The Decimated Defense

[Editor's note: I was working on a post similar to this today that examined the past five years of defensive recruiting with a particular focus on the secondary. This is broader but I may as well not reinvent such a well-put-together wheel. I will take this opportunity at the top of the post to rephrase something I stuck in a mailbag. Here are the members of the secondary in the recruiting classes that comprise this year's team:

2005: None. (Harrison, Sears, Richards all gone.)
2006: None. (Mouton, Brown moved to LB.)
2007: Warren, Woolfolk, Williams, Rogers. (Chambers gone.)
2008: JT Floyd (Smith moved to LB, Cissoko is gone.)

Excluding true freshmen, Michigan has five scholarship players for four starting spots, none of whom are seniors and one of whom is a positional vagabond who was a huge reach even at WR. Attrition has something to do with it, but poor recruiting—the 2006 class didn't have a single corner, and the 2007 class had two reaches and one Notre Dame defection—had much more. With Woolfolk's move Michigan has one scholarship safety on the roster outside of true freshmen. Not to go all ND-fan-talking-about-Ty here, but lord I don't know if anyone could dig themselves out from that.]

With Boubacar Cissoko's dismissal from the team yesterday, we now have a number that every Michigan fan might need to commit to memory:

Everybody got that?

Now, numbers without context are hard to understand. If it's a completion percentage, well, that's not horrible but it's not bad, right? If that's how many questions you got right on your Anthro-Bio mid-term, well, not so great.

The question we will try to answer in this Diary, is what does that number mean when it's the percentage of defensive recruits over the last five classes who are still on your team?

Really? 58.33 percent? How?

Defensive Recruits No Longer With the Team: 2005-2009
Name Class Pos Stars RR What happened? Eugene Germany 2005 DE **** 6.0 Left team James McKinney 2005 DT **** 5.9 Left team Terrance Taylor 2005 DT **** 5.9 Graduated Brandon Harrison 2005 CB **** 5.8 Graduated Johnny Sears 2005 CB *** 5.6 Left team Brandon Logan 2005 LB *** 5.6 Graduated Chris Richards 2005 ATH *** 5.5 Left team Carson Butler 2005 DE *** 5.5 Moved to TE, left for NFL Chris McLaurin 2005 DE *** 5.5 Left team (health)
Jason Kates 2006 DT **** 5.8 Left team Cobrani Mixon 2006 LB **** 5.8 Left team Quintin Patilla 2006 LB *** 5.7 Left team Quintin Woods 2006 DE *** 5.6 Left team Austin Panter 2007 LB **** 5.8 Graduated Artis Chambers 2007 S *** 5.6 Left team Marell Evans 2007 LB ** 5.2 Left team Boubacar Cissoko 2008 CB **** 6.0 Left team Marcus Witherspoon 2008 LB **** 5.8 Did not qualify Taylor Hill 2008 LB **** 5.8 Left team Adrian Witty 2009 CB ** 5.3 Did not qualify (may return)

That seems really bad. Like really really bad.

Is it bad?

It's obviously no surprise that Michigan has faced a lot of attrition since RR came on board. Each case is it's own particular. But all told, it seems to me that we are seeing something here that is way out of whack. And I'm not sure it's RR's doing. And though that seems like a lot of attrition, I'm not sure that's the whole story.

I'm going to break down this list by class. Perhaps in the micro we can see what happened to the macro...

(or perhaps you are already poised to scroll to comments and write "tl;dr" -- if so, get a sandwich and meet the rest of us down at the very long sub-header)

Class of 2005

Name Class Pos Stars RR What happened? Here? Eugene Germany 2005 DE **** 6.0 Left team no James McKinney 2005 DT **** 5.9 Left team no Terrance Taylor 2005 DT **** 5.9 Graduated no Brandon Harrison 2005 CB **** 5.8 Graduated no Johnny Sears 2005 CB *** 5.6 Left team no Brandon Logan 2005 LB *** 5.6 Graduated no Chris Richards 2005 ATH *** 5.5 Left team no Carson Butler 2005 DE *** 5.5 Moved to TE, left for NFL no Chris McLaurin 2005 DE *** 5.5 Left team (health)
no
Nothing left. This isn't just age -- you'd expect at least a couple of 5th year seniors to stick around. This class was decimated early and often, leaving Terrible Taylor as the only major defensive contributor. Harrison, who would be very nice to have around today, burned his redshirt during Safety Armageddon. Logan was the only other graduate. For Sir Carson Butler's career at Michigan, consult the minstrels.

Moral of this story: losing the top two recruits on defensive line made things dicey. In the first attempt at refilling the cornerback cabinet, Carr picked up Harrison and a couple of fliers (Sears, Richards) who didn't work. [More after the jump!]

