Michigan landed transfer linebacker Max Alford from BYU. Alford is the nephew of Michigan running backs coach Tony Alford.
Max is a 6'1", 230 lb. linebacker who played at Utah State from 2022-2024 before transferring to BYU for the 2025 season. He has played in 28 total games in his career, including five starts, and he played in ten games for BYU last season. While playing for the Cougars, he played 142 defensive snaps and 96 special teams snaps, totaling 21 tackles, 2 tackles for loss, 1 sack, and 1 quarterback hurry.
Coming out of Park City (UT) Park City, he was a 3-star, the #145 running back, and #1979 overall in the class of 2022. Going back to film of his high school days, it was pretty clear that he was not going to stick at running back in college. He was kind of just an upright, straight-line runner, but he ran with a linebacker's mentality.
Michigan needed help out of the transfer portal in this class, and Alford is at least a body who can help with special teams play and in the linebacker room. He's coming from the same school as defensive coordinator Jay Hill, so he should have a leg up mentally and may be able to help the other linebackers transition to the new defensive scheme, too. Whether he plays a big role defensively or not depends on a lot of other unknowns, such as Michigan State transfer Aisea Moa and North Dakota State transfer Nate Staehling. The Wolverines lost their top four inside linebackers from a year ago, including Cole Sullivan (Oklahoma), Ernest Hausmann (graduation/retirement), Jimmy Rolder (NFL draft), and Jaishawn Barham (graduation/NFL draft).
Nice add to the roster. Raises the floor a bit due to age and experience in the scheme. BYU was a pretty good defense and Alford was earning snaps there so that's something.
ReplyDeleteI think Thunder touched on the key point here -- " may be able to help the other linebackers transition to the new defensive scheme". If nothing else, this should be valuable in practice particularly before the season starts.
We need better
ReplyDeleteToo harsh? Probably, but we were dangerously soft in the middle of the front7
We need better, but we may not, in the short term, be able to acquire better. Why that is, exactly, we don't know. This is related to why Cole Sullivan left: he was trending to be a starter and key element of the LB room, yet he left for Oklahoma. Was it just money? Was it scheme? Was it a personal dislike for the incoming coaching staff? Was it a sense of betrayal at the turnover in coaches from who he committed to?
DeleteMoney
DeleteMaybe it was money, but then the question is why Michigan did not match the OU offer? Was it because they were out of budget, having allocated available money to other positions of need? Or was it because they felt the value of Sullivan did not match the money demanded?
DeleteWe'll never know, but it is interesting that by near-consensus, the LB room is our position of greatest weakness, and yet the new staff "let" Sullivan leave. It could be they fought like hell to keep him, but Sullivan was committed to leaving. But if that's the case, it suggests something more than just money.
We don't have perfect information here but my tea leaf reading can summarize it simply: Sullivan simply was not worth what Oklahoma was offering. Michigan didn't want to break the bank / bust the budget to hold onto him.
DeleteI don't think that's an either/OR. You can't separate a player's value from positional value. E.g., You can have the best fullback in the country and he won't make half of what an average starting quarterback will make.
Sullivan's departure happened pretty early in the primary portal window so Michigan had money available at the time. But clearly they weren't willing to go off their planned allocation at LB to keep Sullivan. They knew they could go another route and ultimately, they did (Staehling, Moa, Alford).
Michigan, like any team/program has to set some budgets and allocate them to positions. If you overspend in one area you must underspend in another. Based on how recruiting has gone the last few years I don't think Michigan has prioritized spending to land elite LBs or elite WRs. In other words they seem to value those positions less than some of their peers (and insiders have said this pretty directly about WR). In contrast, they seem to value OL and RB more than their peers outbidding teams like Alabama and Texas for proven starters.
Given the WR haul last month (Buchanan, Moa, Ffrench) and retaining Marsh) that may have changed at WR but still seems to be the philosophy at LB. Can't say for sure here, perhaps Michigan thought they could use the Sullivan budget to entice back Rolder and ended up not spending it all, but I bet that's how they landed Stahling and he wouldn't be here if Sullivan or Rolder were retained. (some insiders say Stahling cost around half what other starting level options in the Portal cost).
Those kind of decisions are why GMs are so critical to program success these days. They used to be player personnel directors (aka lead recruiters) but now the sport is professionalized and they gotta be thinking along the lines of pro GMs, considering finances and analytics, budgets, benefits, costs, and risks.
I think the main piece that people are missing in their assessments of offseasons in today's CFB is that EVERY position group is a position of need. To retain guys you gotta pay guys. Everyone in the top half of the roster that plays is a free agent, every year. Some might take under market value to stick around but most starters and top backups are going to have some sense of their sticker price. The LFG posts Michigan used signaled when contract terms were agreed upon. A lot of those didn't get done till the last days of the portal period which tells you those contracts were getting negotiated up till near the end, even for players who were not officially in the portal.
That opens up the big question of how to split your NIL spending between high school targets (higher risk, patience maybe required) and portal targets. Indiana thusfar has eschewed focusing any real effort or money into high school players and I suspect you may see that approach expand in the coming years until the market corrects.
@iykyk at 12:24 PM
DeleteThis is a nice write-up, and though a lot is speculation, that's where as fans are on this. But it was a reasonable bit of speculation.
You mentioned Indiana, and how you think that approach -- eschewing spending money on HS recruits -- will expand. I suspect you're right, but then it brings up this question: for there to be developed players in the portal, some schools are going to have to be the "development schools" so the portal has HS recruits who have some experience. In other words, *everybody* can't be Indiana.
