Michigan Football misses on one top target, what about another?

Saturday was a good news/bad news day for Michigan football but another top target, Kenyon Sadiq is announcing on Monday. Can the Wolverines win out?

Anytime you get a commitment, it’s a good day on the recruiting trail and that’s certainly true for Michigan football which landed a really productive three-star tight end on Saturday in Zack Marshall.

Some Michigan football fans aren’t overly excited about Marshall because he’s ranked in the 600s. However, he had more than 1,000 yards receiving last season, and at 6-foot-4, 220 pounds, he’s a really stellar athlete. He also plays defense but is coming to U-M as a tight end.

Michigan’s tight end room is really strong and Marshall is a guy who has a shot to improve his ranking this season. That can be said for everyone, but he’s Michigan’s second-lowest rated position player and he’s a solid get.

You don’t want an entire class of three-star recruits but Michigan is great at evaluating underrated players and I think they might have done it again with Marshall.

Not-so-good-news for Michigan football

On the other end of the spectrum, Jacobe Johnson, a top-100 prospect and one of the best athletes in the entire 2023 class, committed to Oklahoma on Saturday.

It was expected but some reported that Michigan was in the top two in this recruitment. Johnson took an official visit to Ann Arbor this summer but when the Wolverines couldn’t get him back for the BBQ the writing was probably on the wall.

Johnson was from the state of Oklahoma though, so it’s not a shock that he would pick the Sooners. It’s still a bummer though.

An even bigger disappointment would be losing Kenyon Sadiq to Iowa State.

Sadiq is a three-star athlete and the No. 1 player out of Idaho in the 2023 class according to the On3 consensus rankings, as well as No. 486 overall. He’s 6-foot-3, 223 pounds and he’s been recruited as a tight end, receiver, and EDGE.

Iowa State appears to have taken the lead. The Cyclones have received the lone crystal ball projection via 247 sports and hold a slight lead according to the On3 prediction machine, which gives ISU a 28 percent chance to get Sadiq compared to Michigan’s 24 percent.

The Wolverines hosted Sadiq for an official visit and things seemed to go really well. But Michigan has been recruiting him as a wide receiver and it appears that Iowa State’s pitch to him as a tight end has been more effective.

Idaho’s No. 1 player has announced Monday will be his commitment date. To this point, there hasn’t been a flood of expert projections, so while I’m not overly optimistic, Michigan football still has time to pull this one off.