COMMITTED ๐๐ค๐พ...#blessed @coachwiles @EvanGWatkins247 @MatejS247 @AdamLechtenberg @CoachFuente @zachvcool @5StarPreps pic.twitter.com/8E1xgG2nWVโ ๐๐ฎ๐ป๐ป๐ฎ๐ต๐ต ๐๐ช๐ฒ๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ป๐ค (@thefuture____52) July 28, 2019
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Welcome to Hokie Nation, Derrell!
How the heck is this kid only a 3*? Geesh...looks at his film and size. This may really be a diamond in the rough.
He has a great offer list.
Oregon, Florida, Oklahoma, LSU, South Carolina. Kid is a legit recruit. Probably got some offers just based on his size and potential, but it will be awesome to watch him develop with Wiles. Will need to be patient with him as he develops his technique a little more though.
Maybe he already is! And Fu is the only one that knows it.
I didn't realize he was a Jafar Williams recruit. New staff paying dividends already
https://www.knoxnews.com/story/sports/high-school/2019/07/28/virginia-te...
69 solo tackles, Nice!
Nice
"over finalists LSU and Virginia"...wut?
don't see that sentance very often.
BuT He'S NoT a FiVe StAr
The issue isn't taking 3 star playersโit's taking 3 star players with only 0-1 other P5 offers.
The kid's offer list, size, and film indicate this is a good pull. Something that I haven't seen with most of the rest of this class.
It's one thing to offer a kid with 0 P5 offers in February of his graduating year. It's another to offer him after camps the summer going into his Sr year.
There are stages in recruitment and some blow up later than others.
I'll gladly eat my words if some of our 0 P5 offer kids "blow up". Maybe that will happen to one or two. Don't get your hopes up that it will happen to 8 or 9.
You won't get 100% on bluechips either. This is a small class. If they get contributions out of half the class, the world will keep turning.
No one expects 100% from blue chips. Don't argue a point no one is making.
Perhaps I wasnt clear then. The post I replied to said not to get my hopes up for 8 or 9 of these under the radar kids to blow up on recruiting trail. My point was that we dont need all of them to overachieve to be a successful recruiting strategy because even with the better odds of blue chip players, there is always a certain level of washout.
Sorry my post didnt live up to your high standard, I hope this clarifies it a bit.
Well next time you're playing poker, don't be shocked when your 4s and 6s get beat more often than not by face cards. See how that strategy works
Put in the right order and right suit and they will smoke the face cards. Not at all what I was getting at though.
It is though. That's how probability works over an aggregate of 85 scholarship players.
For somebody that told me to stop inventing arguments, you are doing a lot of it yourself. Very simply, I was only saying that we do not need every reach to overachieve to be a successful strategy. Every class has a baseline of failure. Yes, you have a greater probability to hit with blue chip talent, but it wont be 100 percent.
Lets say an average 3 star recruit has a 30% chance of contributing and an average 4 star has a 60% chance (no idea how close to realistic this is). If evaluation can get those 3 star kids up to closer to 45 or 50% success rate, we are back in the ballpark. It is unwise to make a living trying to outsmart the room for long, but it seems to be a necessary starting point on the road to building a program's reputation. If it doesnt pan out, Fuente wont pan out. Such is the world of college football.
Dude is 6'6 and 255 lbs...cant wait to see what he's like after getting with Hilgart!
Replacement for Darrisaw or Dzansi when one graduates or goes to NFL?
Let's hope he can play DL because we need it
6'6" 265....with a lot lower % body fat....it would be nice to have a "Montez Sweat" coming off the edge.....
I know we as fans say it about a lot of prospects, but with that offer list I have a tough time thinking this kid isn't ranked a little low.
Good pickup.
If I had to guess, some of it might be it looks like the competition level he is playing isn't great. If he doesn't camp a ton, could make for a harder eval
Reading that we got a DL commit had me like...
Very exciting pick up!! Let's goooooooo!!!
Hokies!!!
This is a good one. Nice work getting a commitment while on campus, too.
Would be great if we start using more size at DE, but I think he's too tall for DT. Looks like a Nijman situation to me
Yeah I'm nervous he ends up on OL. We need DL so badly.
He's the perfect size for a lean, athletic tight end
So our QB of the future you say.