Class of 2006

Name Class Pos Stars RR What happened? Here? Brandon Graham 2006 LB ***** 6.1 DE yes Jonas Mouton 2006 S **** 6.0 MLB yes Adam Patterson 2006 DT **** 5.9 DE (backup) yes Steve Brown 2006 S **** 5.9 SLB yes Jason Kates 2006 DT **** 5.8 Left team no Cobrani Mixon 2006 LB **** 5.8 Left team no Quintin Patilla 2006 LB *** 5.7 Left team no Greg Banks 2006 DE *** 5.6 DE (backup) yes John Ferrara 2006 DE *** 5.6 Moved to G yes Quintin Woods 2006 DE *** 5.6 Left team no Obi Ezeh 2006 RB *** 5.5 MLB yes
This is an excellent class of seniors and redshirt juniors, from which seven of 11 (63.63 percent) remain. Attrition came largely from the 3-stars and low 4-stars for depth issues -- of Kates, Mixon, Patilla and Woods, only Kates left from the transition, and none project to be a significant improvement over the current starters in their positions.

Brandon Graham has been every bit the blue chip. The upper four-stars are a bit more mixed: Mouton plays much younger than a guy who's the same age as Graham. Brown needed a position switch to linebacker his senior year. Patterson's the big bust.

Ezeh has been much better than we deserve from a basically unranked fullback, but he's hardly a danger to win post-season conference hardware.

Overall, this defensive class, with a few exclamated exceptions, seems to have been generally overrated.

It is also very very noticeably lacking in defensive backs. Brown and Mouton were safeties coming in, but at least Mouton's move to linebacker was anticipatable. It wasn't a great year in general for cornerbacks, and Michigan lost out on its prize recruit in Myron Rolle, but does anyone else think, with Sears and Richards and a burned shirt on Harrison your foreseeable future, what is up with the lack of defensive backs? This is doubly-WTF considering Michigan's former DB coach, Ron English, was now the DC.

Class of 2007

Name Class Pos Stars RR What happened? Here? Donovan Warren 2007 CB ***** 6.1 CB yes Ryan Van Bergen 2007 DE **** 5.8 DE yes Austin Panter 2007 LB **** 5.8 Graduated no Michael Williams 2007 S **** 5.8 SS yes Renaldo Sagesse 2007 DT *** 5.7 DT (backup) yes Brandon Herron 2007 LB *** 5.7 WLB (backup) yes Artis Chambers 2007 S *** 5.6 Left team no Troy Woolfolk 2007 CB *** 5.5 CB yes Marell Evans 2007 LB ** 5.2 Left team no
Six of the nine (66.67 percent) would-be juniors and redshirt sophomores are still around. This was Carr's last class, and going into the writing of this, I was already tempted to suggest that this one was an example of career-winding-down trying less.

This is the class you'd expect to see the most coaching change attrition from, since they're generally still young enough to start over somewhere else, and didn't get the coach (in this case, Ron English) they signed up for. But, no. Panter left because he was a rare junior transfer. The other guys departed citing depth chart issues.

Depth issues?

From Marell Evans, okay. He was a 2-star recruit getting passed up by the 2008 class and likely would never earn long-term PT here. But Artis Chambers' decision, strange at the time, now seems absolutely ludicrous. He may not have been the answer at DB, but he certainly would have been given every opportunity to win the job from a walk-on and an underperforming classmate.

This class actually ended up underrated by scouts it seems. Warren is right on the Michigan 5-star CB track. RVB seems like he should have been higher up than the bottom of the 4-star ranks. Sagesse and Herron are the serviceable backups you'd expect from guys at their level. Williams has slightly disappointed -- at this stage of his career, he's basically a Stevie Brown with the highs and lows beveled. But that's made up for and more by legacy recruit Troy Woolfolk's emergence at both cornerback and safety this year. Unfortunately, we only have one Troy Woolfolk.

For all intents and purposes, after two classes of ignoring the position with Johnny Sears and Chris Richards the only opion, Michigan's 2009 backfield had to come from this haul. Donovan Warren and Troy Woolfolk are as much as you can rightfully expect from one class. Having Michael Williams pan out would be nice, but still, an entire backfield is too much to ask from one class.

Did Carr take this year off? It's hard to say. English did a good job getting some defensive backs, particularly Warren. But at this point linebacker was now past leaking (Mouton had moved but Brown hadn't) and they needed more than a junior transfer, a 3-star and a 2-star.

Class of 2008

Name Class Pos Stars RR What happened? Here? Boubacar Cissoko 2008 CB **** 6.0 Dismissed no J.B. Fitzgerald 2008 LB **** 5.9 MLB (backup) yes Brandon Smith 2008 S **** 5.9 WLB (backup) yes Mike Martin 2008 DT **** 5.8 DT yes Kenny Demens 2008 LB **** 5.8 WLB (backup) yes Marcus Witherspoon 2008 LB **** 5.8 Did not qualify no Taylor Hill 2008 LB **** 5.8 Left team no J.T. Floyd 2008 ATH *** 5.5 CB (backup) yes
This is the hybrid class between Carr/English and Rich Rod/Shafer. With limited time, RR focused most of his first-year recruiting efforts on offense, so these guys are primarily Carr-era holdovers.

