Elite development has and will be the key for Michigan football

Michigan football will never land as many five-star recruits as Ohio State. But that doesn’t mean the Wolverines can’t beat the Buckeyes. Just look at the past few seasons. Ohio State lands higher-ranked players but still ends up losing three in a row. Why? Development.

Of 13 Michigan football players drafted this weekend, 11 of them were picked higher than their recruiting ranking. The only exceptions were J.J. McCarthy and Cornelius Johnson. Every drafted player went higher in the draft than they were ranked in their high school recruiting class.

I know Ohio State is loaded with talent this season, but four players drafted, with all their recruiting success seems low. It’s probably due to poor development, or at least development that’s not on par with Michigan football, which has had 78 players drafted since 2017. Ohio State has just 59.

That’s a low number for all their offseason championships and recruiting victories. It’s also why as Ohio State fans celebrate their recruiting wins — they feel meaningless to Michigan fans because over the past three years, they have literally been meaningless.

Even though Ohio State has had more talent on paper, ranking an average of third the past three seasons in talent compared to Michigan which never ranked higher than 13th, according to the 247 Sports team rankings, Jim Harbaugh and company were able to beat them.

Michigan football has to stay elite at development

Now, Sherrone Moore has to prove he can keep that development going.

That’s going to be the key to maintaining the Wolverines’ recent run of success. Once NIL finally gets figured out in a universal way, teams like Ohio State will lose that pay-for-play advantage.

Urban Meyer ran it like an SEC program and it worked. But I’d take development over dollars any day of the week, especially because soon enough, the dollars will be even. Michigan football has already taken huge steps forward, which will help the program start churning out top-10 classes again.

Yet, the blue-chip ratio over the past two seasons has been excellent. Michigan football has had 30 commitments/signees in the 2024/25 classes. Of those, 22 are ranked as four-star recruits by the 247 Sports composite rankings. That’s 73 percent — well above the requisite 50 percent put forth by 247 Sports’ Bud Elliot to be a national title contender (last season Michigan was 53 percent).

So Michigan football recruiting has been a lot better the past two cycles than people realize and by the end of 2025, I expect another top-15 class (or close).

At Ohio State, that wouldn’t be enough to win. Hell, a top-5 class hasn’t been enough. But at Michigan, if they can keep developing as they did under Jim Harbaugh, the winning should continue well into the future.