sons of NFL players. It was Hoke who recruited Mo Hurst, but Harbaugh and co would have been very aware of their star's DTs story, and wondered if there was more where that came. As we pointed out in the recruiting profiles of Carlo Kemp, Kris Jenkins, Jaylen Harrell, Taylor Upshaw, Micah Pollard, Aidan Hutchinson, Ty Wheatley Jr., Jon Runyan Jr., Devin Bush Jr., Christopher and Myles Hinton, Mike Morris, and more I'm probably forgetting, there were two main benefits of taking the sons of former pros:

1. You have a good idea of how much he'll grow in college.
2. The player has a good idea of how much work it takes to play in the NFL.

The first is why they could project 240-pound Kris Jenkins would be able to grow into a 306-pound defensive tackle with pro-level agility and speed. The second point goes back to the "Harbaugh Guy" effect. One of the most common reasons that highly ranked players don't pan out is incoming freshmen tend to underestimate how much more development stands between them and competing on this level, let alone the next one. A guy like Jenkins who grew up around the NFL should have a better understand of the grind, the caliber of play at the next level, plus more reasonable expectations for early playing time.

Immigrants are one class of player often associated with higher ceilings relative to their recruiting ranking. The stereotype, which has some truth to it, is the Nigerian refugee who discovered football too late to rise up the rankings, but comes with freaky athleticism and a much better work ethic than your typical American teenager.

It's probably more from selection bias than some underlying cultural difference. You look at Mike Sainristil, whose father ran a religious radio station in Haiti until he had to bring his infant son and two elder siblings to the Boston area due to political death threats from the 2000 Haitian elections. Or Junior Colson, a Haitian refugee given up by his birth parents so he could be adopted and raised by a very religious family in Tennessee. Or David Ojabo, who moved from Nigeria to Scotland as a 7-year-old, went to high school across the ocean to play football. The commonalities here are families that passed through a pretty tight crucible long before anyone suspected the boy on/in their arms had an athletic future. Also that Harbaugh specifically mentioned the families' stories when talking about them as recruits.

If there's evidence for Michigan's developmental abilities there, it's that a lot of these guys progressed more quickly than expected, with Sainristil and Colson playing as true freshmen, and Ojabo developing into a fully functional college star by the back end of his junior season despite getting stuck in Scotland for most of his sophomore year. On the other hand, they weren't able to get much, if anything, out of German mogul skiier Julius Welschof, or late-to-football Quebecois Alessandro Lorenzetti, both considered athletic freaks in need of a lot of development.

Note they've been leaning harder into this recently. Second-generation North Americans Mike Onwenu, Josh Uche and Elysee Mbem-Bosse were in the 2016 class, but AFAIK the only immigrant between them and Ojabo was Sammy Faustin in 2018. Lately they're developing preferred walk-on Chibi Anwunah, whom I keep telling you is going to be a factor.

Another marker we noticed in their recruiting was Michigan seemed to prefer athletes who played multiple sports. From my final recruiting take of 2021:

Hansen, Guy, Bounds, Anthony, Dixon, McLaurin, and El-Hadi are basketball players. Colson is a soccer player. McCarthy would have been a ranked hockey player. Rooks, Giudice, Iwunnah, and Bennett are wrestlers. Benny didn’t play basketball (that I know of) but one coach watching his highlights thought he did.

2022: 

Basketball: Keon Sabb, Will Johnson, Amorion Walker, and Colston Loveland. Track & Field: Loveland, Zeke Berry, Tyler Morris, and Kenneth Grant. Baseball: Grant, Jimmy Rolder, and Deuce Spurlock. Soccer: Spurlock and Marlin Klein. It's a theme.

Harbaugh also liked taking players who played multiple positions without committing to a plan for college until they had the kid on campus for a few months. Michael Barrett is a case example. He would end up playing Don Brown's Viper position and then bulking up another 20 pounds and learning to become an underrated (I thought Michigan's best) interior linebacker. As a recruit Barrett was the consummate "ATH," a FB/TE/WR/Slot/Safety/LB/Hybrid who flipped from a commitment to play QB at Georgia Tech and whom we thought would end up at running back. Barrett also had basketball highlights interspersed throughout his Hudl page, and when you googled him you'd pull up his discus and shotput marks.

MICHIGAN HAD [ASSISTANT] TYPES

Down low—ope too slow. [Bryan Fuller]

A subset of their scouting and development strategy was to find certain attributes that they valued at various positions, and build around that. In the case of Uche and Ojabo they were looking at bendable bodies they could teach to play football. This has been a theme in Michigan's recruitment of Lugard Edokpayi, Aymeric Koumba and Enow Etta in the last two classes.

