Michigan Football: Breaking down 3-star commit Dominick Giudice

Michigan football offered three-star defensive end Dominick Giudice Wednesday and he verbally pledged to the Wolverines later. Here’s what they are getting.

After not getting a commitment since last May, the Michigan football program grabbed two new verbal commitments Wednesday, one on the offensive side of the ball and another, later in the day on defense.

The first commitment of the day came from former Notre Dame pledge, Greg Crippen, a four-star offensive lineman from Florida that is ranked No. 222 overall in the 2021 class.

While the second commit, defensive end Dominick Giudice of New Jersey isn’t as highly rated as Crippen, the 6-foot-4, 250-pound weakside end received an offer from Shaun Nua and the Wolverines earlier Wednesday and hours later, he announced his commitment to Michigan football via his Twitter account.

If you didn’t know much about Giudice before today, don’t feel bad, you aren’t the only one. But if you dig into his highlights, you can see why the Wolverines were interested in him and ended up extending an offer to a kid that had mostly been offered by teams from the MAC, as well as Air Force, Navy and Temple.

Rutgers and Wisconsin were other programs that showed some interested, but the Scarlet Knights never offered the Mater Dei product, who racked up 19 sacks last season.

Giudice has the look of a classic pass-rushing defensive end, someone more in the mold of an Aidan Hutchinson or a Kwity Paye. He’s guy who can play end on a four-man front and get some pressure on the quarterback.

It’s clear from watching him as a junior that Guidice dominated the line of scrimmage and with more than 40 tackles for loss, along with all the sacks, he basically lived in the opponents backfield.

What’s impressive about his sack total, is that during the 11-game season, he notched at least one sack in each game, while also averaging 5.5 tackles per game.

In terms of his ranking, Guidice is outside the top 1,000, ranking 1,146th overall according to the 247 composite rankings, as well as the No. 54 weakside end and the No. 38 player in the state of New Jersey.

However, as we have seen plenty of times in the past, recruiting rankings aren’t always right and Michigan football has shown a penchant for identifying these kind of fast-rising prospects and landing them before others take notice.

Nua has been working hard to add some pass rush to the defensive line and with Guidice, the Wolverines landed a natural pass rusher with some solid potential.