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2014 FB Recruiting Thread: Signing Day is this Wednesday!

and now back to recruiting news- sadly it seems......

A week ago, Tampa (Fla.) Sickles offensive lineman Zach Hudson took his first visit to Missouri. On Tuesday, the 6-foot-5, 280-pound lineman canceled all his upcoming visits and committed to the Tigers. According to his high school coach Brian Turner, those actions showed how much Missouri impressed him.
"I think he made up his mind after that visit," Turner said. "He had other visits scheduled, but he really liked Missouri. "He went to (visit) Texas, and had visits planned to Wake Forest, Arizona, some others. He decided not to take them. Him and his parents really liked (Missouri). They instantly liked it."
 
Look at it this way. They've loaded up on 11th graders who have done well in cone drills. We'll have 15 offers ready for the kids who have a great senior year, but haven't popped up on the radar yet. Remember all of the late season commits we got last year and that we have flipped kids in the past (Ford Howell from NCSU). If we do well on the field, we do better on the trail.
 
When you're recruiting strategy is to load up on late bloomers and under the radar kids you put together a Fresh Deacs kind of class once a decade and are mediocre the other nine years. I don't have an answer and cannot say whether we could do any better under another staff because we just don't know. As it stands now, and will probably continue into the foreseeable future, we will probably recruit below average, play below average, and be lucky to have a record that is not below average.
 
If we can't out recruit our opponents or out play our opponents, then we have to out coach our opponents. We did it vs UNC and failed to do it against Duke and Maryland. It's up to Grobe to show that WFU is a successful enterprise on the field and he must do that with the players he already has. Last years class is the one with 7-8 true freshmen playing, not the '14 class.
 
P4nthers11 said:
When you're recruiting strategy is to load up on late bloomers and under the radar kids you put together a Fresh Deacs kind of class once a decade and are mediocre the other nine years. I don't have an answer and cannot say whether we could do any better under another staff because we just don't know. As it stands now, and will probably continue into the foreseeable future, we will probably recruit below average, play below average, and be lucky to have a record that is not below average.
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Grobe's success from 2006-08 was primarily due to players who committed between Dec 2002 (Jon Abbate, Steve Justice, Kevin Marion, Kenny Moore - 2003 class) and late Jan/early Feb 2005 (John Russell, Riley Skinner, Boo Robinson - 2005 class). That's a 26 month period that ended over 8 years ago. Recruiting since then has been flat.

Think about that for a second. Grobe was recruiting based on the promise of going to the Seattle Bowl in 2002. BB&T Field was still Groves.

Most importantly, it was eons ago in terms of recruiting. YouTube went on line Feb 14, 2005. All of a sudden, it wasn't up to some guy from Scout or Rivals to find videos of a prospect and make them available in a crappy format behind a premium subscription. Players and their family/handlers could upload videos themselves and coaches could just scan the internet for clips of players to help fill out their classes. The odds of a player like Aaron Curry only have offers from ECU and Wake two weeks before signing day or a Boo Robinson being signed at the last minute are much lower now than they were pre-YouTube.

The bold is dead on. Our staff can't just bank on under the radar kids when the radar has gotten much larger.
 
Excellent points, but we have had success late in the recruiting season. Josh Harris, Whitlock, D Mart, Hedlund, Chubb, Teddy Mathews, Donatell, and Tylor Harris were all committs after Jan 1st. What upsets me is the 3-star kid who is in the system for 2-3 years and still can't play. When that happens, it falls on the staff to develope these players and when it dosen't, we have freshmen being offered playing time out on the recruiting trail.
 
Compare your list with the Jan/Feb recruits in the 2003, 2004, and 2005 classes. No comparison, especially since much of your list is just optimism.
 
Those '03-'05 guys developed into good players. There weren't any 4-star guys. What made them into ACC Champs? The kids were getting now are rated higher, but what's the difference between then and now? First, the conference was at a low point. Only Beamer is still coaching in the ACC. So it could be said that we had a better HC then. Second, Swank was the best kicker we've ever had. Winning close games made them champions. We had 3 close ACC games this year and went 1-2, the '06 team would have taken all 3. Winning is a habit, unfortunately so is losing. Look at how we lost the last 3 games last year. It had nothing to do with recruiting, it had everything to do with what kind of team we have turned into. The character of the '06 team would have "willed" us to a winning season and a bowl game. There was nothing in the spring game to show a shadow of that '06 character.
 