Considering the previous classes, holes were now springing all over the defense, but linebacker was dire, while defensive back was basically 2007's haul and a whole lot of nothing.

The lack of attention became evident early, as Hill and Witherspoon never arrived on campus. Smith proved to be a linebacker. Meaning DB was basically Boubacar and 3-star athlete J.T. Floyd.

If ending up with six of nine of your juniors was bad, coming to this point with five of eight sophomores is, well, demonstrative of the greater theme of this whole exercise.

As Brian said while discussing this class recently, Martin has been a beast, Fitzgerald is on pace, Demens looks buried on the depth chart, and Floyd justified his low ranking. They're young, but declaring "disaster" on this class may not be premature.

Class of 2009

Name Class Pos Stars RR What happened? Here? William Campbell 2009 DT ***** 6.1 DT (backup) yes Justin Turner 2009 CB **** 6.0 redshirt yes Craig Roh 2009 DE **** 5.9 WLB yes Anthony LaLota 2009 DE **** 5.8 redshirt yes Vladimir Emilien 2009 S **** 5.8 FS (backup) yes Brandin Hawthorne 2009 LB *** 5.7 MLB (backup) yes Isaiah Bell 2009 LB *** 5.7 SAM (backup) yes Teric Jones 2009 RB *** 5.7 CB (backup) yes Mike Jones 2009 S *** 5.7 MLB (backup) yes Thomas Gordon 2009 ATH *** 5.5 redshirt yes Adrian Witty 2009 CB ** 5.3 DNQ (may return)
no
At this point, you're not supposed to have much attrition, and this has held true. We lost Adrian Witty, who did not qualify academically, was Michigan's lowest-rated recruit, and got offered because it helped us reel in Denard Robinson.

On the other hand, given the current state of things, every warm body at cornerback helps.

The 2009 class has considerably more star power at the top than we've seen from the waning Carr classes. They're way too young to put against a track, but it is concerning that Campbell has looked lost, meaning his blue chip status may be overrated Most of the verified 5-star guys above showed more as true freshmen. Brandon Graham didn't start as a freshman, but he did see significant time, and showed himself to be something special, behind LaMarr Woodley. A closer analogue to Graham then would be Roh, who may have been underrated. Justin Turner's late arrival justified his redshirt, but with the warm body problem at cornerback, that 5th star that he just couldn't get now seems out of reach. With Cissoko's dismissal, perhaps that will change.

Looking ahead, I have a personal fear of Emilien being slow after seeing him get torched this spring against Carlos Brown (I'm not married to that opinion), and Mike Jones we know is moving to linebacker, so safety remains a concern. Safety and cornerback are now major priorities for 2010. Linebacker, which has benefited from more redshirts and an influx of erstwhile safeties, seems like less of a concern. Defensive line needs backup bodies, and lots of them, but the front seems like it can hold if Roh slides over to Graham's spot next year.

I Just Got a Sandwich and Then Skipped Down to This Part. Did You Learn Anything?
You mean conclusions? Already? Without contextualizing? No way! But I'll give you some hypotheses now:

1. Small defensive class size seems to more culpable than attrition for the defense's depth issues.
2. Very, very little of the overall attrition on defense seems to be related to the coaching change.
3. The disastrous Class of 2005 is still leaving ripples through Michigan's program. If you discount the erstwhile 5th year seniors and true freshmen, our attrition rate is still like 1 out of 3, which is bad, but not as ludicrously bad-looking at you see here.
4. RR's focus on offense in his limited time in 2008 may have resulted in a class just as disastrous.
5. The English-to-Shafer-to-GERG shift is probably somewhat at fault for many of these players' seemingly retarded development (particularly the linebackers)

Some of these we have already discussed, if not completely digested. Some I think (like 1 and 2) are new. Of these, 4 and 5 are those easiest to pin on Rich Rod, particularly 4. It seems to me in retrospect that Rodriguez wasted too much time chasing Pryor and not enough on addressing defensive needs. The 2009 defensive class and its early returns are encouraging to that regard -- it seems he has learned his lesson and, even with 3-9 around his neck, managed to close a solid class.

Preview: The Decimated Defense, Part II (Had to do it in two parts because my other spreadsheet I need is on another computer dammit)

See: Misopogon test the hypotheses above by showing what other major programs' class size and attrition rates over this period have been like.

See: Charts.

See: Nice formatting that inexplicably seems beyond the capabilities of the Drupal editor

See: SPARTY. ON. ICE.!!!!



Tropp, Conboy, Winston...what are they teaching at these schools these days?