Witty WAS evaluated. Just poorly. You even noted that big schools were once upon a time in on him, then dropped away.

I'm sure his coach has wonderful things to say about him. What's next, his mom says he's awesome too?

This is kind of the point. There's no real objective source that's evaluated Witty and liked what they saw.

Just want to go through the litany of data we have here to try to demonstrate my point.

Adrain Witty Is Probably Not Going to Pan Out:
- was a 2 star recruit. No other big schools offered him.
- is coming off a torn ACL
- has not played competitive football since 2007, save for half of his senior season in 2008 (I'm pretty sure this is true, unless he's playing football somewhere right now)
- could not qualify academically to be here this fall

Adrian Witty Is Going To Pan Out:
- his high school coach says nice things about him
- insiders at spring practice liked him

AND WE'RE COUNTING ON THIS GUY.

Where do you see Witty being evaluated? Rivals has no stats or anything on him. Scout has no strengths/weaknesses section.

And, I realize that relying on Witty and Vlad is a problem, hell I'm the one that brought it up, but I fail to see how this is all Rich Rod's fault. Again, shouldn't we have some juniors and seniors for next year that can start at safety?

Of course. I never said it was "all" RR's fault. In fact I made great pains to say that blame was shared.

That there are no upperclassmen at safety who are good -- that part is Lloyd's fault, clearly. That guys like Williams are bad and that he's all that's left in the cupboard is generally Lloyd's fault, I agree.

That the guys we're counting on to step in that void left by Lloyd are coming off torn ACLs, aren't on campus because of academics, and weren't perused by other big programs (Witty) or can't get on the field now over terrible players like Williams despite the fact we burned his red shirt on special teams and against DSU (Vlad) is an obvious indictment of RR.

Safety is just one black hole. LB is another. Corner is pretty scary too. That's 3/4 of a defense where we're looking around noticing that: 1) Lloyd left a crater, yes, BUT 2) RR is not filling the cupboards with anything we can really count on

BUT MIKE WILLIAMS WAS AN ARMY ALL-AMERICAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can't possibly point to how bad Mike Williams is and, in the same breath, downgrade Witty because of recruiting rankings

Sure I can. You say: recruiting rankings aren't perfectly reliable, there's a lot of variance involved, but they're better than just listening to what his high school coach says*. What evidence do we have to say that Witty is ACTUALLY GOOD, outside of his high school coach and some insiders who tout everyone?

If we're just back to "I trust RR to find diamonds in the rough to populate our defense, don't show me recruiting rankings", I've got a couple of 2009 Michigan football boxscores to demonstrate what we know so far about RR's defensive acumen.

---------
* followup:

http://www.sundaymorningqb.com/story.../17/71811/4082

lots of college teams don't recruit as much talent on defense and convert offensive players to defense. Lots of the best players in high school on offense are better off on defense in college.

that point seems lost in this discussion

I said, when Denard committed, that I thought he could be an all-conference cornerback. I know everyone's fascinated with his ability with the ball, but he was recruited by a lot of schools at cornerback (including Florida).

So, Michigan has 71 players on the team that were originally given a scholarship out of high school. That's pretty mind-blowing

Not following. And I'm sure this is due to my ignorance. Can you explain to me (as if I were an 8 year old) what this means?

Also, Dvaut1, your posts in this thread have been amazing lately. Thank you.

There are 85 scholarship players on a football team. The vast majority of the time, these guys are recruited out of high school and given a scholarship. That means there are 14 walkons who have worked their way up to a scholarship. Now that's awesome for them, but it sucks for us.

Ah ok. It seems so obvious now. I'm ******ed. Thanx ike.

Read this on another forum, thoughts?

Heck that fool John L Smith was 8-4, running the spread in 2003 with none of his own players and far less heralded recruiting classes, courtesy of Bobby "freaking" Williams. Plus he ran off a ton of thugs when he arrived, sound familliar??

Excuses are for losers. Lots of coaches win immediately.

