Michigan added a big name to its 2024 recruiting class on Friday when ESPN 300 quarterback Jadyn Davis announced his commitment to the Wolverines.
Davis is the No. 35 prospect overall and the No. 3 dual-threat quarterback in the class. He’s a 6-foot-1, 200-pound signal-caller from Charlotte, North Carolina, and chose the Wolverines over nearly every major program in the country.
His commitment gives Michigan its first ESPN 300 quarterback since current starter J.J. McCarthy signed in the 2021 class.
“I had a lot of schools that were heavily recruiting me and I’m a big relationship guy, so it was hard to narrow that list down and tell people no, but I prayed on it and asked for guidance,” Davis said. “I asked for signs and all the signs pointed to Michigan, and I’m happy with my decision. I’m ready to get there to work and earn the starting job and lead them to a national championship.”
Davis has been part of the recruiting process since he was 13 years old, earning his first offers from Alabama and Georgia, so he has been able to see schools and programs from nearly every angle. The son of a marine, Davis said he has a “good B.S. meter” and was able to wade through the noise of what was important and what wasn’t in his decision.
“I can kind of weed through all that pretty fast and get caught up in the glitz and glamour and the facilities,” Davis said. “You might get a job and the office space is the best, but after a month or two of being there, it’s just an office building. So I had that approach, which I know is not typical, but this was a business decision, as well.”
Michigan checked off a lot of boxes for Davis and his family, especially from the academic side. His mother and father were both very much a part of the process to ensure their son had all the facts and was making the best decision off of the right criteria.
“If you graduate with a degree from Michigan, you’re almost set for success,” Davis said. “My mom and dad have always been ‘no books, no ball’ and education tops the charts in their mind.”
It didn’t hurt that he also had a good relationship with quite a few of the players on Michigan’s roster and has been able to get to know McCarthy and the rest of the quarterback room. That group has stood out through the process as a unit that looks out for its members, Davis said, and they genuinely work to help each other while also competing to make Michigan’s offense the best it can be.
The relationships with the players bled over to the coaching staff as well, and Davis spoke highly of Michigan’s coordinators, but it was the head coach who stood out above all else.
“Coach [Jim] Harbaugh, that’s my guy; I would run through a brick wall for Coach Harbaugh,” Davis said. “He fires me up, his personality can be controversial at times, but I love Coach Harbaugh.”
Those relationships, the education and what Michigan can provide Davis all put the Wolverines over the top despite the quarterback having so many other programs after him. In today’s recruiting landscape, name, image and likeness is typically a major factor in the recruitment of elite-level prospects. But for Davis, he said he wasn’t interested in using that as a barometer for his decision.
He said he is interested in eventually working in the NIL market, but he wasn’t caught up in what schools could offer him before he got to campus and didn’t let it factor into what school won out.
“My motto is, I can’t be bought,” Davis said. “I’ve turned it down even when I was approached, and you can’t buy my happiness, because that’s just not the kind of guy I am. At the end of the day, I’m going to be happy based off of the people that are in the building, not with any monetary value.”
Davis knows if he plays well and earns the starting job that the money will naturally come to the starting quarterback at a university such as Michigan. He said he focused more on what was already in place and how comfortable he would feel if the money never came in.
The Wolverines helped themselves in that category over the past few seasons, winning the Big Ten championship two years in a row and making the College Football Playoff. Davis wants to be part of a winning program, and seeing the offense Michigan runs and how it will prepare him for the NFL, combined with the trajectory of the program, was enough for him and his family to see that Michigan was where he wanted to be.
“I’m a guy that hates losing more than I like winning, and teams always say they’re close and they’re about to get over the hump,” Davis said. “But Michigan has showed us that they’re over the hump and it’s a place where you’re going to play in the largest stadium in college football, play on the biggest stages and have an opportunity to compete for a national championship, and that’s exactly what I want.”
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