Mailbag question: Earlier offers this year

Hello:

It doesn't seem like you guys talk a lot about recruiting. My question is do you guys see an improvement in early recruiting over last year?

Why I ask is because I believe you guys were one of the first guys to bring up the lack of early recruiting, so I would like your take on it this year.

Has enough early offers went out yet? I am a little worried about the number of reported offers out there as far as offense / defense. There seems like a lot of offers to offensive players and not that many for defensive players, or at least as of right now. Is that because of the new DC hire (seeing what he wants)? Or will this staff always look to boost the offense first?

To me, it seems that this year recruiting has to look towards bolstering the defense, what is your take?

Great Blog! ... JB

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Thanks for the question and the comment.

First off, we will answer more recruiting questions if people send them in. This blog takes its cues from what readers want and send in for questions. Yes, most of the time we just deal with team stuff, but at any point we will answer any question thrown our way -- if we can! Right now, is as slow a period as any for football, so polish off your question mark key and send us your questions. (Btw, we believe there are no stupid questions, so don't be timid.)

Moving on -- we are defensive guys, so we always want more defensive players. Yes, we were one of the few people that were complaining about the defensive recruiting last year. Remember, when we brought that up, we had gone to spring practices and saw the depth issues on the Michigan defense. We saw, first hand, that the defense has issues and that the available talent was not as good as everybody thought. Too many times, people believe players will automatically get better each successive year, but it doesn't always happen. We noticed it last spring. Everybody else realized it once the season began.

We think that the defense should be the recruiting priority every year at Michigan. Winning with defense and special teams is a tried and true practice in football. As they say, offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships.

Michigan seems to be ahead of the recruiting game this year for the 2010 season. Though they have many early offers out on the offensive side of the ball, they also have quite a few offers for defensive players. They seem to have evaluated kids earlier and are looking at giving out more offers this year.

The biggest difference we see, or hear about, is the increasing number of assistants on the road this year. The late transition last year, and the need to put more time into the 2008 class, made for slow start in recruiting the 2009 class.

The early start gives the coaches a fighting chance against the other big-time programs that have already made a lot of scholarship offers already. That shows very good progress for the program.

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If you have any questions please e-mail erocwolverine@gmail.com

Written by CoachBt and ErocWolverine