Maryland football coach Mike Locksley is likely to hire Zohn Burden to be his wide receivers coach, a source with knowledge of the situation told InsideMDSports.com. Burden would succeed Joker Phillips, who left in January to become the wide receivers coach at N.C. State. While he appears to be the heavy favorite for the job, he hasn't formally been hired, the source said.
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I wish we would have just moved him to WR coach when Wiggins left, but I don't think Fuente and Zohn got around particularly well.
Zohn probably asked him what software he preferred when reviewing and breaking down film.
Weren't there ALOT of questions around some of the offers he was throwing out?
Zohn was honestly pretty underwhelming. But it's yet another voice in the 757 with an axe to grind against VT unfortunately. Less worried at UMD becoming some powerhouse recruiting there and more about the final nail in the coffin in our recruiting efforts in the 757 under this staff.
There were, but he was also one of our best recruiters (if not the best recruiter) for a couple consecutive years. I did a post that is 2-3 years old at this point (can't find it right now) where I broke down the recruiting success for each of our coaches, and compared it to their salary - Zohn was
one ofthe best recruiter on staff, andone ofthe worst paid. IIRC, if you took 247 coach recruiter rankings, and divided it by salary (avg recruiting score/$ of salary), Zohn was#1 in the nation#2 among 15 public schools who are geographic and/or conference rivals.I'm not sure what changed from early 2017 to 2018.
EDIT: Big shout out to FudBoster who tracked down my post from 2 years ago! Correction to my above comment - Zohn was the #2 best recruiter per $ of the public schools I analyzed, and as a whole, VT was doing pretty well (per dollar spent on) recruiting.
Nothing a Boolean search can't find
WOW great work! What was your search criteria?
("recruiting" AND "bar1990" AND "ranking")
What changed from 2017 to 2018 was probably the capehart situation
Care to elaborate on the capehart situation?
Capehart was a verbal commit to VT, went on an official visit to UMD after he verbally committed to VT without telling Fuente and Co., Fuente pulled his offer when he found about his visit to UMD through other sources.
Seemed like the issue was more the kid wasn't honest with Fuente rather than him taking the visit.
There's an extra wrinkle to this as well-Capehart said he visited College Park as a favor to a family friend who was coaching up there (or an actual family member...can't remember precisely). So, yes, Tahj should have informed Fuente about this, but if Fuente was trying to send a hardline message about this sort of thing, I'd say it didn't have the intended effect given our recruiting classes since this happened. Seems like quite a few bridges have been burned in regards to recruiting in the 757 (perhaps not directly related to this, but it can't have helped)
I seem to remember the rub being that Capehart specifically lied about going when he was specifically asked about going.
Since Capehart can't play dead in a western, we dodged a bullet on this one.
Insiders were basically saying the same thing when it happened. Of course it got shrugged off as sour grapes. Bottom line is he was overrated and we didn't cater to his BS. I think most of us would applaud that in a coach but somehow it keeps blowing back up in conversation. There have been influential people in Virginia High school football smearing VT since the Thoroughbreads. I wonder if something similar went down with Capehart where a false narrative won out and had extreme repercussions.
The thoroughbred situation was essentially Corwin Cutler's dad try to leverage Blanding, Brown, and Mizzell into getting Cutler an offer at QB at VT, Lefty / Beamer wasn't haven't it and all of them ended up getting funneled to UVa, correct?
that was the start. then they bad mouthed VT and Beamer up and down the State. Worked hand in hand with the former cop at lolUVA to get kids there instead of VT. Shitty parents too involved in their kids lives with time on their hands and an ax to grind.
Capeheart situation, besides the above, was an optics issue of Fuente seemingly being ridiculously harsh on a recruit for taking a visit. Yeah we dodged a bullet on a recruit that didn't pan out but it cost us relationships as I remember.
Unless I missed additional info like on Burden below.
was he making offers on his own without knowledge of anyone else? or were the recruiting coordinators and Fuente in full knowledge as it is their job to be fully in the know? which seems more likely to be true
This logic is highly questionable and paints Burden unfairly IMO
Was it Zohn or Mitchell that was offering kids before the all clear? Replying to Fernley as a similar question.
thanks! appreciate the reply. I hadn't read that. was it in an article somewhere ?
I heard/read that (1) he was handing out offers to kids that the rest of the staff hadn't scouted/decided on, and (2) he was handing out a ton of non-committable offers in VA, which both 'devalued' an offer from VT, and pissed off high school coaches.
