Dante Moore Set To Visit Michigan
Recruiting season is in full swing and the Michigan staff is going to be awfully busy for the next month or so hosting prospects from across the country. One of the biggest targets for the Wolverines, however, is from less than an hour away. Detroit Martin Luther King quarterback Dante Moore has been at the top of the recruiting board in 2023 for U-M for a long time and tomorrow he's set to be on campus in Ann Arbor.
“It’s not far from me at all to be honest,” Moore recently told Allen Trieu of 247 Sports. “I just need to get back up there and talk to the staff, talk to Coach [Matt] Weiss, talk to Coach [Jim] Harbaugh and to see what’s up there. I’m going to take a couple teammates up there with me. I’m just trying to get back up there. I love being up there, always love being back up there and talk to the players there like Donovan Edwards and JJ McCarthy. So just wanted to get back there and it feels good being there.”
The 6-2, 195-pounder is considering the No. 5 overall player in the country by the 247 Sports Composite, so he's obviously a big time prospect and target, but not just for Michigan. The Detroit native has already taken official visits to Miami, Oregon and LSU, and is also high on Notre Dame and Penn State as well, and has offers from just about everyone else in the country too.
This is the kind of kid that Michigan absolutely needs to land, but Jim Harbaugh's offensive philosophy might be a hurdle too big to overcome. Quarterbacks like Moore, and CJ Carr in the 2024 class, want to throw the ball as much as possible, and from what we've seen, that's just not going to happen at Michigan. The Wolverines ran the ball a ton last year and it led to the best season in Ann Arbor in decades, so it seems likely that Harbaugh and Co. will try the same approach in 2022 with a strong offensive line and very talented running backs.
Winning is obviously the ultimate goal, but quarterbacks want to produce. The record for passing touchdowns in a season at Michigan is just 25. Last year alone, 26 quarterbacks bested that mark and four of them were in the Big Ten. Cade McNamara, who played in 14 games, threw just 15 touchdown passes. That's a tough sell for a five-star quarterback who wants to put up numbers and play in the NFL. Even CJ Carr, the grandson of legendary U-M head coach Lloyd Carr, seems to be leaning away from U-M.
This offensive philosophy vs. putting up big numbers in order to recruit high-level quarterbacks is certainly a debatable topic and one that we'll watch play out in the coming months when it comes to the recruitment of Moore, Carr and others.
