Name: Drew Kendall
High school: Dedham (MA) Noble and Greenough
Height: 6’4″
Weight: 255 lbs.
Position: Offensive guard
Class: 2021
Offers: Boston College, Duke, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina State, Penn State, Stanford, Syracuse, UMass, Virginia, West Virginia
Commitment: Uncommitted
Notes: ESPN 4-star, #13 OG, #256 overall…Rivals 4-star, #4 OG, #65 overall, #1 in MA…247 Sports 4-star, #12 OG, #154 overall, #1 in MA…Teammate of Michigan linebacker commit Casey Phinney…Son of former Boston College offensive guard Pete Kendall, who was a 1st round pick of the Seattle Seahawks in 1996…Pete played 13 years total with the Seahawks, Cardinals, Jets, and Redskins
Hit the jump for more.
Stats: N/A
Strengths: Well coached offensive lineman…Good stance…Keeps hands ready to strike…Quick initial step…Shows ability to get out front and stay out front when pulling…Keeps hands inside frame of body…Shows good punch in pass protection…Keeps wide base…Drives feet through the play…Plays through whistle…Maintains power angles and finishes blocks…Puts opponents on the ground regularly…Active hands…Uses drag hand well…Shows excellent field awareness
Weaknesses: Lacking ideal bulk to play from day one in college
Overall: This probably comes as no surprise, because I’ve been beating this drum for a while, but Kendall is an excellent player. He might be undersized, as I’ve seen him listed at 6’3″ in addition to 6’4″. But as long as he can put on enough bulk to get close to 300 pounds in college, he should be fine in that respect.
Projection: Power Five conference multi-year starter. His NFL upside may be limited by a lack of size/bulk, but he can be a very good college player.
Reminds me of: David Molk. Molk was a center, which could be a possibility for Kendall, but he was an undersized guy who won with quickness and tenacity. He won the Rimington Award (best collegiate center) but wasn’t picked until the 7th round in 2012, probably because he was only 6’1″.
Highlights:
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So….Kendall vs. Spindler. May be difficult to compare at this time as Spindler is 300+. But technique-wise Kendall looks good!
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I see this post as a result of spindler choosing ND. Not that Kendall won’t be a bad player. But what is going on with in state recruiting. UM missed out on at least 3 of the top elite in state recruits. Some at positions of need. DT for example. These are top 50 players. When do u see osu loose out on the top recruits in Ohio? Whats the word with in state recruiting? I’ve heard there is negative recruiting with UM and in state recruits. And also the beef with the Belleville coach.
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That’s funny. I see this post as a scouting report on Drew Kendall.
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Man, there’s a lot to unpack with this comment.
Ohio State doesn’t lose out on as many top recruits, but they’re also a) better at football and b) the only Power 5 school in their state. I’ve done research on this before (recently in a series of tweets), but even Clemson and Alabama – schools that dominate in college football – don’t dominate in-state recruiting against South Carolina and Auburn, respectively. Ohio State’s biggest in-state threat is Cincinnati.
I’m sure there is negative recruiting. From some of the things Spindler said, it sounds like he bought into the idea that Jim Harbaugh might leave for the NFL in the near future.
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In your example of Alabama and Clemson losing out to auburn and South Carolina would be like UM losing to MSU. UM has lost top ten in state recruits to OSU, PSU, Alabama (a five star in state recruit at a position of need), LSU and ND. I understand the rich rod Era and hope Era happened while these recruits were growing up but fo example 2017 when UM pulled 7 out of the top 10, that doesn’t seem to matter.
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So, my first comment will surprise absolutely nobody, I think Spindler is a DT and as such is a huge loss for us. But at the same time, I really can’t get too worked up about it either, as having spent a lifetime playing and following sports in Michigan I have seen on many occasions seen the fathers of Catholic league kids get all hushed tones and stuff about what a “Special Place” Notre Dame is. It’s in there deep. Those kids all will have made multiple trips down there for one thing or the other by the time they are 18. They have a powerful appeal, particularly when they are good.
I do get some comfort from the updated roster release and that the weight gains over this offseason among linemen on both sides of the ball have been impressive, at minimum. Welschof is listed at 286 and would seem physically ready for his test. Jeter at 318 is a big mature man. We have more size across more bodies, across two lines combined than we have had for some time.
On the offensive side of the ball, nearly all the names that are seemingly making up the 2 deep are really big boys. Hayes at LT being the lightest … I think.
So, with regards to the plan of bringing in athletes that need to be grown up physically and then also Harbaugh’s publicly stated complaint that we needed to get bigger and stronger is concerned, the Ben Herbert hire is clearly working.
Then, I think to myself we’re gonna get bigger and stronger still, as the way, double likely outcome here is that we ain’t playing anyway.
I’m in a good place this morning.
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I wish a guy like Spindler could be cloned and play them on opposite sides of the ball. He looks like a mean defensive tackle, but I just don’t think he has the quickness to be a superstar there. I think he can be a star at OG, at least as much as offensive guards can be stars.
