So, I wasn't even aware of this guy until I saw it on the ticker on ESPN yesterday. A 3* by scout, 247 and 4* by ESPN (I believe) committed to UNC over Alabama, Auburn and us. I don't know if he cut us out early or what. But my bigger question is to why we seem to be locked out of Woodbridge HS. That may just be me, but Campbell and Hand come to mind. I don't know who we have recently from Woodbridge. Obviously Alex probably has more information on this than I do but I was wondering the community's thoughts on it, plus I didn't see anything like how we looked towards, Patterson, Ellis, etc.
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Do you mean Kyree Campbell?
Yes, he did.
Bragghokie, thanks for starting the topic, but before starting a new topic in the future read: (1) http://www.thekeyplay.com/community-guidelinesand (2) http://www.thekeyplay.com/content/2015/july/22/meta-community-guidelines....
edited the post so I hope it's more along the guidelines with what you mean. I was doing something else at the same time so I forgot the links and such.
He was never that interested in us. Without looking it up, he's wildly out of size for VT's defense. I think he's like a 6'5" 280+ DE. That's a DT for us, maybe. He is probably too tall to play DT for us. He just didn't fit with Foster's defense, but he kept us on his short list anyway.
This is pretty much what my thoughts were when I saw he committed and was puzzled why VT wasn't a top contender. Foster & Wiles want athletes over sheer size, so I'm guessing we didn't target him much because he didn't have what we wanted. And from his commitment comments it sounded like he was pretty smitten with Chapel Hill [insert confused emoticon here].
Its not so much about how big/tall a player is, its more about his skill set and "twitch" as Coach Wiles always says. They couldn't care less about size of a player. The only thing they care about, and any coach for that matter, is how the player's skill set fits their defensive scheme/philosophy. If Bud Foster landed a 6-6 280 pound End that could run like a gazelle and/or a 230 pound end like Dadi, i.e. Clowney, you better believe he'd play him at End. Same goes for a Tackle that is 6-5 320ish that has the speed of the ball like Corey Marshall, i.e. Suh. It's just a coincidence that a lot of "big" linemen get switched around a lot at Tech, why?, because of their skill set, not their size.
How's Hand doing down in Bamaland?
Pretty well actually
Not as well as Jonathan Allen.
According to this link Alabama depth chart, he is 3rd string DE. Kirven is 2d string on the OL.
I won't really use this as a example. I'm pretty sure this goes under the complete fail in recruiting.
Hand would have been an immediate starter, or should have been recruited that way (possible further fail), vs knowing he was 3rd team at Bama
Also Hand would have had the same popularity as previous 5* recruits Fuller and T Taylor
But Hand went to Bama, Land of Top Talent, where he isn't a starter or the face of the program.
As for how he's doing he's following previous NFL Draft Picks working his way to the Top, Considering this year he is behind A'Shawn Robinson, the 2016 NFL Draft's Top DT and a redshirt JR Dalvin Tomlinson, Probably Top NFL 2017 draft class
didn't realize Tomlinson was so highly regarded
And to this I wonder how many guys miss there chance at the NFL because they go somewhere where they end up buried on the depth chart as opposed to going to another school where they would probably be starting. How many guys miss the NFL due to that I wonder? Or at least how many end up signing as an UFA as opposed to being drafted.
Hard to say. Probably equal to the number of players that choose a school where they end up starting, but didn't get the coaching needed to make it to the NFL. I mean Matt Cassel spent his entire USC career as a backup and still made it
Not as often these days. NFL scouts/coaches do their due diligence. I don't think he's going to get overlooked just because he spends an extra year or two riding the bench. Don't forget, he's just a freshman. He has 4-5 years to prove his worth.
It's hard to say no to Bama.
At least he didn't Settle!
I still am not entirely convinced Hand would have been a great fit in Bud's system. Most of Hand's high school experience came on the interior and I don't know if he had the twitch on the edge. Guys like Sweat, Dalton, and Jonathan Allen (who is also at Bama ahead of Hand) were much bigger losses.
Biggest factor would have been his influence in terms of landing elite kids in state IMO. I still think he would have been superior to someone like jr Collins who had a pretty good career here.
Great point.
That I agree with. And I don't think Hand's best fit was Alabama. He should have gone to a true 4-3 school. Butch Davis version of the 4-3 from UNC would have been the ideal fit for his path to the NFL.