Opposite the bendies has been several, mostly successful attempts to grow OTs out of high school tight ends. We attribute these to Greg Frey, the OL coach who gave us Lewan and Schofield in his first stint, and signaled a second swing through the nation's tight ends in search of big feet and big frames. This yielded Jalen Mayfield, Ryan Hayes, Karsen Barnhart and Trente Jones, with the groundwork laid for Jeff Persi before Frey's departure. You can also count Joel Honigford, though his best self was reverting to a blocking tight end.

As mentioned before, Don Brown had his vipers—we'll take Khaleke Hudson and Michael Barrett and ignore the rest—as well as a certain type of player he liked for Anchor, which was why Michigan went all out for FSU legacy Mike Morris when FSU seemed only half interested. Paye, Upshaw, Welschof, Braiden McGregor, Kechaun Bennett, Gabe Newburg, and Aaron Lewis, whose talent and want for coaching have both defined his Rutgers career, were Brown's other anchor types. Add Hutchinson and you've got a very high hit rate at strongside end. That's all the more impressive considering Carr and Rodriguez went on a streak of 14 classes—1997 to 2010—with just two pros (Brandon Graham and Larry Stevens) at the position despite bringing in 4-stars Jake Frysinger, Dan Rumishek, Patrick Massey, Jeremy Van Alsytne, Eugene Germany, Anthony LaLota, Ryan Van Bergen, and Craig Roh in that time.

Jay Harbaugh's eye for running backs led to a glut at the position that seems to have continued under Hart, which is worth pointing out both because Hassan Haskins was one of Michigan's least likely draft picks at a heavily scoutable position, and because when Jay wanted a Corum or Charbonnet or Edwards they never became a Derrick Green or Ty Isaac.

Then you have the #SpeedinSpace guys. We can't count Giles Jackson since he was signed before Gattis was hired, but AJ Henning and Tyler Morris were (with JJ McCarthy) legends of the Chicago 7v7 circuit. Xavier Worthy and Roman Wilson were the fastest players in the country. I like to zoom in on Wilson, then zoom out again because he can't stay in frame long enough, and because there was a time when Brady Hoke's wide receivers coach said speed is overrated. It is not. Roman Wilson's game was speed, decent hands, and nothing else. He was fast and that got him open a lot. Whatever you want to say about Gattis as an offensive coordinator, his approach to receiver recruiting was correct.

WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THE TIGHT ENDS

Nice catch, Connecticut quarterback. Thank you, true freshman receiver from Idaho. [Barron]

The one position where Harbaugh lapped his competition—and this has been true wherever Harbaugh's gone—is his program's eye for tight end talent. His first big commitment was Zach Gentry, a quarterback they converted into a TE who can block well enough and runs too fast for linebackers and most safeties to keep up. They repeated the trick with Nick Eubanks, Sean McKeon, Erick All, Luke Schoonmaker, and Colston Loveland, adding AJ Barner in the portal. In all that time the only misses were Wheatley Jr., Mustapha Muhammad, Louis Hansen, and I guess Matthew Hibner, ironically the four *highest*-rated recruits save for Devin Asiasi, who was an immediate impact guy for them in 2016 before UCLA bagged him.

If we're picking one guy to represent the bunch it's Luke Schoonmaker, another high school quarterback romping through impossibly outclassed high schoolers who came to Michigan with a basketballer's athleticism and learned how to block before going in the 2nd round of the 2023 Draft. The Harbaugh regime also can take credit for making AJ Williams a decent NCAA player his last year, and Jake Butt into the obvious Mackey winner a year before he won the Mackey.

BEN HERBERT RECLAMATION PROJECTS

Barrett used to be a "too small to play linebacker" viper, remember? [Barron]

The last kind of guy I want to reference is kind of a hard one to track down except for a couple of anecdotes—the player who swears his career is entirely due to Ben Herbert fixing something that was wrong with him. The most canny case here is that of DJ Turner, who was considered too slow in high school, was part of the too-slow problem in 2019-'20, then magically became a lockdown corner who ran a 4.3 at the Combine in 2021. Turner's explanation was that Herbert slowly fixed a career-long issue with his hamstrings.

Another story is that of Braiden McGregor, who suffered a hideous knee injury at the end of high school that wiped out the beginning of his collegiate career, and was probably still hampering him while McGregor was starting through the 2023 championship run. Aidan Hutchinson's broken leg healed up alright. Mike Morris made it back without ill effects. So did Blake Corum. Mazi Smith, long rumored to have weight issues, surprised the lot of us when he stayed on the field after a 50-yard screen play at the start of the 2021 season.

