Michigan Football: Ranking assistant coaches as recruiters

The Wolverines have seen a brief uptick in their 2023 recruitment efforts, landing several commits over the past month. With a handful of additional highly-regarded prospects set to visit at the end of the month for the BBQ, we take stock of where Michigan football’s assistant coaches rank as recruiters.

This ranking is an attempt to gauge the recruiting capacity of each Michigan football assistant coach on staff for the 2022 season.

The results will be weighted towards “what have you done for me lately territory”, and will also take into account what coaches have done at prior schools as well, not simply their time at Michigan. And lastly, we will also give weight almost exclusively to actual results against hypothetical successes.

We may mention pipedream prospects that an assistant has steered Michigan into an optimistic position for, but we do not count that the same as actual commitments and signatures.

#1.) Defensive Line coach Mike Elston

An easy choice for the top spot, Elston was a massive hire for Jim Harbaugh and company this offseason for both his excellent track record at developing players, but also for his recruiting chops, which he put on display at Notre Dame before changing sides.

For the Wolverines, he’s also been quite busy, landing commitments from Michigan football’s current top-ranked prospect, four-star defensive lineman Enow Etta, along with commitments from four-star edge rusher Collins Acheampong, three-star defensive tackle Brooks Bahr, and helping pull two intriguing prospects from Brandon Collier’s BPI program, 2023 edge rusher Aymeric Koumba and 2024 defensive lineman Manuel Beigel.

Overall, while Elston has only been in Ann Arbor for a few months, his efforts are largely carrying Michigan’s 2023 recruiting efforts at the moment, with a full third of Michigan’s commitments coming directly from Elston’s efforts, along with two of its top three ranked commits.