Does getting 1 or 2 five star kids really make much difference in terms of influencing other in state kids? While on the surface it seems logical, I've seen little to no evidence to support this notion.
VT probably only wants about 6 of the top 10 kids and generally gets about 3. Would getting the big fish help in getting the other 2 (plus others)? Has it helped UVA?
I don't know, but they're certainly attempting to make a claim to that effect in Maryland this year. [Haskins and the "movement".]
I would have liked to have seen Tino Ellis at Virginia Tech this year, even if Virginia Tech still got a pretty good WR class.
This is not completely applicable because Maddy was not a 1 or 2 star, but Dadi Nicolas credits Tech's willingness to try and sign Maddy as a reason for liking Tech and that Minnesota's refusal to do so as one reason he de-committed.
Source: Alex Koma's story
would have to land the 5 *s to have a clue. It also depends on the position. A 5* QB can certainly create a lot of buzz on the offensive side of the ball and help you land better offensive skill position players. A 5* DE? who knows, but it can't hurt especially when it's a position we've struggled to land elite players at.
As for landing 3 out of the top 10 we haven't been doing that lately and when we are landing kids in the top 10 they are generally in the lower half of the top 10. We are missing out on the majority of what the recruiting industry thinks are the state's elite players. As for helping UVA it's hard to tell as well. They have landed more 5* players in the last 2-3 years then we have in the last decade, but the time cop seems to have run out of time.
WHAT? How can this be? He's been saving up his timeouts for years to fend off this exact situation.
Agree with that. It would be nice to pull a 5* instate talent once in a while.
Wouldn't he have just been a starter at DT?
The John Allen thing is really interesting actually. I've talked with one of his old coaches and VT blew it and then some with his recruitment. When VT was first introduced to him, John was "too small" and so they wouldn't offer until they saw how much he grew. This apparently pissed him off and he felt spurned the rest of his recruitment. Prior to that, he had been very interested.
This right here, VT didn't blow it. VT coaches don't throw scholarships out to every player and then choose who they then take. IF a player is given a VT offer its because you have been given the chance to play at VT and go to school for free. VT does its homework, the reason they are the first to offer a lot of kids.
Yea I agree here. Similarly, if we have 15 scholarships to give, we don't give out 20 offers and then when 18 kids except choose which 3 scholarships to revoke.
Maybe "blew it" was the wrong way to put it. More so saying in hindsight it sucks because they had no way of knowing like you mentioned. One way or another, however they put it to him rubbed him the wrong way.
I am not going to claim I knew anything about Allen's recruitment, however I can say that as a senior, he was as about as ideal a fit for a DE in Bud's system as I have seen until Jalen Dalton came along. I am not buying this explanation. I don't doubt your credibility, but it doesn't align with my observations on Allen's high school career.
Correct but I doubt Virginia Tech saw him for the very first time during his senior year. Plus like I said, those words came straight from the mouth of the guy who coached him early on. He's a coach at a local high school and is actually the same reason VT was turned on to a commit named Clay Dean.
#saucedropping
Can't deny what you say...
If a guy feels slighted, that is a recruiting fail. No way around that, if it is true.
BS,
So if VT coaches don't offer the kids Call Girls and blow and that's what he wanted is that a recruiting fail? You can't make every kid happy never can never will. If a coach comes into Tech and starts telling recruits he can make them happy no matter what I don't want him as coach.
Whaaaa????
Hookers and blow? I said something close to that?
I haven't seen a reach like that since this guy...
Edit...
This is the original post:
The John Allen thing is really interesting actually. I've talked with one of his old coaches and VT blew it and then some with his recruitment. When VT was first introduced to him, John was "too small" and so they wouldn't offer until they saw how much he grew. This apparently pissed him off and he felt spurned the rest of his recruitment. Prior to that, he had been very interested.
No coke, no blow..WTF are you talking about?
Is there one thing about this that, as I said "if true", that you see as a good move recruiting-wise. Keep in mind Allen is no Schmuck.
I went extreme because of the wording you used and sometimes I feel certain social network fans think coaches should do everything and anything to get a kid to VT. A kid or coach saying he recruit was "slighted" is BS to me. Like the one parent who said a coach didn't say hi.
Ok...missed this before my edit.