Perhaps a greater testament to Herbert's ability to not just develop players but "make them unbreakable" is the list of Michigan players whose careers ended for medical reasons was extensive right up until 2018, and is just three guys since: Isaiah Gash, Gabe Newburg, and Quintel Kent. Prior to Herbert Harbaugh was still losing players to medical retirements, transfers after Michigan's docs wouldn't clear them to play, or possibly to Saban-style medical roster cuts. But you wonder if Herbert was around earlier if things might have gone differently for Chris Fox, Drake Harris, Christian Pace, Zia Combs, and others that Michigan clearly needed and had to do without.

HE DID IT ON PURPOSE TOO

The last thing I need to bring up is Harbaugh's program unreservedly supported its players' NFL goals. His predecessors weren't necessarily against pro aspirations—Moeller was praised in his time for being different in this regard than Bo—but I think their programs didn't make it an emphasis. When asking why Harbaugh had better pro results, part of that story has to be the fact that Harbaugh had coached in the NFL, hired NFL assistants, taught NFL concepts, and generally recruited on these program attributes. It's fair to say he was purposefully courting players who were particularly interested in NFL careers, and tooled his program to make those dreams a reality.

He also more than likely used his connections in the NFL, and his program's reputation for pro development, to convince NFL teams to draft and sign his players. The Baltimore Ravens drafted one Wolverine (Prescott Burgess) and signed one (Fitz Toussaint) or two (we counting Boren?) from the franchise's move from Cleveland to Jim Harbaugh's arrival at Michigan. Since then John Harbaugh's drafted five Wolverines and signed for more to his 53-man roster. In this last draft Jim took Junior Colson and Cornelius Johnson, and signed Karsen Barnhart. Jay Harbaugh joined Mike Macdonald in Seattle and promptly drafted AJ Barner. Insiders were pretty sure JJ McCarthy wasn't slipping past the Vikings because their GM is Known Friend and Trusted Agent Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, the Stanford economics alum who tried to hire Harbaugh in early 2022.

With three NFL franchises now intimately familiar with Michigan's roster, no doubt there will continue to be increased opportunities for Wolverines when their college careers are over.

WHAT DID WE LEARN?

It's too hard to tell—it gets into what-ifs—how much of Harbaugh's players' NFL performance was due to superior player scouting, and how much superior player development. What we can say is that it wasn't just any one strategy or thing they did, but a combination. Ben Herbert probably raised Mazi Smith and Kris Jenkins and some other guys a few rounds past where your standard Michigan S&C guy would have gotten them, and saved DJ Turner's career. Josh Ross and Junior Colson were probably of greater value to John Harbaugh and Jesse Minter because of their familiarity playing the toughest position in that weird defense. Anyone besides Harbaugh isn't putting that fleet of tight ends in the league. A bunch of borderline NFL transfers likely made it over the line because they spent their last year or two at Michigan.

I think most of it was player scouting. Going after the fastest guy in the class every year is a good way to find players the NFL will want at wideout. Developing New England as a de facto second home recruiting ground gave Michigan an advantage similar to that enjoyed by Wisconsin, which also found big, smart Zinter/Stueber types in areas they scouted well and the rest of the country did not. If you can hang 40 pounds on a super-quick lineman without losing his agility, the pros are going to be interested. Harbaugh's assistants also did Yeoman's work in other underscouted areas by developing relationships with the trainers who tend to bring the talent to them.

Every coach backfills his classes with high ceilings, but Harbaugh's strategy of doing this with high-ceilinged first- and second-generation immigrants and the sons of NFL players produced a lot more gems than the typical strategy of offering the next class of guys from the home state/region. As for the top of the class, Harbaugh learned to be a lot more judicious in the types of players he prioritized, probably left some meat on the bone to make sure the choice cuts he did bring home were his favorite kind. He also increased his chances with that kind by hiring their head coaches, a win-win because the type of guy who builds a high school into a power is often a good addition to any staff.

That was the theme that stood out the most, really: "Harbaugh Guys." The term really doesn't need to be associated with a coach, though. We've known for a long time, in every sport, that the self-motivated obsessives are less likely to wash out and more likely to reach their potential. To a large degree, I think Harbaugh's outstanding success at finding NFL was realizing what made him a 1st rounder despite what would have certainly been a 3-star ranking out of high school. Normal human beings are not cut out for the kind of persistent dedication it takes to be a professional football player, so Harbaugh found a bunch of guys as weird in this way as he was. Like Harbaugh, they were athletic generalists who thrived on competition and produced an effluence of positivity. Michigan was by no means unique in looking for that kind of character in their players, nor by any means is that the only kind of person who can be extremely valuable to a football team. Instead I think the story is Michigan itself is an advantage in recruiting this kind of player, that Harbaugh was able to connect with them through their shared personality traits, and that those personality traits were helpful to Harbaugh and his players in ways that any national high school talent survey is bound to miss.