And I think that's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Sure, the Michigans and Ohio States will take in *some* HS recruits, and *some* of those will portal away. But some schools without rich benefactors, and thus a smaller NIL bucket to work with, will have to lean on less-proven talent to fill their rosters. So will schools like the MAC serve the role more and more? Will schools *within* the B1G, such as Minnesota, or Rutgers, or Maryland, start to move into that space?
Thoughts? I'm of the opinion that we will start to see a separation, somewhat like minor league baseball. When things get interesting is when the AAA schools (using my minor league baseball analogy) stop wanting to share their big media deal revenue with the single-A schools.
Thanks. I have some connections in the AD but that above is >90% speculation for sure. Not trying to pretend otherwise.
Delete"*everybody* can't be Indiana."
Absolutely!
For starters, Indiana has significant money and was able to keep some 4th/5th year guys who could have gone pro in school. That's a must if you want to compete for a national title.
Secondly, they have the money to pull big additions from the Portal. Thank you Mark Cuban. Their budget isn't top 10 but it's probably top 25. Enough to be in contention. But for a few exceptions (ND, Miami, Texas Tech), it will be real tough to be in shooting distance if you aren't in the B1G/SEC.
I think absolutely the untapped market, the "secret sauce" that Indiana had that others don't have, is hitting the undervalued uptransfers more aggressively than most. Over 50 transfers in 2 years and nary a 4-star high school recruit to be seen. Not a problem since we know that's a lot of guesswork coming out of high school.
You see the talent in the NFL that comes from the MAC, Sunbelt, and other "mid-major" conferences. There's no lack of supply. That's all there for the taking for the big boys at the top of the food chain now. Not just that but programs that are below the elite (e.g., BYU, Cal) are also going to function like "developmental" schools. Think Royals or Rays to Yankees or Dodgers. I don't see any way around some schools being perpetual developers and there are no controls in place to limit the damage (like multi-year rookie deals or delays on free agent eligibility). In CFB it's a free market, every year, for everyone.
So yeah that developmental status will be there for Minn, Rutgers, and Maryland too, unless they get a sudden infusion of donor money to change their station. Good luck but Texas Tech hit the jackpot so it can happen anytime. Still it's not so terrible because those schools are above the pecking order from mid-range ACC or B1G school still, so they can't complain TOO much.
The market will eventually correct but right now a big chunk, probably the majority of, the market is still stuck in the old ways. Still looking as high school players as multi-year commitments who can be developed and molded over time. Instead they should be seen as what they are: 1-year investments you hope to get something useful out of, or form some connections with, in advance of their second season and beyond. Frankly, no team should care much about star rankings or their internal equivalent, because they are about a player's theoretical NFL draft potential in 4 or 5 years. Kid could be on school #4 or 5 by then. But not many are thinking that way -- they are in denial. Just as Dabo Sweeny was in denial in trying to avoid using the Portal.
DeleteThe things team had been doing to search far and wide for under the radar high school recruits, still has value. You can still strike gold with underrecruited 3-star like Jake Guarnera and Cole Sullivan. But here's the thing -- the only excess value you are really getting is in the first year, or maybe their breakout year where they prove themselves as quality backups or emerging starters. But once they are known quantities, you gotta pay to keep them at about the same price you would have to pay to get an equivalent player in the portal. In other words Sullivan and Guarnera were bargains as sophomores but now as Juniors they are not -- makes no difference where they spent their first 2 seasons; they are worth what they are worth to Michigan and Oklahoma, respectively. So whatever you are paying them for their commitment out of HS and their come-up, it shouldn't be more than the value you place on a 1-year portal rental doing the same job (e.g., a rotational backup who flashes occasionally but also makes mistakes). Maybe you'll get SOME discount in the future for guys who want to stay where they are at, but that's not something you can count on. Those are emotions.
So the answer is to focus your scouting efforts that you used to put into high school on watching tape and making connections with "the minor league" schools instead. That's where the bargains are right now.
But here we are looking at high school recruiting rankings like they matter. They are probably more of an indictment of teams focusing on the wrong thing (think Sherrone Moore's priorities to recruit high school from day 1) than an indicator of future success.
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All of the above can get blown up quickly with structural change. But for right now this is where we are headed IMO. Indiana's approach -- mostly ignoring high school and 25+ person portal classes plucking players from other programs is the way to go.
Continuity is cute, but it's a luxury. Dusty May gets that -- would have kept Donaldson over Cadeu if he thought it was worth much. Same in football really (though an argument can be made on OL...)
Hahaha, "aNoN"
Deletehttps://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTZjMDliOTUyODFrZGZzdG40NjhrZzBzenhzaGNzcnZ6b2oyc2tvMWJoamNqdHV5ZCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/MDxuzRvxF39VwnYu9B/giphy.gif
Not sure what you mean by posting this GIF. If you have have a specific issue with what I posted, say it.
Delete@Anon
DeleteHe thinks we're the same person. Would be a weird thing to have a fake dialogue with yourself online. Sometimes accusations tell you more about the accuser than anything else...
"Sometimes accusations tell you more about the accuser than anything else... "
DeleteRemember when you accused thunder & me of being the same person? It was right before your personality split & multiple accounts Lank
cool
DeleteStruck a nerve, forcing an account switch
Delete#jeDub
Good heavens, what passes for discussion here is worrisome.
Delete