Q&A: Eden Prairie LB Drake Michaelson Excited About Prep Bowl Bid and New Offers

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Drake Michaelson, a 6-foot-1, 205-pound senior linebacker from Eden Prairie, has helped lead the Eagles to a Prep Bowl rematch with Wayzata Friday night. Michaelson, who attended the Minnesota Under the Lights football camp in June, has attended several Gopher games this fall. GopherHole.com caught up with Michaelson to learn the very latest on his recruitment and his senior season in an exclusive interview.

http://www.forums.gopherhole.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1569
 

Drake Michaelson

Does anyone know how many more scholarships we have for this years class? I would really like to see drake get a Gopher offer. He may be on the small side but, to me, he very much seems like a Kill type player. I think he shows a lot of explosiveness and I could definitely see him adding 15 to 20 lbs in a year or two. Just watching his highlight reel, he seems to have a very high football IQ and a knack for being around the ball and making plays. Thoughts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak2tyXJTOSQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H4y98Jmpcc
 

He looks like one of those guys that would need to be a preferred walk on for the Gophers. At 6'1" 205 he would have to be a safety or pack on a fair amount of weight to play LB. Looks like he has good instincts and is a solid tackler. Based on his rivals page he has some solid mid-level offers and that seems like a perfect fit for him where he is at right now.

I would bet that Kill and his staff would love it if he would walk-on but I don't know that they would give him a scholarship.
 

I think Duke Anwayu from Blaine and Brett Pierce from Holy Angels are the two most likely to get scholarships. I bet they'd like Michaelson and Larson to walk on. I know Carey Woods mentioned he got a walk on offer, but can't afford to pay his own way so he'll most likely be headed to NDSU or the like.
 

Guys like Woods and Michaelson are the type that we all potentially end up sitting here a few years from now going why didn't the U go harder after that guy? There is a very valid reason at the time and you just hope for the best for those guys wherever they end up and hope they prove the big school wrong for not offering them when they had the chance.
 


I doubt it, since I can't remember too many MN kids that we didn't offer where we later regretted it. Maybe I'm wrong, but can you name 5 MN players in the last 5 years that didn't receive offers that would have contributed?
 

John Galt said:
I doubt it, since I can't remember too many MN kids that we didn't offer where we later regretted it. Maybe I'm wrong, but can you name 5 MN players in the last 5 years that didn't receive offers that would have contributed?
Click to expand...

Jordan Waiwaiole
Carlton Littlejohn
Marcus Williams
Trevor Olson
Tim Sauer
Isaac Odim
Weston Peiffer
Zach Mottla
Billy Turner
A.J. Tarpley
James Farrow
Anthony Hayes
 


Mottla is a walk on though, so he technically is a guy that wasn't offered that could contribute (he is contributing).
Mike Rallis was also a walk on, so he is techinically a guy that wasn't offered that could contribute.

Zach Vraa is another guy who I think would play for the U.
 



dpodoll68 said:
Jordan Waiwaiole
Carlton Littlejohn
Marcus Williams
Trevor Olson
Tim Sauer
Isaac Odim
Weston Peiffer
Zach Mottla
Billy Turner
A.J. Tarpley
James Farrow
Anthony Hayes
Click to expand...

Farrow and Hayes were offered and went elsewhere. I haven't ever heard of Waiwaiole, Littlejohn, Sauer, or Peiffer. I'm not saying they couldn't play for the Gophers, I'm just not familiar with them. Turner and Williams looked good for NDSU, I guess I'm not completely sold that they would start, but they would definitely be in the 2 deeps. Agree w/ Trevor Olson, from what I've heard he's one of the better OT's in the MAC. Odim definitely would have been a starter, but I don't even know if he was on anyone's radar.
 

Farrow was offered and committed, but then had his offer pulled.

Hayes was never offered. Kill talked to him about flipping over from Stanford. Hayes said no, so Kill never offered.
 

John Galt said:
Farrow and Hayes were offered and went elsewhere. I haven't ever heard of Waiwaiole, Littlejohn, Sauer, or Peiffer. I'm not saying they couldn't play for the Gophers, I'm just not familiar with them. Turner and Williams looked good for NDSU, I guess I'm not completely sold that they would start, but they would definitely be in the 2 deeps. Agree w/ Trevor Olson, from what I've heard he's one of the better OT's in the MAC. Odim definitely would have been a starter, but I don't even know if he was on anyone's radar.
Click to expand...

Odim had legal troubles that he has appeared to overcome (so good for him), but at the time, the U couldn't risk bringing him in.

Trevor Olson would help a ton.

Farrow's offer was pulled.

If Hayes was offered (I don't think he was), it was extremely late.

Turner and Williams would both help the U out a ton.

Littlejohn is also at NDSU and is a really good LB. He is a tad undersized, but he makes a lot of plays. He'd definitely be getting PT.

Waiwaiole is a LB at Air force. He could definitely play for us. He's a heck of a LB.

AJ Tarpley plays at Stanford and is pretty good. He had a huge game against USC, again, he'd help us a ton.

Tim Sauer is a good OL from Northern Iowa. He would be a starter this season at RT.

Weston Peiffer...he's at Western Mich (I think). I don't think he's done a whole lot there, I could be wrong. But I don't think we missed on him.
 

You could also add Kyle Henderson to that list. Say what you want about his play the past few weeks, he is still a contributor who started his career somewhere else because I would assume he was not offered by the U. Jon Schlecht from back in the late 90's might be an example of another guy.

Bottom line is that recruiting is a very inexact science. Most guys that don't get offered never turn out to be anything special but there are also plenty of guys that fly under the radar because they aren't quite big enough or aren't quite fast enough but still become very productive football players.

The point of my post about looking back on guys like Michaelson and Woods was not to say the U should be offering them scholarships, it was just pointing out that sometimes those are the guys that end up being very good players somewhere else. More often then not the coaches are right in their evaluation of a players ability to play at the D-1 level.
 



Aren't we better off not offering guys like Henderon and Mottla if they are going to walk on anyway? I understand the technical point, but I'd say the staff made the correct decision to not offer Mottla a scholarship, since they got him anyway.
 

Again I am totally on board with not offering those guys out of high school because most of the time they don't pan out but as we have seen with the examples given by others sometimes they do. The coaches spend countless hours watching film and evaluating these recruits in person so I will always defer to their decision on a guy. Any successful program has a strong walk-on program because you can find a lot of productive players that fell through the cracks for some reason or another.

We have actually been pretty successful with walk-ons at the U however we have struggled a bit with the signed players in terms of guys not panning out or leaving school.
 

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