His size reminds me of Chris Ellis. That's if he plays defensive end.
I'm gonna need a phonetic spelling of his name for pronunciation so we don't end up with the confusion that was Terrell Owens.
Phonetically it's Kevin!
Everyone's wondering how he's only a 3-star, but it's obvious to me from watching that HUDL video. That's not high level competition he's playing against. The whole thing reminded me of the day my middle school basketball team got to play against our dads because the other team forgot where the game was supposed to be played and never showed up. Sure they were old and fat and out of shape, but boy did they kick our asses pretty soundly.
Dude looks like a man playing against boys. Obviously that does not mean that he will not pan out, but it certainly makes it harder to confidently project his ceiling.
I agree it makes it harder to project a player's ceiling when they play a lower level of competition. I do think this is where the services lack a bit (scouting players who aren't playing at the highest level of competition). James Mitchell is an example of a player who should have been top 2-3 in the state and some services had him barely in the top 10. I'm not saying he is JM, I'm just making the point that small school kids who have big school talent are necessarily rated the same due to these factors.
However, in this case I believe he will be a 4 star post senior year based on camps, season performance, measurables etc. I like this commitment alot
He would need to jump like 800 spots to be a 4 star. I get that people are optimistic about him, and we should be, but that large of a jump is not probable. Please don't let "he's probably going to be a 4 star by the end of the year" become the next thing. Let's just accept that he's a solid 3 star player and will hopefully be a solid contribution to the team. There's nothing wrong with that.
so what you're saying is he's gonna be the next Bruce Smith for us
Thanks for the math lesson. Does it ever get old being that negative?
::Checks every single thread for the last 6 months::
Apparently not.
Somebody has to bring balance to the force
Nice potshot though
Just dripping in negativity
in the context of "your optimism is overblown and what you just said you think will happen almost certainly wont"? Yeah, it's relatively negative even if you don't think it's absolutely negative.
Asking for realistic expectations isn't negativity
tone tone tone tone tone, my guy. people read negativity and not realism in your comments because you come across negatively way more (and way more often) than you do "realistically". if people always think you're negative, it's probably because you've earned it to a degree.
"I like this commit too and think we could see his rating rise over the next year, but I'd be surprised if he makes it to 4* because he'd have to jump ~800 recruits to get there" and voila, you affirm the positivity, qualify it with "realism", and you don't personify a larger gripe with the crootin' narrative ("the next thing") in the OP.
You're splitting hairs man. If you need it to be that delicately phrased, you're just looking for a reason to be upset
I don't need anything, but there's a pretty obvious disconnect between what tjb is saying, what tjb thinks he's saying, and what a lot of other people think tjb is saying. Don't want to be perceived as negative? Great, fine, adjust the tone to be less negative. it's not that difficult.
There's room here for the hokiefireman-types and the outoftowner-types. but don't try to claim being the measured one in the middle when it's pretty clear that's not the case. Tjb even made a "bringing balance to the force" comment -- moderate realists didn't bring balance to the force, sith lords did.
Um excuuuuuuuuse me, but the grey Jedis believe in seeing the positives of both the light and dark sides
Anything short of, I'm happy he's a Hokie, is being too negative here.
I'm happy he's a hokie.
Who gives a shit if he "jumps" 800 more spots and gets another star (even if he does will just make it harder to keep him from Bama or Clemson). That won't mean a thing about what he does when he gets here. Looks like a great commit and let's hope he sticks.
You're obviously wrong. If you look at how the final score is calculated in a game, you get an extra touchdown if you have more 4 and 5 stars than the other team. /s
via GIPHY
Damn that big and quick as a jr? He is going to wreck havoc when foster gets his mitts on him!
Good Pick-up....he will blast through the DL..good power and speed...
Are we still in the running for Tyler Baron? be nice to have a Tennessee two-step on our outside DL
In the running? We're on track to be Miss Congeniality.
Does that say 255 lb DE? Is that allowed? I thought the NCAA capped the size for DE's at 240 lbs like 20 years ago.
I hope he stays on the outside of the line and raises hell. Bailey can ring the QB's bell and Stephen can sing along.
Guess that's why our defense has been so pathetic for most of the last 20 years.
Sure it'd be nice to get the huge, athletic freaks with high ratings coming out of high school but they aren't exactly a dime a dozen. Have we honestly lost any trust in Bud and Wiles after one abysmal season?
