It's unfortunate Tech missed the cut. After interviewing Chaffin a couple of months ago (http://www.thekeyplay.com/content/2014/february/25/2015-center-brian-cha...), I can say this kid will be a success at whatever career he pursues in life. He's a very smart, determined, and grounded kid, as well as a heck of a football player.
My Top 4 schools in alphabetical order #TGBTG pic.twitter.com/dyHEAfIkmX— Brian Chaffin (@B_Chaffin65) May 22, 2014
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Our recruiting is brutal right now.
Yeah, the loss of Grimes hurt. Not that Searels isn't a good coach, but it's hard to recruit a guy to a place you've only been for a few months yourself.
Brutal is a bit of an overstatement but if we don't land Sweat, Ferrell or any of these in highly rated in state guys than I officially go full freak out mode. We still have consistently finished in the top 30, 25 in the country but dang missing on these in state guys hurts. Ironically enough, right now our basketball recruiting is probably flying ahead of football but that's not really a surprise.
He's not in-state, he's from North Carolina. Still sucks to miss out but just saying
Yeah I know just got a little off topic haha. I've always thought we had a good chance with Chaffin before the Stanford offer.
I can see why he's settled on those schools, in-state + Stanford.
I don't think recruiting had anything to do with it.
....wow....
Its amazing just how knee jerk and short sighted our reactions have gotten recently.
We just finished one of the better recruiting classes we've ever had. Yes, we are missing out on some elite guys, but lets not dump chicken shit all over the guys we do have. We're just a couple months removed from completing a very solid class that included a complete overhaul of the offensive line with guys that actually played OL in their careers, an event so out of the norm for us, it actually merited mentioning. And now our recruiting is brutal because we can't sign a 5-star elite OL? Come on, man. Lets try to walk before we run. We have absolutely zero appeal to an elite OL guy right now. Zero. Our OL has sucked so hard for so long that its hard to even remember the last time it was good. Let Searels do his job this year, let him coach these guys up, and when we have a solid OL that is showing the good quality of coaching they're getting, and keeping our QB off his ass every game and opening up holes for our RB while flat out playing mean football (which is exactly the kind of play you WILL see out of this team, and soon) then we can hyper-evaluate and nitpick to death when guys start turning us down.
I mean really... when you are a OL recruit and your final list has Stanford, which has had some of the best OL coaching I've ever seen in recent years, you're a fool if you're even considering Virginia Tech when you're considering your long-term goals, especially as a 5-star recruit. Lets give our coaches some freakin time to show us what they've got before we roast them over the fire for not getting the job done.
It's a lot more than Chaffin.
Once again, way to shit all over the guys we ARE getting.
And my point still stands. If you're expecting this coaching staff to go out and sign a top 10 recruiting class every year, you're out of your mind. Won't happen. Just won't happen. Not under Beamer, and probably not under the next coach. And there are a variety of reasons for that, some of which being that recruiting agencies have historically under-ranked the recruits we get. But even with all that being said, last year we absolutely loaded up, especially on offense. We nabbed more 4* recruits in one year than we did over the course of a few years with Stiney. And another thing, its fucking May. The recruiting season doesn't even end until February, 2015. We have 9 months to round out a recruiting class, and you're freaking out and crapping all over the good work thats being done because a couple guys back away in May? Are you kidding me?
We are doing just fine on the recruiting trail. At this time last year, our recruiting class looked like Da'Shawn Hand and maybe a couple others. By the time it was done, it was a well rounded class that will have us playing better ball in the near future without Hand. As I said before, give these coaches a CHANCE to do something before you pull out the guillotine.
I wish your tone was more respectful, it's the spirit of TKP. And I've been following recruiting in Virginia since 1998. It's not like I don't know of which I speak.
Rivals preseason top 10: GTaylor, Settle, Clark, Sweat, Farrell, Simmons, DeBerry, DTaylor, Burrell, Lewis. We're in good shape with Farrell and Sweat. Out of it with Settle, Taylor, Simmons, Burrell and Lewis. Out of it with Clark in a few days. Not in great shape with DTaylor or DeBerry, but not out of it either.
It has been well documented that our in-state recruiting has been in decline for a few years, which puts more pressure on our out-of-state recruiting. We had a guy like Chaffin on campus before he got much attention, showed him early love, we're very close by. We only need a couple of OL this year, but we need a LT like Clark and we need a Center like Chaffin. They were/are undoubtedly the two on the top of our board. Chaffin is, like Barnett and Lewis, a classic example of good scouting by VT lead to kids getting noticed and us losing them. The flattery of our early identification doesn't feel so great when the kid signs elsewhere.