Yeah, and John L Smith was a great coach!

It's almost like other factors are in play here.

FWIW I've probably been overly pessimistic. Two straight weeks of losing the way we have will make you jaded.

The defensive recruiting isn't that bad, and more importantly, it's still November. If they close with some big recruits then I'll calm down. And it's possible they'll do just that.

And as mt2r pointed out, we're recruiting a lot of good athletes on offense, some of whom could potentially transition to defense. So the small defensive recruiting classes may be mitigated by position changes.

So I'm being overly reactionary for sure. Things aren't as dire as I characterized them. Which doesn't mean the situation is great, either.

However, if the class turns out to be Marvin Robinson and a bunch of 2/3 star types the rest of the way, then I think it's fair at that time to hit the panic button, because unless the projects and the sleepers work out, we're going to be in the same spot 3 years from now wondering why we have so many holes on defense.

Hurry up, Saturday!

Ready to just go ahead and beat down Wisconsin and OSU and get everyone to STFU.

at first, i was , but then i was

sadly, the only reason I know this is I'm used to watching Illini football where the defense has constantly sucked for a decade plus and the offense has had to move guys over to the other side of the ball. For instance, Terry Hawthorne, the guy who made the tackle on Roundtree at the 1 and had the pick six at Minnesota last week, is a true freshman good WR recruit who started the year on offense. It became apparent that Illinois had quite a few WRs this year and crappy defense. The coaches pressured and he agreed to move to the other side of the ball. Now, as a true freshman crossover, he has, arguably, the two biggest defensive plays of the year for Illinois that have played a large part in the two FBS wins.

Illinois often, pretty much always, cannot recruit at the level of a Michigan. This often results in getting offensive players, telling them they will play offense at college, and then convincing them to change sides after a year in the program. It's kind of shady, but it's the way to compete. Hell, I saw Kelvin Hayden go from the Illini's best WR to being their best defensive player the next year at the tail end of Ron Turner's era. Hayden is now a defensive starter with the Colts and most known for his pick and TD return in the Super Bowl against the Bears. The other corner with him at Illinois was Christian Morton, an athlete who came to campus as a QB. He had 4.4 forty time or something like that. One of the safeties at the time was Morris Virgil, a player recruited to play HB and who actually played HB some as an underclassmen. It sucks, but when the defense is very weak, you have to move some of your offensive talent over to the other side of the ball.

Sailor Bill Martin, is now Fighting Bill Martin. Apparently he twice got into a physical altercation when the usher or whatever wouldn't let him into his box. Just awesome.

I hate teh ****ing ushers in the student section.

YO BRO IT BE THE STUDENT SECTION, IF YOUR ARE GOING TO POLICE THE DOOR WITH 5 FAT ****S I'LL JUST GO IN AND THEN WALK AROUND

**** YOU.

Yeah, I'll bet what really happened is he wouldn't sit down on a key 3rd down play, and MSC had him evicted.

I get policing the lower rows, but policing the sections is a waste of walrus. Walrus should be used to serve drinks in the new luxury boxes next year.

I keep hearing this about small defensive recruiting classes and "Rod doesn't care about recruiting defense." People say this as though he is just completely neglecting the defense in recruiting.

Rod's first full class, 2009:
11 defense 10 offense 1 kicker
That's not counting the two DTs who decommitted very late.

2010 class:
11 offense 8 defense 1 punter currently

imo Cornelius Jones is 100% moving to defense along with at least one of the wideouts. The general consensus is that we will be adding at least four more defenders to this class as well. That will put us at 11 offense, 12 defense IF at least two O guys aren't slotted for a move to D already which would put this class somewhere around 9 O / 14 D.

Where are these classes that are short on defensive players, exactly? I understand that we may not be getting the right balance of DTs, LBs, and DBs but I don't see any evidence that they are somehow neglecting defensive recruiting in favor of the offense and not doing their best to fill holes.

LOL Michigan AD thuggery

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4639664