jim harbaugh quarterback whisperer

In our slack chat I was making a point about how P.J. Fleck's hard pursuit of Andrel Anthony is a good sign for Andrel's prospects, and we got on to some of the meme-ish "always offer [position] if [school] is after him" recruiting rules.

The Rules: The internet has no lack of "Position U" articles. They come in three varieties: too focused on a point in the past when only a few teams threw the ball (hi Purdue), too focused on NFL careers (hi Miami), or too focused on the present because the author's real intention is Oklahoma should get an extra trophy for two recent Heisman winners they ganked from Big 12 rivals. Getting consistent stardom out of five-stars (USC) and five-star transfers is harder than it sounds, but that's soft content for sites that go for peak clicks-per-neuron ratios.

The point of this exercise is to identify serial scouting over-performance, ie schools that get more out of less at a position with such frequency that an offer from that school reflects positively on a guy Michigan recruited. Also things will be biased to the Midwest, because that's what I'm most familiar with. This is MGoBlog, where we use copious amounts of research to bring you the real, sometimes counterintuitive answers.

Like for example this one that was stupendously simple:

Oregon Quarterbacks

via NBC's twitter

Pro-Style Era: Bill Musgrave, Danny O'Neil, Tony Graziani, Akili Smith, Joey Harrington, Jason Fife, Kellen Clemons
Spread Era: Dennis Dixon, Jeremiah Masoli, Darron Thomas, Marcus Mariota, Justin Herbert

There is ONE. One damn year since Mike Bellotti came onboard has Oregon had less than awesome quarterback play, that in 2015 with a D-II transfer sandwiched between three years of Mariota and four of Herbert. Almost none of these guys were major recruits. Herbert was #659 in his class, barely higher than the highest Michigan State commit. Mariota was #491 and the #3 player in Hawaii. Darron Thomas was the relative blue-chip at #280, the #5 Dual-Threat to the composite. Masoli was an unheralded JuCo transfer. You have to go back to Dennis Dixon, the #2 dual-threat in the 2003 class (#53 overall) to find a guy who cracked a top-250. And that followed an insane streak by Bellotti going back to the late 1980s.  Onetime expected-to-be-a-Michigan-commit Tyler Shough is expected to be the next guy.

They have had their whiffs but a lot of their transfers were good elsewhere—Johnny Durocher at Washington, Braxton Burmeister is expected to start at VT. Bryan Bennett went to SE Louisiana but made an NFL roster. Jake Rodrigues, the half-decent SDSU guy we faced, was an Oregon transfer too.

2nd Team: Jim Harbaugh Quarterbacks

It's had its moments. [Bryan Fuller]

I really tried not to do the homer thing, but after spending half a night trying to find any other answer, the guy who was the subject of a two-parter on under-the-radar QB recruiting by me in 2015 is the guy. Harbaugh really had quite a streak going before Michigan, and that's not even counting guys like RGIII, Taysom Hill, Brock Osweiller, Tanner Price and Connor Shaw who decommitted from Stanford when he couldn't get them in for some reason or another.

As for those he did get, start with two USD pros, Todd Mortensen and Josh Johnson. At Stanford he recruited Andrew Luck and successors Josh Nunes and Kevin Hogan. He drafted Colin Kaepernick. At Michigan however he's so far mostly played transfers. Grad transfer Jake Rudock worked out great, after about half a season. John O'Korn did not work out, and Shea Patterson was a mixed success. Two attempts at inserting home grown redshirt freshmen in hopes they'd take four years to dislodge were ended almost immediately by a pair of Wisconsin headshots, one to Brandon Peters in 2017 and the other issued to Dylan McCaffery in 2019, so those are mostly incomplete. Peters got recruited over by Patterson, bailed, and was a decent starter for Illinois last year. McCaffrey would be a redshirt sophomore this year.

HONORABLE MENTION

Michigan State under Dantonio. Brad Salem(?) had a string of good ones from Kirk Cousins to Connor Cook, to early career Brian Lewerke, with less-than-serviceable Andrew Maxwell and Tyler O'Connor thrown in between. NC State has more quarterbacks in the NFL today than any two schools, but they're mostly transfers and from other regimes.

[Hit THE JUMP for shorter writeups because getting tired of Wisconsin takes less time than trying to outright my bias]

On the basis of one somewhat and one very weird game, how would you revise the assumptions made in 2019 5Q/5A? Hopefully the answer is not at all, but … ugh.

-Dirk

I don't think anything about the defense has changed significantly. MTSU had 200 yards on an all-perimeter gameplan before Backup Events, and Army is a service academy triple option. If anything I think the situation there feels significantly better than it did preseason:

• Uche looks like a Winovich-level dude and seems set to be a full time performer going forward.
• The Ambry Thomas colitis scare is over.
• Jordan Glasgow grabbed the WLB job and looks like a player.
• Aidan Hutchinson is going from potential star to star.

The downers aren't downers at all if Michigan gets Dwumfour and Jeter back from injury. We knew Ben Mason wasn't going to be ready to be at DT. The one thing that is a bit concerning is the lack of immediate impact from Chris Hinton and Mazi Smith, and Uche might provide a way around that.

Offense… well. Uh. Missing DPJ and Runyan plus having a clearly dinged Patterson is a drag. But Patterson's main issue this season has been his decision-making, and that was his issue last season. If that isn't tracking towards an improvement for whatever reason (transition costs, that's just his ceiling) Michigan's not going to approach our optimistic preseason takes.

One thing that's probably making our offense takes more negative than they should be: fumbles. Michigan lost three all of last year. They've lost five already this year. They were probably due for an increase just as they regress towards the mean, but that's absurd.

Offense is stock down, but not as catastrophically as a lot of people seem to think.

[After THE JUMP: positive questions that reflect a faith Michigan will right the hahah no just more BPONE]

Previously: Podcast 11.0A, Podcast 11.0B, Podcast 11.0C. The Story.

For the first time in the Harbaugh era Michigan returns a starting quarterback who is not clearly doomed to break a vertebrae and transfer to UCLA because of Michigan's awful pass protection. Even this is a bastardized version of Jim Harbaugh Develops Quarterbacks because the returning starter spent two years at Ole Miss. If year one to year two Harbaugh transitions still mean anything this is cause for optimism.

But with experience comes bloody fate. Michigan will once again try to get a senior quarterback through the Ohio State game unscathed. Previous attempts:

• Chad Henne, 2007: Henne's shoulder is separated during the season; he plays in the OSU game because the alternative is a maniacal Ryan Mallett but he's basically unable to throw.
• Denard Robinson, 2012: Robinson's ulnar nerve gives out midseason and he moves to running back.
• Devin Gardner, 2014: Gardner breaks his foot in the second quarter.
• Jake Rudock, 2015: Rudock is ended by Joey Bosa in the third quarter.

Here Michigan finally might have an advantage on the Great Satan at the end of the schedule. The story of OSU quarterbacking over the past decade is that when someone goes out, Kenny Guiton or Cardale Jones or Dwayne Haskins comes in. The story of Michigan quarterbacking is that John O'Korn comes in. This dynamic is reversed in the aftermath of every OSU QB bailing when Justin Fields was imported.

For the first time in a very long time Michigan might have a clear advantage at QB in The Game.

[After THE JUMP: is it a Heisman campaign if you're aiming for third place?]