ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Several years back, Jim Harbaugh paid a visit to Blue Valley North High School in the suburbs of Kansas City, Kansas, to check out four-star quarterback prospect Graham Mertz.
Mertz ended up signing with Wisconsin, but the visit paid off in a different way. As Harbaugh chatted with Mertz’s coach, the conversation turned to a local basketball star who also happened to be one of the best wide receivers in the city.
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That player was Ronnie Bell, who at that time was committed to play basketball at Missouri State. Harbaugh knew about Bell through his brother-in-law, a high school basketball coach in the Kansas City area, and ended up offering Bell a scholarship.
Now a senior captain, Bell is poised to lead Michigan in receiving for the third time. He has a younger brother, Kendrick, who committed to Michigan in October as a quarterback. And Kendrick’s coach at Park Hill High School is Andy Sims, who coached Mertz at Blue Valley North.
“I remember we were sitting there in the office talking about Ronnie,” Sims said. “Fast forward, and here I am coaching the little brother.”
Like Ronnie, Kendrick is a multisport athlete who splits his time between the football field and the basketball court. Like Ronnie, he’s a three-star recruit without a bunch of Power 5 offers. Seeing how Ronnie outperformed his ranking at Michigan, maybe it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the Wolverines would give Kendrick the same opportunity. That’s not how it felt to Kendrick, who said Harbaugh called “out of the blue” to offer him a scholarship in September.
“It was a surprise, 100 percent,” Kendrick said. “I remember after practice coach Harbaugh called me. He said he watched my film and told me he was going to offer me. That kind of blew my mind.”
Michigan sits at No. 24 in the 247Sports Composite rankings with 15 commitments for 2023, a smaller number than usual for this point in the cycle. The class has been marked by hits and misses, with five-star quarterback Dante Moore among the prominent targets who committed elsewhere.
With Moore off the board, the Wolverines had to assess their quarterback options for 2023 while zeroing in on five-star prospect Jadyn Davis for 2024. With Kendrick Bell joining the class, the Wolverines added a developmental quarterback who has the flexibility to play a different position — wide receiver, most likely — if QB doesn’t work out.
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“I think right now, his mindset is to go in as a quarterback,” Sims said. “If some things change along the way, he’s willing to do what the team needs. If he lands at receiver, that worked out for his brother, and it would probably work out for him, too.”
At 6-foot-3, Kendrick is 3 inches taller than his brother with similar ability to run after the catch. He didn’t start playing quarterback until his freshman year of high school and spent many of his summers on the AAU basketball circuit, so he wasn’t a polished quarterback prospect when Sims took over at Park Hill two years ago.
For both of his sons, Aaron Bell saw AAU basketball as a way to get exposure and earn a college scholarship. Whereas Ronnie was committed to play college basketball before switching to football, Kendrick didn’t get that far. He told his father after his junior season that he didn’t see himself playing basketball in college and decided to double down on his football training.
Kendrick spent the offseason working with a private quarterback coach to smooth out his mechanics. The improvement was apparent right away, bringing an uptick in recruiting interest early in Kendrick’s senior season.
“I thought a lot of his junior stuff was more an athlete trying to figure it out,” Aaron Bell said. “I felt like he was a true quarterback this season.”
Kendrick’s first scholarship offer came from UMass, coached by former Michigan defensive coordinator Don Brown. Tulane, Northern Iowa, North Dakota State and Tulsa were interested, as well. The offer from Michigan opened up a whole different world of possibility, as Kendrick experienced when he made his official visit during the weekend of the Penn State game.
After landing the scholarship offer from Michigan, Kendrick was torn between following his brother’s footsteps and doing his own thing. His visit to Ann Arbor resolved any lingering doubts.
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“Once he went up there, instead of seeing it from Ronnie’s eyes, he saw it for himself, and he fell in love,” Aaron said.
As a prospect, Kendrick isn’t on the same level with Mertz, a top-100 player in the 2019 class. Though Mertz was more polished as a passer at this stage of his career, Bell brings an athletic dimension that should expand his options. Sims coached both players and, in a roundabout way, had a part in both finding their way to the Big Ten.
“I’ve been lucky to have two great quarterbacks to coach,” Sims said. “I’ll be going up to see both these young men play.”
(Top photo courtesy of the Bell family)