DEACS76 said:
Those '03-'05 guys developed into good players. There weren't any 4-star guys. What made them into ACC Champs? The kids were getting now are rated higher, but what's the difference between then and now? First, the conference was at a low point. Only Beamer is still coaching in the ACC. So it could be said that we had a better HC then. Second, Swank was the best kicker we've ever had. Winning close games made them champions. We had 3 close ACC games this year and went 1-2, the '06 team would have taken all 3. Winning is a habit, unfortunately so is losing. Look at how we lost the last 3 games last year. It had nothing to do with recruiting, it had everything to do with what kind of team we have turned into. The character of the '06 team would have "willed" us to a winning season and a bowl game. There was nothing in the spring game to show a shadow of that '06 character.
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That's recruiting. Character guys who will their teams to win. That's recruiting. It's not like Grobe was a big time motivator until 2008 and then started picking at turf.
 
PhDeac said:
That's recruiting. Character guys who will their teams to win. That's recruiting. It's not like Grobe was a big time motivator until 2008 and then started picking at turf.
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I disagree. It is also coaching- our teams reflect the passion of the coaches- they all could sit passively on the side lines eating plactic grass-all the fire, aggressiveness, and passion of the early Grobe years are gone. We lived snot bubbles for a while now any of that hair on fire stuff are meaningless homilies. We play like we are coached. I do agree that until we get better at recruiting we will not get better, We need to win some of these battles and we won't do that until we put a better product on the field. What high quality recruit wants to play for the Lobo mess and punt from the opponents 38 yard line on a regular basis? There is way out of this mess but doing the same old same old that is not working will not do it. Change has to start at the top and Grobe is unwilling to make any substantive changes to get better. No one we are recruiting gives a damn or remembers the Glory of the Orange Bowl year- they were in grammar school.
 
My only disagreement with your post is I don't think Grobe ever had aggressiveness. The fire and passion came from the players.
 
Let's look at recruiting vs talent evaluation. The 'holes can bring in more highly rated kids. They're an inch taller, step faster and have better looking girlfriends than our guys. What was it that made us a better team than them on Sept 8th, 2012? How many times has a kid got an extra star because the top schools were after him. How about LOWF getting poached after we found a diamond in the rough. Alec Morris comes to mind. We find another QB in Texas and Alabama swoops in and picks him up. I think our staff is good at evaluating talent, it's getting them to commit to tough liberal arts school that the hard part.
 
PhDeac said:
There are enough tough liberal arts schools that recruit better than us that suggests there are larger problems.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/vanderbilt/football/recruiting/commitments/2014

Vandy already has 9 recruits. Six 3* and three 4* including a QB from CA and a RB from Chicago.
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My point is SO WHAT. If we recruited 20 4-star recruits, would they beat out our 22 yr old seniors? Would they all be redshirted? How did our team, with so little talent, beat the 'holes with two 1st round draft picks and a ton of 4-stars? It comes down to what you become once you arrive on campus. From AC to Nikita, player developement is the key for OUR success. It's our failure to develope an OL over the years is the root to our problems.
 
DEACS76 said:
Let's look at recruiting vs talent evaluation. The 'holes can bring in more highly rated kids. They're an inch taller, step faster and have better looking girlfriends than our guys. What was it that made us a better team than them on Sept 8th, 2012? How many times has a kid got an extra star because the top schools were after him. How about LOWF getting poached after we found a diamond in the rough. Alec Morris comes to mind. We find another QB in Texas and Alabama swoops in and picks him up. I think our staff is good at evaluating talent, it's getting them to commit to tough liberal arts school that the hard part.
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The fact that we beat 2 or 3 teams a year who had better recruits doesn't mean much. There are way too many variables such as injuries, game planning, luck, etc., to discredit recruiting rankings based on 2 games a year. Our conservative coaching virtually guarantees that we're going to win a game or 2 every year from simply letting the opponent make too many mistakes. On top of that, we now play 2-3 teams every season that we are truly better than, talent wise.
 
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DEACS76 said:
My point is SO WHAT. If we recruited 20 4-star recruits, would they beat out our 22 yr old seniors? Would they all be redshirted? How did our team, with so little talent, beat the 'holes with two 1st round draft picks and a ton of 4-stars? It comes down to what you become once you arrive on campus. From AC to Nikita, player developement is the key for OUR success. It's our failure to develope an OL over the years is the root to our problems.
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Vanderbilt beats us 10 times out of 10 now. The game is over at halftime, that's the problem. And it didn't take Franklin that long to get those guys to that point due to his recruiting prowess. He has the same limitations that we do.
 
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