According to InsideNova, Forrest Park wide receiver Eric Kumah will be enrolling for the spring semester at Virginia Tech.
Forest Park's Eric Kumah enrolling early at Virginia Tech ... https://t.co/TwmIWJB7gE @Eric_Kumah11— InsideNoVA (@InsideNoVA) November 24, 2015
Regarding the VT coaching search, Kumah said "I don't see a reason to change unless the new coach isn't interested in me,"
Kumah is a big bodied receiver who has excellent ball skills. He is also a good kick returner and jailbreak guy on inside screens. He will have a chance to compete right away for the third receiver spot in the Hokies rotation with back ups Demetri Knowles and Kevin Asante exhausting their eligibility and very little depth at the position.
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Great! We need WR
Has Knowles just been injured? How do you go from being like a 500-600 yard guy a few years ago to being a complete non-factor and "we don't have a third receiver." I know he has drawbacks, but it's hard to imagine he isn't at least serviceable if healthy.
Does anyone have any insight?
I was thinking the same thing earlier. I was looking at his stats on HokieSports and he went from WR and Kick Return in 2012 and 2013, to just KR in 2014 with 3 catches at WR, to only playing 2 games this year and one reception for 7 yards. Is he hurt? I didn't think that he was that bad and was at least relatively consistent.
Demitri Knowles HokieSports
Usually your #1 or #2 WR when passed on the depth chart can find a way to beat the #3 DB on the other teams.
Only thing I can think of is he was hurt, joined a sorority, or our coaches read these boards and realized how unpopular the kid was with the fans.
I never disliked him. I knew we were making due with what we had, but I felt like he tried hard and I never fault a hokie for giving it his best. Additionally, he took his demotion and almost complete lack of playing time with what seems like a lot of grace and a team first mentality.
LT had to throw to someone
That's cause Aaron Moorehead is not around. Look he turned Josh Stanford, Dimitri Knowles and then Willie Byrn into contributors, are they Isiah Ford or Cam Phillips, no - but they contributed. Zorn Burden is not the same as Moorehead. The new coach needs to be bring in some solid coaches.
Really Stanford didn't do shit his last year and Knowles had 3 catches last year. I'm not sure how you remember the receiving corps under Moorehead last year but Burden has done a great job with the people he has on the roster. I for one think Blocking on the outside has actually gotten better.
Maybe I'm just being naive, but I've noticed an uptick in wide receiver play under Burden. I don't miss Moorehead. Of course Ford and Phillips are better, but there seems to be more effort and team play now.
Knowles was a deep threat who wasn't especially adept at catching the ball. I'm surprised his contributions have been as minimal as they have, but I'm not shocked he's not excelled.
The amount of weapons an offensive coach would have at his disposal here for the next few years has to be a huge selling point.
Truth. I like Zohn, too, and hope the new staff has room for him.
He's a huge need. Great!
Love it!
Fantastic news. Dude wants to be a Hokie - awesome!
This is awesome! For lots of reasons.
I guess he's pretty confident that we're going to get a competent offensive coach here. Hopefully Jackson feels the same way
He won't have to worry about the new coach not wanting, kid is a baller.
I cannot believe our backup WRs Demetri and Kevin got too to no two catches tying them with Brandon Motley and Michael Brewer.
Good news! Assuming the new coach runs the spread, we need plenty of athletic WR's for 4 wide sets.
Well, it's hard to run a spread with no WRs.
Great news.
Who in the world are Demetri Knowles and Kevin Asante? /ssssss
I think I saw their pictures on some milk cartons.
Asante was recruited for one reason and that reason signed with UNC.
Marquise played us hard on that one, just to get his friend a scholarship.
I believe that a 757 defensive lineman did the same thing 2 years ago.
As did a RB from Pennsylvania that we keep waiting to show up for us, though I have no clue how close he and his OL teammate were. Someone failed to project how big this kid would get as a 247 pound lineman doesn't have much of a shot at contributing.
He did actually sign so I think that was a different situation.
Good point, my bad. Back to watching from afar.....
via GIPHY
Sometimes, I sit in my closet and cry about the recruits we didn't get. Where are we if we got Williams, Keith Marshall, Todd Gurley, Desean Hamilton, Landon Turner, Coleman Thomas, Deshawn Hand, Josh Sweat, Stephone Anthony and Derrick Nnadi?
