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This was a heckuva turnaround by Michigan football.
When I went to West Bloomfield in February, when optimism was quite high in the recruiting world that Edwards would end up at Michigan, Edwards told me a different story.
At that time, Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia and Oklahoma were heavily pursuing the four-star running back with the Buckeyes having the lead.
I had been told by two people — but not Edwards — he nearly committed to OSU at one point. I was told Nick Saban often called to get Edwards out of class — that was the type of hard-edge recruiting that was going on. However, on the OSU front, when the Buckeyes took Evan Pryor and TreVeyon Henderson, something was lost in translation, and that kept Ohio State from landing him — though it still tried, as late as August.
Michigan, however, was about as close to out of it as it could be without being officially ruled out. The coaching staff was still recruiting him hard, but the others made such strong pitches and were perhaps a bit more consistent. Around that time, led by RB coach Jay Harbaugh, the Wolverines made a much more concerted effort to reel Edwards in. They were already all hands on deck, but became even more so, with Edwards feeling more and more like a priority to land in Ann Arbor.
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The trepidation came based off the track records the other schools produced. Georgia, in particular, has been putting its backups into the NFL at a pretty high clip, whereas Michigan hasn’t had a running back drafted since Mike Hart. While Edwards longed for the hometown school, that was one thing he had to weigh.
Huge credit to Matt Dudek, Jay Harbaugh and Josh Gattis — not to mention head coach Jim Harbaugh — for stepping up and turning things around. The negative recruiting was brutal, but for Edwards, home is where the heart ended up being.
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