I'm a big fan of the coaches, and definitely tend to defend them.
But this...again "if true" is a boneheaded thing to happen.
Peace.
How is it boneheaded to wait to offer a kid?
At some point it's time to put up or shut up.
Warning I don't know the specifics but
You can keep telling a kid you want to give him a scholarship, BUT we need this and that. Ok the first time is motivation but once a recruit shows the commitment the school needs to also. If that means a conditional offer than maybe that's just what Tech needs to start doing.
And in this case, a 5* recruit, even a 4* recruit, can be given a scholarship right away. A player in the 99th percentile of high school players will generally pan out well
VT has got to move away from the current recruiting model used. 60% of players currently are instate and I'd bet more than half had planned to come to VT since middle school. It's not hard to recruit to players to their dream school. That has given VT a lot of freedom in holding back and only offering scholarships the way they do. But if you want to recruit out of state players and players that don't dream of playing at VT since middle school than you have to change how and when you offer kids.
No, the day VT starts just starts throwing scholarships out at any highly rated player is the day I stop donating money and buying tickets.
I'd be interested to see how the numbers stack up. For every kid who gets a scholarship offer before he's ready, but grows as expected and can say "they believed in me first" how many are there who get a scholarship offer, don't pan out and then have it pulled?
You have to figure out what you're willing to do as a program. How many non-committable offers are you willing to hand out in the off chance that one of the kids progresses and you can turn that into a bonafide offer?
He played (not a lot) as a true freshman.
What I find interesting is that there should be some serious sanctions coming down on UNC athletics, in the face of one of the worst athletic/academic scandals in the history of the NCAA, yet everyone seems to be pretending that it's not happening.
Then this will be a reason used to say that sanctions wouldn't be fair to the players.
The whole thing does seem vaguely familiar.... oh yeah, the exact same thing happened to UNC under Butch Davis 5 years ago. Different sanctions, same crap. "Don't worry, the football team won't be touched." Fedora better hope not, or his reputation is torched for the rest of his career.
I just hate the current system of NCAA's way of giving sanctions and don't think it's fair to the current players at a university (albeit, I can't think of a better alternative)
Just like USC and the whole Reggie Bush ordeal. USC was hit long after Bush was in the NFL and the players that "weren't allowed to play in bowl games" weren't even involved with the incident. Even at that time, Pete Carroll was in Seattle. So how is punishing a new coach and a new team an appropriate form of discipline. But this is the issue with the average coach tenure being 4 - 5 years (at best). By the time the NCAA does anything, the coach has moved on to another job and the university is left with the backlash.
My proposal would be to put sanctions on the coaches and players involved, not the university, unless said university was fully aware of the infractions. If the coach has moved to a new university in the NCAA, then those sanctions follow. If they go to the NFL (i.e. Carroll), put the sanctions on hold and they start the minute he comes back to the NCAA, if he ever does. This would start to weed out the "bad" coaches over time and put more pressure on current coaches to follow the rules.
It's not just the coaches, it's the university and entire community that needs to support the rules. Why should UNC's overall athletic program benefit from systemically flouting NCAA rules and academic fraud?
The NCAA should simply move faster.
But then for guys like Bush and Carroll who will probably never return to the college ranks, you never end up punishing anyone and teams essentially get away with cheating if they're just fast enough about it. The USC situation was a little messed up, but places where the coaches, atmosphere, and athletic department (UNC, PSU, Miami, SMU, etc.) are part of the issue then the program should absolutely face punishment.
That's why the "lack of institutional control" charges are so significant, and usually result in more punishment. This makes it a school wide problem, not just a coaches/players thing.
His offer list is expansive with every local program and most east of the Mississippi that are top teams offering him. Seems lien UNC might be a good fit if he committed to them.
He's a guy whose stock has dropped ever since he got rated the first time as a sophomore. It was anticipated that he would be a top 100 guy (hence the Bama, Auburn, OSU offers) but it never seemed to pan out. I believe that none of the other offers were committable.
That being said, he was long thought to be a UNC lean.
Maybe he is attracted to their academics? :)
Bucks were on him early during his sophomore summer. He seems to be trending down a tad lately. I guess he hasn't kept himself in the best of shape and lost some of his explosiveness. More of a project based on his frame right now than anything else.
He doesn't even have to go to real classes at UNC, we can't compete with that.