Michigan Football: Top target to visit Wolverines, more on 2022 recruiting

Sebastian Cheeks has long been a top priority for Michigan football in the 2022 recruiting class and this week, he’ll take a visit to campus. 

If there was one guy who was lost in the shuffle a little bit when Michigan football went through its coaching changes, it might have been 2022 linebacker Sebastian Cheeks.

Michigan has new linebackers coaches and a new defensive coordinator and while the Wolverines never stopped recruiting Cheeks, U-M certainly did lose some momentum.

Now, it appears that Mike Macdonald, linebackers coach George Helow, and Michigan are starting to get that momentum back as Cheeks is taking an unofficial visit to Ann Arbor this week as reported by EJ Holland of Rivals.

It’s an important step for the Wolverines who were not scheduled to have Cheeks on campus prior to that. Ranked 127th overall in the 2022 class according to the 247 sports composite rankings, the 6-foot-3, 210-pound linebacker is the No. 4 player in the state of Illinois, as well as the 13th-best linebacker in the class.

Notre Dame and Texas are two schools that have become prominent in his recruitment and he’s received crystal ball projections to both, with his most recent crystal ball going to Texas from Texas Insider Mike Roach.

The other four for Notre Dame came in August and back in February. The Irish are still in the mix and will be getting an official visit. They are also closer in proximity, just as with Michigan and oftentimes, these midwest recruits turn into Michigan-Notre Dame recruiting battles.

For Michigan football, the first goal is impressing Cheeks enough to come back for an official visit. If that happens, then it’s game on.

Michigan still after Walter Nolen in a big way

When recruits talk about who is recruiting them the hardest, that doesn’t always reflect the top list of schools, although there are usually schools on both lists.

With five-star defensive tackle Walter Nolen, it’s safe to say Michigan is among the favorites and among the schools recruiting him hardest, at least according to Hayes Fawcett who reported that Nolen told him U-M was among the five recruiting him hardest.

While Tennessee made this list, the Vols don’t seem to have much chance of keeping the in-state prospect. Florida feels like the favorite, but Michigan is right there. You also can’t ever count out teams like LSU, Bama, and Georgia.

An interesting LB offer

Sometimes recruits take visits to camp looking to get noticed and that trip paid off for Deuce Spurlock, a 2022 linebacker from Alabama, who was offered by Michigan following an impressive camp outing with the Wolverines.

Spurlock is a 6-foot-2, 200-pound linebacker that’s ranked as a three-star recruit (1,074 overall) and he was on the radar of Courtney Morgan while he was at Fresno State. Now that Morgan is the director of player personnel at Michigan, Spurlock got an offer.

He’s a low three-star prospect but we have seen numerous examples of Michigan offering these types of prospects only to see their rankings rise. Nate Johnson is a good example. The three-star quarterback just jumped more than 200 spots in the latest rankings.

The three-star has also been offered by Mississippi State, Pitt, Washington State, and Boston College among others, and he’ll be interesting to watch as linebacker recruiting goes forward.