Michigan Football: Breaking down 3-star commit Tyler McLaurin

It’s shaping up to be a good weekend for Michigan football on the recruiting trail and it started Saturday with a pledge from 3-star Tyler McLaurin.

If everything goes as planned for Michigan football, the Wolverines will walk away with two new commitments this weekend and on Saturday, U-M landed its 12th player so far in the 2021 class and the top defensive recruit so far in three-star linebacker Tyler McLaurin.

Now, before fans get all riled up about Michigan football adding another three-star, you should know that McLaurin is a higher-ranking three-star and one with a good shot at bumping up in the rankings.

While the Wolverines still have a lot of work to do on the defensive side of the ball, up to this point, McLaurin is the top-ranked pledge and he’s ranked 404th overall according to the 247 sports composite rankings and 26th among outside linebackers.

The addition of McLaurin is also another win for the Wolverines in the state of Illinois. Trevor Keegan, J.J. McCarthy and A.J. Henning are some other notable recruits to come from that state and McLaurin is the latest as he announced his decision on Twitter.

McLaurin is the second linebacker to join Michigan football’s 2021 class, joining fellow three-star Casey Phinney, who is an inside linebacker. As far as McLaurin is concerned, his versatility is one of the things that makes him attractive.

His scouting evaluation from 247 sports’ analyst Allen Trieu says that his size at 6-foot-2 is legit and that he appears bigger than the 210 pounds he’s listed at. Trieu also notes that he can improve his speed and that might be the one thing that has held him back from getting the four-star upgrade.

Sometimes, those things change, so we will see. One thing that certainly helped Michigan was the fact that McLaurin visited just before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. It seems like McLaurin will ultimately end up playing inside linebacker a la Josh Ross, Devin Bush or Cameron McGrone.

When I watch his highlights, he reminds me a lot of Ross as someone who’s tough enough to play on the inside but athletic enough to cover some backs and tight ends.

It’s hard to say exactly what this means for Jamari Buddin but Michigan is in solid position for other linebackers such as Junior Colson and Jaydon Hood, so we’ll see how many the Wolverines end up taking.

At the end of the day though, McLaurin brings explosiveness, athleticism and versatility, which is exactly what you want in a Michigan linebacker.