On a recent podcast, Andy Staples was talking about how difficult it can be for (certain) hometown teams to deal with in-state politics - he was specifically talking about Texas and Miami. There's an expectation among high school coaches in Dade, Broward, and Palm counties that any offer from Miami is committable. This brings puts Miami in catch-22; if they offer a kid, they have to be ready to take him immediately. If they hold off on offering a kid, but another school comes through with an offer, then Miami coaches look bad for not offering the kid soon enough. Or worst case - kid doesn't commit, someone better comes along, Miami offers kid #2 and yanks the offer from kid #1 - then they look really bad. I guess Texas faces similar issues in state.
Anyways, as listening to this, I couldn't help but wonder if Fuente was in a similar bind in the state of VA, and if/how much Zohn contributing to putting the program in this bind.
Digressing even further - this is why I think that all offers should not just be committable, but signable on the spot, effectively making ESP/NSD obsolete. Offers can include an expiration date as well, just like a job offer in the real world.
I don't even understand what a non-committable offer would look like. Are the coaches being sneaky in their phrasing or straight up pulling offers. I know every offer has a clock tied to it, but every offer should be capable of being committed to at that particular time it is made.
Non-committable offer is basically an offer that could be pulled down the road depending on who doesn't go pro or what other recruits sign, etc.
Who was that DL we were recruiting last year who had offers from us and LSU and Pitt? I think Pitt was the only 'committable' offer of the three.
Tenneseee sends out 500 offers a year. How many of them do you think are real?
Probably less than 25 (#nosauces)
Naquan Brown who you're thinking of? Committed to LSU but I think they told him to look around. That's the only one that comes to mind with all 3 schools.
Yep! That's the one!
Apparently VT cooled on him- which I don't believe, and then VT proceeds to not sign any big time DE's in the process.
Maybe, maybe not but he definitely doesn't fit the mold of what we're going for in regards to DE.
And what is that mold?
Guys bigger than Jalen Stroman? That's the target. I'm not saying he's going to be an elite talent or a massive bust, but his listed height and weight are bigger than his camp numbers, and he doesn't have the greatest speed to play off the line.
The guys we've signed recently at DE have all been 6'3" and up, and over 220 pounds.
Well that's great...
I think what I like least about this is that he can leverage all the relationships he built while at Tech and blame any problems on Fuente. Is Capehart still at UMD?
Pretty sure Capehart entered the portal a few weeks ago...so no
Regardless of how good anyone thought he was, we're losing another 757 connection. And haven't really been replacing any of them.
The JC Price hire is key here, Price can recruit, has a knack for finding talent in the 757, and was a former player with 757 legends.
Losing another 757 connection? We lost whatever 757 "connection" Burden provided a long time ago
Zohn, as the primary or secondary recruiter brought in some productive talent, which you can click through here: Link
That being said, his coaching was lacking. He wasn't going to unseat Holmon Wiggins, who was an upgrade and his work was highlighted in the national championship game last month. He couldn't coach RBs. He was the odd man out.
Zohn will forever be an A+ emoji user.
Zohn should be wary of the inevitable train wreck that the future holds for UMD football under the Locksley leadership. Good luck to ZB, nonetheless.
If Locksley hired him, it's about recruiting, not coaching. Locksley is arguably the worst head coach in the P5 based on his record at MD and New Mexico. It's never been about X's and O's with him, it's about bringing in guys good enough to overcome his terrible coaching.
He was a fine playcaller at Alabama. NM is a really, really tough place to win. I'm not saying Locksley is a great coach, and I think it might be fair to say that he prioritizes talent over scheme (not a bad thing IMO), but it's definitely extreme to say 'it's never been about X's and O's with him' - you don't get to that level without a great understanding of how plays are designed and executed.
I'm sure he was a great middle school coach and can probably BBQ a piece of steak. He is an awful head coach. One of the worst. You are what your record says you are.
I get it, I wouldn't want him as HC at VT, but I think that stems from his inability to run a program from the top down; not from a lack of tactical knowledge.
Side note - I hate this saying so much. It doesn't apply to college football, where we often see that a 8 win SEC is better than a 1 loss G5 team, or a team with a better record have an off day, etc.
True, but if the body of work is big enough, it's true. Great coaches - at any level- don't lose at an 80% clip over time. Great coaches eventually win- everywhere the go, no matter the situation or personnel. That's why they are great coaches. If Fuente is great, he will start winning 9-10 games a year, despite Whit allowing other sports teams to walk inside Merryman, and not having a 2 million dollar analyst money pool. If Fuente is a great coach, he can beat UNC, UVA, Pitt, Miami, GT and Duke many more times than they beat him, no matter the circumstance.
Locksley is Mike London 2.0. Will steal some good recruits away from us and proceed to not go to a bowl game.
Wrong Thread.