I do not believe for one second that Donovan Jeter wasn’t 300 pounds last year. I don’t know if it was a typo or an old weight or what, but he wasn’t only 290 pounds.
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I’ll see if I can find it on the Wayback machine. In any case 318 is mostly better than 300 for a Nose guy.
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No, he was listed at 290. I know that. I’m just saying the listing had to be incorrect.
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On the December 2, 2019 capture of the roster, Jeter is listed at 6’3″ 290.
https://web.archive.org/web/20191202002519/https://mgoblue.com/sports/football/roster
2018 wan’t archived.
They only appropriate response to either/both of the publishings, both then and now is we’re never gonna know for sure.
Beyond that, stop messing with my good place.
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I wasn’t sure, I was just satisfying my curiosity about both Jeter and Wayback machine.
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Michigan in-state recruiting is a disappointment. I don’t think it can be sugar-coated. They’re not doing as well as they could and should find a way to do better. To lose out on the majority of top players in a strong year with five top 100 recruits is awful. Is it a disaster? We’ll see how they recover but there’s a chance the answer is yes.
If you are comparing to OSU – Michigan absolutely does have more disadvantages. If they are selling regional success Michigan is behind OSU. If they are selling academics and prestige – Michigan is behind ND. If they are selling Pure Michigan – MSU is going to have something to say at least. Michigan kind of tries to market itself as a place where you can get all of that but it doesn’t always work head-to-head. And now they’re losing a bunch of kids to PSU too. It’s bad.
Getting guys out of Ohio is harder then ever. Getting the top in-state kids to stick seems like it should be a priority. If that means hiring more in-state ties within the program that could make sense but I doubt ex-players are going to help unless it’s someone who came up in SE Michigan.
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“If they are selling academics and prestige – Michigan is behind ND.”
What? Where did this come from? Not sure this is really a big factor in the recruiting landscape anyway but do you mean academic prestige? Michigan is absolutely not taking a backseat to ND in academics or prestige. Stanford, sure but not ND. ND is a private school and much smaller but Michigan is certainly more diverse and as a public school, is naturally less selective as a whole. But that does not lower its academic excellence. I will grant you that ND probably caters to a different target population.
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There’s certainly a relationship between selectivity and excellence.
Diversity means different things to different people but FWIW both Michigan and ND are 65% white.
https://datausa.io/profile/university/university-of-notre-dame#:~:text=The%20enrolled%20student%20population%20at%20University%20of%20Notre%20Dame%20is,Hawaiian%20or%20Other%20Pacific%20Islanders.
https://diversity.umich.edu/data-reports/
None of that is really the point. ND, as an elite private school, is generally considered to be superior to Michigan, an elite public school. Not on every ranking but more often than not. That said, they are close enough that it depends on individual preference and circumstance.
I wasn’t knocking Michigan, the school i went to and all my family went to and that I think is great, just pointing out that they can’t claim superiority in academics as a viable recruiting strategy the way that say Northwestern or Stanford can.
In the 90s they could sell the stadium – now there’s 6 other schools with stadiums over 100K. They could sell national TV games – now you can watch anything anytime. They could sell the rivalry with OSU – now they lose every year.
It’s harder to recruit to AA right now than it was. And Michigan should be trying it’s hardest to keep the in-state kids that it can have an edge with.
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“None of that is really the point. ND, as an elite private school, is generally considered to be superior to Michigan, an elite public school.”
Statement #1 is true, statement #2 is false.
Notre Dame is rated higher across very few disciplines where Michigan is always almost immediately right behind them. the most notable example is their Accounting department which your US News list places them at 5, we stand at 6. Notre Dame is a fine research University that does very big work relative to their size and offers very fine schools of Business Administration and Engineering. But where the two schools go head to head, Michigan has far more higher ratings than does Notre Dame, and when it comes to the breadth and depth of nationally ranked programs Michigan blows Notre Dame’s doors off.
It is unfortunate that Top Universities doesn’t publish in detail, their criteria so that we could evaluate that part of their ratings, but it is telling that Notre Dame doesn’t crack the top 100, I would be surprised if they break into the top 150 in the world. Michigan stands proudly at 21.
I have a great deal of experience with the US News lists having pounded them extensively for three college aged boys and they are very useful for determining fit and such, but examining their criteria reveals all kinds of stuff that while useful for a family evaluating a school for themselves, doesn’t begin to reflect the relative quality of a particular University’s overall performance in the world.
Michigan is almost universally considered to be a better university than is Notre Dame. This is true almost without regard for discipline, and the cumulative excellence at Michigan dominates. Which is to be expected, as Notre Dame with probably 12,000 total students and 8,000 undergrads couldn’t possibly be expected to keep up.
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Michigan is bigger. Most rankings say ND is more prestigious and harder to get into.
Of course it depends on the specifics which is what I said. MSU and OSU have some programs that are better than Michigan.
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https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/best-colleges/
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https://www.timeshighereducation.com/rankings/united-states/2019#!/page/1/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats
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https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/choosing-university/worlds-top-100-universities
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https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities
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Kendall sounds good. Let’s get him.
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https://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/#7299d21c1987
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