And it's not helpful for you to draw this conclusion that anyone who expects VT recruiting to be successful (i.e.: land the players you identify early, in the state, who you are expending the most resources) is disparaging the guys who we have commitments from. It is assumed that we are all hokies here, we are all grateful for the kids who want to join our very tight clan. It is a great honor and a big mark of respect for any kid, football player or not, to decide to be a Hokie. I'm sure you could ask any of our four commitments and they would agree that they want our class to be the best possible. It would be fantastic if the four guys we have are the lowest ranked players on NSD. It is meant, obviously, as no disrespect to our current verbals that our expectations at VT are great and we simply want our recruiting to be as successful as possible.
How was that disrespectful? It was still one of the more civil things you will read on the internet today.
All that OP said was our recruiting was brutal right now. While that might be an exaggeration, he never "shit all over the guys we are getting" and was far from freaking out. The response to his single sentence on the other hand...
it was like...
Funny thing about Stanford is that as well as they are apparently coached, in the last ten years Tech has actually had more offensive lineman drafted than Stanford.
Tech - 8 Stanford -7
Tech has had 1 1st rounder, 1 2nd rounder, 2 5th rounders, 1 6th rounder, and 3 7th rounders
Stanford has had 1 1st rounder, 1 2nd rounder, 1 4th rounder, 1 5th rounder and 3 6th rounders.
If you shorten the timeline, its a slight advantage to Stanford since 2010 at 4-2. I have no way of easily obtaining the undrafted free agent information but Tech seems to always have a lineman or two signing that way as well, with Miller this season. I get that perception is a big part of reality but reality is that Stanford is not a top school to get drafted to the NFL from as an offensive lineman.
Decided to look at his whole list for the last ten years
NC State had 5 lineman drafted, 2 3rds, a 4th, a 6th, and a 7th
North Carolina had 7 lineman drafted, a 1st, a 3rd, a 4th, 2 5ths, and a 7th
Duke had 1 lineman drafted, a 7th rounder in 2004
Wow, I would have guessed that Stanford would have bested us by 2:1 ratio or something.
Thanks for always taking the time to look up and post this information.
One big negative for us though, and it was something I thought to look at after my original post, was that Texas has done piss poor in terms of getting lineman drafted the last ten years. The last time a Texas lineman was drafted was 2008 and there were only 4 total in the last ten years.
Another sad thing to note is that we still trail LOLUVA historically in drafted players 133-123 since 1940.
Tech players have been drafted the most by these six teams:
1) New York Jets (9)
2) Detroit Lions (8)
3) Cleveland Browns (8)
4) Washington Redskins (7)
5) Broncos/Chargers both (6)
Whoa calm down, first of all Chaffin's just a 3 star recruit. Yes he's good and would have been a great addition but he's not considered "elite" by any of the recruiting services so I don't think saying that we're struggling in recruiting right now is much of an over-reaction. Also, the dude just simply stated his opinion which we're all free to do here, no need for a 2 paragraph rant...
I don't think it's brutal as much as it is sluggish. Tech's going after more highly regarded players this cycle, and none of them have really whittled down their lists.
This is what happens when you're taking a small offensive class.
There is also the second wave of recruiting. The kids we are chasing now are the ones early identified, more will come out after July camps and even some will show up as verifiable recruits after their senior years.
We will also be involved with kids who have already committed in the fall. Recruiting has changed a lot.
But one thing I watch is in-state and close by kids who VT identifies early, offers, gets on campus. Those are the kids you want to close. Its also nice to hold on to your verbals, where we obviously have struggled this year.
We need Sweat, that could really turn the momentum.
In Loeffler we trust? We aren't operating with elite guys right now...but the coaches seem confident in our boys.
Best of luck, Brian. This kid will be a great player on and off the field wherever he chooses to go.
Obviously he is prioritizing on good education. Smart kid. Wishing him success. Not that VT cannot provide that - but definitely understandable if he is primarily looking outside Tech's core disciplines.
Bummed, but hope he does well at Stanford.
Seems like a lopsided list even if he is from NC.
Of those 4 I would think that Stanford is a slam dunk unless he really wants to stay close to home.
OLU
Alphabetical Order. He sounds a little too smart for UNC.
Well I guess we got chaffed on this one.
dukadukaduk...Psssh
This made my day.....
Good luck to Brian Chaffin. Not every recruit or student can go to Virginia Tech and the Hokies cannot accept every one either. At least Brian is professional about his recruitment.
It'll be interesting if he winds up at State. A lot of players from his Highschool are on the current roster, however, they have Tony Adams pushing for the starting C as a true freshman.
I'm sorry, but WTF DOOK!?!? Seriously??
Well, in all fairness, a prospect is way better off learning from Cutcliffe than CML. Will win a lot more games too, and probably go bowling.
With that said, may we never lose to the Fighting Cutcliffes again!