Wow!! These lists are always so tough to put together. I believe you did a very good job. Where do you get most of your information/how do you make decisions on all of these players?

Yup… hard to put this together… but somehow the kicker over at Plymouth HS is slipping under the radar. He’s something else.

Thanks for the comments. Yes, this is the hardest thing I do on my site. It’s a lot easier to to Top 25 Rankings and Game Picks.

In answer to diesel’s questions above, I prefer to list players that I have personally seen. But, that is impossible. It does,however, account for the particular skew toward the CHSL, teams that CHSL teams played and other key teams. Those are the teams/players I am most familar with. But, we all know there are a lot of good players that don’t fall into that group. I try to find them by doing a lot of research–media game reports. school web site game recaps, Maxpreps stats leaderboard, Rivals and Scout ratings, M-Live comments, word-of-mouth, media pre-season player rankings.

It would be a lot easier if I waited until the media and the leagues published their honor teams. Then, I could just cherry-pick the ones I like. That’s not a challenge. I’d rather do my own, even if I risk a mistake or an oversight. In past years, I have included players, mostly linemen, who were highly-rated pre-season, but had an early season-ending injury and didn’t play, or even quit the team before the season. Linemen are the most difficult to evaluate, particularly from teams I haven’t seen. Even when I see a team, it’s hard to evaluate linemen. I’m sure the media teams are made up primarily of nominees from coaches, who of course know their linemen best.

When it comes down to picking between player A and B, it helps to have seen both. It helps to have seen both multiple times. Case in point. I did not rank Earnest Thomas, #7 OLSM very high (Honorable Mention). A 4 star recruit that committed to UCLA and had multiple offers from major schools would normally be a no-brainer. If I had not seen that individual, he probably would have made my first team. But, I’ve seen Thomas at least ten times over two years. I’m sorry. I have not been impressed. I was a lot more impressed with Gary Hunter. Robert Bolden got an Honorable Mention pick. He got that more on potential and previous play rather than this year, although I understand he was better in games that I didn’t see. Bolden looked like an ordinary QB in the games I saw. Ordinary QBs normally don’t make my team–even Honorable Mention. But, he was such a high profile player for three years that I felt he deserved at least an HM spot.

There will be criticisms from some who say there are too many Brother Rice players on my team. I am sensitive to those comments, so I actually try to overcompensate and make sure anyone from Rice that gets a mention, really derserves it. Like many elite teams, Rice has a lot of great players. Because I follow Rice very closely, I happen to be aware of the great ones, and I usually put them on–at least for HM. However, I left a couple real good players off this year from Rice that were probably worthy. Of course, I left a few pretty good CC and DLS players off as well. I don’t think I overloaded with players from any team this year.

In addition to linemen, it’s hard to find all the worthy kickers. Statman points out the kicker from Plymouth. I wish I had known about him earlier. I would have reseached him and made a more informed call.

I’m going to try to live with the group as initially published. If someone points out an obvious oversight, e.g. a player who didn’t play this year. I’ll do an edit. I have been known to add a player or two who was really worthy but just got overlooked. It’s done on a case-by-case basis.

One of the sources I use is Maxpreps. They do a great leaderboard in a number of offense, defense and special teams categories. Unfortunately, all teams do not submit stats to Maxpreps. Players on teams that do submit stats probably get an advantage when being evaluated for my team.

Prepseer,

At least your honest, about not seeing everyone, and trying to use what you have, so I can understand your logic. Harmon was not at Southfield last year, as he lead the PSL in sacks with 19 at Henry Ford and was first team all PSL. IMO that is part of the reason the OP had him ranked so low, they assumed some drop off would take place leaving the PSL. You would be hard pressed to find that kind of 2 year production from many…again, its your list, and I believe that you do the best that you can.

Farmington Hills Harrison’s Kicker only kicked for the first 4 or 5 games. Had injury and replaced by Steven Stepek (Jr.) and Michael Rubenstein (Sr).

I’d have to say Rubenstein and Stepek had a better season than Morris, he did good, but didn’t play like those two. Rubenstein’s leg is just amazing and Stepek has tons of upside as a junior.

jjohnson,

I was hoping to have heard from you before publishing the team. I didn’t have an Inkster roster and there were few detailed game reports available. I saw them at the scrimmage, but again didn’t have a roster. Was I OK on the players selected? The linemen? I almost put the Twins that transferred from Taylor Truman, but couldn’t find anything at all on them. I didn’t want to put them on simply for the pre-season hype.

As for Gardner, I did know him well. He’s obviously a better college prospect than Fracassa, but if you’ve ever seen Fracassa play, it would be hard to argue against his pick on a high school honor team. This is not a Blue-Chip List, but a h.s. honor team. He was the best player on the best team in the state wire-to-wire.

Nick Hill wasn’t on the team because it was only for Wayne, Oakland and Macomb county.

snyder jerry,

There’s no such thing as simple math when it comes to picking an All-Metro Team–or any other honor team for that matter. This is based on individual, not team performances. While, I don’t dispute your math, I will say that it’s irrelevant. There are too many variables. Do you know how many points were scored against the teams mentioned when 2nd and 3rd string players were on the field. Did you comapare the strength of the opponents of each of the teams. You can’t make a simple comparison of team defensive stats and then pick players from those teams for the Honor Teams. If that were the case, you would have many more players, who may not be deserving, repdresenting teams that happened to play great defense as a team and maybe they played that great defense and recored those great stats against inferior teams.

As for Capatina, I’ve seen him play at least ten times. I’ve got him where I think he belongs. Now, if you want to talk about players I have on the team who I haven’t seen play, let me know. It’s possible I’ve made a mistake on some.

Feel free to do your own team. I would be curious to see who you would put on from CC, OLSM and DLS that I didn’t mention and who you would take off from BBR.

Hey thanks for fixing the spelling error, and good job on the picks… nicely done.