I also hope he stays outside. My worry is that if he won't stay outside at DE, he will move to OL instead. You don't see a lot of 6'6 DT's for any team. I'm far from panic mode, and he may well be fine at DT at 6'6 or 6'5 or whatever his real height is. I just want to see him on the DL because that's a position of greater need at the moment.
EDIT: Also, despite all the 240 lb rhetoric stuff with our DE's for a long time we played with a stud and a rush end, with one being more of an anchor against the run and usually more traditional DE weight. Remember guys like Noland Burchette and Orion Martin who both were around 6'2 260lbs? They both played opposite a more aggressive, pass-rushing threat. So it wouldn't be ridiculous to think that we could play with Sings at our traditonal 240-250lb DE size, and Derrell Bailey opposite him at 6'5/6'6 265 or 270 given his height.
I still think that we have two DE examples that really skewed our idea and created all these DE weight narratives and that would be Dadi Nicolas and Houshun Gaines. Both are very lean for DE. However, I would argue that our biggest problem putting DE's in the NFL has not been weight, but has actually been their height/length. We have not had a lot of DE's over 6'2, often times using DE's that are 6'0 or 6'1. The average NFL DE is just barely south of 6'4 according to most numbers I have found. If we have a 6'4 245 lb DE coming out of college the NFL isn't going to dismiss him right away because he's sub 250, they know they can (most likely) put 10-15 lbs on a 6'4 frame. The problem is trying to get a 6'1 guy to carry 260 athletically enough to play DE in the NFL. There are freak exceptions, guys like Darryl Tapp 6'1 260-275 and Jason Worilds 6'2 262 that translate to the NFL, but usually the NFL isn't going to waste time trying to figure that out when they have 6'4 and 6'6 guys that are much more likely to handle the increased weight.
For example, Montez Sweat, 1st round draft pick out of Mississippi State and key component of #1 ranked defense by S&P in 2018, was listed at 6'6 245 lbs on the 2018 official Miss State roster. The dreaded sub 250 DE! It's also not out of the realm of possibility he lost some weight throughout the season, which is quite common given in-season practice, conditioning, and weightlifting alterations. Nobody was worried about him being under 250 coming out of college, because they saw the burst and explosiveness needed to play DE, but they also saw the frame and length to maintain that through increased weight.
Coaches will know where to use him
I haven't lost faith in Bud at all, I just would like us to have our own Miles Garret type of DE be QB rushing nightmare as well has hold off a block and take away the backside on a run. I like the speed off the edge of the smaller players, I don't like seeing them end up 10 yards behind the play after being shot put by the now-standard 300+lb tackle. If Bud feels confident he can find some 240 lb ends that can cave the pocket and contain the run, the so be it, but as the college game has changed, my eyes tell me that type of DE is becoming more rare each year.
I think there are a few schools that might be working to "change" the trend back to heavier ends like Clemson, who I would wager had by far the biggest 40 front across the board of any school that uses primarily a 4-3. That might be swinging the pendulum back to 265-285lb DE's for some, but I still think that the smaller DE trend is still in vogue. Most schools don't have the talent to be able to play DE's effectively as pass rushers at that size like Clemson does.
Clemson: 6'4 265 Clelin Ferrell - 6'3 315 Wilkins - 6'5 355 Lawrence - 6'4 271 Austin Bryant
Another great 4 man front was
Miss State: 6'6 245 Montez Sweat - 6'4 300 Jeffery Simmons - 6'3 310 Hoyett - 6'4 255 Gerri Green
I still think the Miss State weights are much more common across college football at the moment in 40 fronts.
Obviously, our average weights are behind at all four positions (last season), but according to the depth chart, it's looking like our DT's will be getting closer to 300lb average this year and DE's will be around 240.
You all see his foot speed and agility in his drills??? Big man has some moves. If he can come in and build his upper body and shed the baby fat (submits to Hilgartification) - MAN! Look out quarterbacks!!!
Otherwise, Vice will have himself a great tackle!
That's what jumped out at me as well. The shuttle drill didn't impress me much. He looks a little slow (as any man his size will in that drill), but the agility displayed in those footwork drills looks fantastic. Can't wait to see what he can do in maroon and orange.