Michigan Football: Is 2020 class helping to close talent gap?

Michigan football and the rest of the college football world had their recruits ranked one last time for 2020 and after that, how is the talent gap?

As Michigan football fans watched the Wolverines struggle to beat the elite teams on the 2019 schedule, the topic of talent came up often.

Some Michigan football fans became resigned to the fact that the Wolverines are going to be a nine or 10-win team for the foreseeable future. And that’s understandable, especially when you consider the difference in talent between Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama and others.

While it’s going to be difficult for Michigan to catch Ohio State and other powers like Alabama, the Wolverines also fell to Penn State and Wisconsin, two teams it has consistently out-recruited since Jim Harbaugh became the head coach.

In 2019, Michigan football had the top-ranked class in the Big Ten. In 2016 and 2017, the Wolverines also landed highly-ranked classes before dropping off a bit in 2018 and rebounding in 2019 and 2020.

The Wolverines have a really solid group for 2020 with a total of 12 players ranked in the top 300 according to the 247 composite rankings heading to Ann Arbor. That’s good enough to beat every team in the Big Ten except Ohio State.

The problem?

Michigan football didn’t land a single player ranked in the top 100. Hell, Boston College got more than the Wolverines. Ohio State got a lot more and it’s evidence of why it’s going to be hard for U-M to close the gap.

In the final top 100 rankings from 247 sports, released Wednesday the Buckeyes had six guys rank in the top 100 including three wide receivers in the top 37. Michigan didn’t have any.

Talk about speed in space? Ohio State has three of the 10 best pass catchers in 2020, meaning Don Brown and company better find a new way to play defense.

That doesn’t mean Michigan football isn’t talented. Plenty of programs would kill to have the kind of talent base the Wolverines do and since Harbaugh has been the head coach, they have won games and send players to the NFL at the rate of a top-10 program.

Unfortunately, the gap in talent appears to be widening with Ohio State, not closing. Of course, rankings don’t mean everything, as Michigan can attest to, but as long as the Buckeyes dominance continues, that probably won’t change.