That's why recruiting us so important to me with the next HC.
so how do you feel about Fuente?
Concerned about recruiting........impressed with what he did at Memphis.....excited to have a QB guru running the team.
Not my favorite, but might be our best real opportunity. Herman may have just preferred the rebuild at USCe in the SEC. Richt may either not be leaving or he may retire if he's fired. Miles is pretty old and is still currently employed. Smart is just a tough fit at VT with Buds presence, but I think he's going to be a star. Those are the guys I prefer over Fuente.
Fuente is very similar in my mind to Mullen, but cheaper. Both may not be great recruiters but are great at player development. I like a lot about Morris, but Fuente nudges ahead of him since he has actually completed the miracle rebuild.
Who says he cant recruit well?
Not me. I said "May not be a great recruiter."
Recruiting is important. I realize that. I also think that recruiting has less to do with the coach and more to do with the program with rare exceptions. I think Herman would have been the only real exception to that rule in this case. Dude can recruit. I think Richt and Smart benefited from being at UGA and Bama. Fuente may have been hurt by being at Memphis.
If Fuente is hired, I don't expect our recruiting to take a down turn. If anything, I imagine it will stay relatively the same with potentially a slight up-tick. I think an exciting offense will do more for recruiting at VT than much of anything. Fuente may not get a hot recruiting class right off the bat like I think Herman would but after a couple years of putting pretty good numbers up offensively the flood gates might start to open up a bit.
Projecting recruiting is an inexact process. Fuente may recruit very well here, but there isn't data to support that at this point. We also need to see his staff, the guys on his Memphis staff are all Texas or west based.
Intuitively, I agree that Fuente will do about as well as we have been. But back to my original point, that level of recruiting was leaving some cash on the table.
Like Beamers staffs in their heyday, Fuente also has an opportunity to be better at player development than his competition. That seems to his clear strength, you can't do what he did at Memphis unless you are an excellent teacher with schemes that take advantage of your talents. And no matter what, Fuente will have more talent at VT than he has ever seen before....even when he was at TCU.
I think he needs to retain someone off of the O staff, Stiney or Burden to have continuity and someone with ties to HS coaches in state. He could almost field a great team with players just from VA if we could get back to signing between 3 and 6 of the top 10 and half of of the top 20 like we did for several years. Stiney has those connections and Burden's time at ODU would be a selling point. I think he would also be able to convince Lawson to stick around and Jackson to stick with his commitment (unless Loefler ends up at a P5 and recruits him).
You just wait. You will forget all about those guys as soon as we land Harris!
*ducks
Other than wishful thinking and a magic wand, what makes you think a new coach and staff would be able to get any -- let alone a bunch -- of those guys to Blacksburg? And which guys wouldn't have come here if the current coaching staff wasn't here? Let's say VT gets 2 or 3 of them but doesn't get the Fullers...how much better off is VT?
I strongly suspect you're going to have no problem coming up with a similar list of woulda, coulda, shoulda recruits 5 years from now.
You've really taken that role of TKP Scrooge and run with it. I don't remember you being such a black cloud before the coach search. Just search your posts, every single one is just another version of "I have significant disdain for that thing you just said!"
Your point is a valid one, and it may not have been easily inferred that I wasn't literally saying we should have or would in the future sign all those type of players. But there are like ten ways you could have communicated your counter that would have expressed more respect for the spirit of TKP discourse.
Your original statement conveyed no nuance and just came across a myopic recitation of the same oversimplified and tired (and mostly inaccurate) argument about recruiting misses and how Beamer & Co didn't recruit.
If you don't want to be taken so literally, you could also consider taking a more reasoned approach as well to your comments that adds to and respects the discourse of TKP (like your later comment - which I was the only person to upvote BTW even though I don't entirely agree).
I'm obviously not a star athlete, nor have I ever been recruited. I came to VT for reasons of loving the atmosphere and looking forward to starting a career in Engineering. That said, I've always hoped part of the selling point for our recruits is how awesome it is to be a part of Hokie Nation, and the myriad benefits they would gain from that. I know college recruiting encompasses much more than my sentimentality, but I'm glad to see this kid still want to come to Tech even through a coaching change.
Now that... THAT.... that is a good last name for a football players. I will thoroughly enjoy yelling "KU-MAAH" for the next few years.
You're doing this all wrong...You're supposed to derail conversation to our new head coach or our old coaches!