Generally, you can somewhat predict what teams will produce each season based on the talent they have at prominent positions.
The mix between talent, experience, coaching decisions, the schedule, the previous year’s success or failure, and more goes into how prognosticators look at teams, but CBS Sports is looking specifically at the first category as it assesses the ‘blue-chip ratio’ entering the 2025 season.
Unsurprisingly, at the top are the teams that perennially recruit better than the others on paper — Alabama, Ohio State, and Georgia comprise Bud Elliott’s top three with percentages ranging from 84% to 89%. Michigan football comes in ranked 14th with a blue-chip ratio of 57% — a number that may seem low, however, Elliott points out that the Wolverines won the 2023 national championship with a ratio of 54%.
It’s commendable that Elliott has the maize and blue on the list. Because Michigan will tend to be something of an outlier, as a program that tends to get more out of less. Part of it is because of the coaching, but from a schematic standpoint, the Wolverines play a different brand of football than most of the field. Tabbed ‘the boa constrictor’ by PJ Fleck and Joel Klatt, Michigan isn’t trying to outpace its opponents — it’s trying to squeeze the life out of them. Even with second-year head coach Sherrone Moore at the helm, that’s just as true as when the team was led by Jim Harbaugh.
Whether or not Michigan gets similar results to 2021-23 remains to be seen. It will be incumbent on the offense to find some semblance of a passing attack, and the defense to look similar to how it finished the year in 2024.
The teams that precede Michigan include the aforementioned trio, Texas A&M, Oregon, Texas, LSU, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Penn State, Miami, Florida, and Auburn. But, as you can note, about a third of those…
Source link : https://wolverineswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/wolverines/football/2025/07/18/michigan-football-2025-cbs-sports-blue-chip-ratio-preview/85284333007/
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Publish date : 2025-07-18 23:28:00
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