Although I try to avoid simply repackaging notes from the press conferences into a post, as I think regurgitating information is next to useless, when there are Actual Facts instead of just soundbites, it’s worth it:
- At this point, Brandon Graham is planning to return for his senior year.
- Corey Zirbel’s injury is career-ending. He will remain with the team as a student assistant (scholarship count updated accordingly).
- 7-8 players are expected to enroll early from the 2009 recruiting class, and the class should be around 23 guys (for the record, I have thought it would be bigger, but something tells me the head coach knows a little more than I do).
- Western Michigan and Notre Dame have been known as non-conference opponents for some time now. Eastern will fill one of the other non-conference slots, and there is still an opening in the schedule.
Graham’s return would be huge; Zirbel’s non-return is unfortunate, but the team played without him this year and should continue improving; The recruits I can think of who have mentioned enrolling early so far are: Shav Beaver, Tate Forcier, Vincent Smith, Brandin Hawthorne, Anthony LaLota, Vlad Emilien, Mike Jones, and (if Michigan lands him) Will Campbell. That’s 8 guys right there.
The 2009 Schedule now looks like this:
| Michigan Schedule 2009 | |||
| Date | Loc | Opp | Notes |
| September 5 | Western Michigan | Source. | |
| September 12 | Notre Dame | Source. | |
| September 19 | Eastern Michigan | ||
| September 26 | Indiana | Homecoming | |
| October 3 | @ | Michigan State | |
| October 10 | @ | Iowa | |
| October 17 | |||
| October 24 | Penn State | ||
| October 31 | @ | Illinois | |
| November 7 | Purdue | ||
| November 14 | @ | Wisconsin | |
| November 21 | Ohio State | ||
Western and Notre Dame have set dates from outside sources. Rodriguez said the remaining open date is in October, which means that Eastern must be taking the final September date. The October 17th date will likely be filled with a cupcake.
Posted under Football
Tags: brandon graham, corey zirbel, press conference
so that means we have 21 guys including will campbell…we need a wr and jenkins or an offensive linemen…it looks as if these last few are going to be tricky…how to they work this so they keep their count and don’t lose out on a big?
i think the only reason he said 20-23 is because he doesn’t know how many people are gonna leave the team.
RJ…don’t worry about it. He was guessing 23, but there is actually room for up to 27 (backrolling some early enrolle’s into the 2008 class which has 2 open spots still) while staying under the 85 limit. There is PLENTY of wiggle room right now.
Tim, So 23 seems light for this class at this point. With 6-8 guys coming in early, how many open spots do we have from last years class that we could use for the guys in Jan? Also Brian at Mgoblog says corner and OL are the remaining needs for this class and I agree. But what about LB?, we lost two 4 star guys out of the 2008 class? Don’t we need at least 2 more? Thanks!
I would say the class ends up having more than 23 guys in it, but it would be inappropriate for Rodriguez to admit that before the scholarships are opened up by attrition.
Last year’s class ended up being 3 prospects short of 25 (taking into account Darryl Stonum’s early enrollment), so 3 early-enrollees could be back-dated to that class, and the remaining 4+ would count toward 2009’s 25 limit.
As far as LBs, we signed 2 in last year’s class (who stayed) and currently have commits from Brandin Hawthorne, Jordan Barnes, and Mike Jones, plus Isaiah Bell could end up at linebacker as well. On top of that, it seems as though the staff is looking for at least 1 more guy. A 5-man linebacker class would be insane (especially when 2 of our starting LBs this past year were underclassmen).
Tim, thanks for the info. I am assuming you are expecting Mike Jones to be play LB not Safety. Your logic makes sense, so lets take Jelani and then we can call it good! :-)
From your math it looks like this class could take 6 more guys but maybe as high as 8.
Seems there is a lot of trouble finding teams to play at Michigan. So M does not play Minn or NWU. I’ve heard rumors the B10 is considering adding a 9th conference game. Is there an overwhelming reason M could not/should not add Minn or NWU to the schedule…perhaps as a non conference game?