Oh, for sure. Defense was a huge miss in this class. But, paired with last year I think it's mostly fine (outside of DT). Last year's class had some OK offensive recruits but was mostly defensive recruits. 9 defensive recruits in the top 300, including 5 DB's. They just clearly weren't ready to see the field this year. Honestly, I think part of our problem this year (beyond bad defensive coaches) was that we're seeing the hole the 2018 class left us in; ranked 22nd nationally, only had 7 four star players, no five star players, no top 100 players.
We'll see how this finishes. Harbaugh alluded to getting some more DB and DT help in this class; which may end up being through the portal. At this point DT seems like the biggest issue. We're relying on our two highly rated DT's from 2019 to pan out.
Someone on 247 actually posted this running roster update, which illustrates that the roster is actually pretty balanced; makes sense why they went more heavily offense this class. Given the amount of OT we have, I could see them flipping some of those guys to defense.
Players listed from most veteran to most recent classes, 4* in 247 composite in bold, 5* bold and underlined.
Offense (41)
QB: Milton, McNamara, Villari, McCarthy (4)
RB: CTurner, Haskins, Charbonnet, Corum, Edwards, Dunlap (6)
TE: Schoonmaker, All, Hibner, Hansen (4)
OT: Allen*, Mayfield, Hayes, Keegan, Barnhart, TJones, Stewart, Persi, El-Hadi, Bounds (10)
OG: Filiaga*, Stueber*, Honigford*, Rumler, Zinter (5)
C: Atteberry, Crippen, Anderson (3)
WR: Bell*, CJohnson, Jackson, Sainristil, Henning, Wilson, Worthy, Dixon, Anthony (9)
Defense (47)
WDE: Vilain*, Upshaw, Newburg, Bennett (4)
DT: Jeter*, Paea*, Smith, (3)
3T: Hinton, Welschof, Jenkins, Giudice (4)
SDE: Hutchinson*, Morris, McGregor, Guy (4)
ILB: Ross*, McGrone, Wheeler, Mullings, Hill-Green, Colson, Hood, McLaurin (8)
SAM/EDGE: VanSumeren, Ojabo, Harrell (3)
VIPER: Barrett, Solomon, Velazquez, Mohan (4)
CB: GEMGreen, Gray, Faustin, Perry, DJTurner, GJohnsonIII, Seldon, Green-Warren, Dennis, McBurrows (10)
S: GERGreen, Hill, QJohnson, Morant, Moten, Paige, Moore (7)