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2016 Football Recruiting Thread - Notes from NSD Press Conference and Reception

Save for a couple of exceptions, such as MD, GTech and Army, these offers all look like junk mail advertising that most people throw away immediately without reading.
 
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94, Do you have any idea who will (likely) be a gray-blue-red shirt in the class of '16? With all these targets still out there, can we defer what we have til '17?
 
Deac94 said:
AUGUST PREVIEW

With the Traveon Redd and Moe Neal decisions behind us, I thought I would summarize what is upcoming for Wake football recruiting in August.

There are still 11 recruits that I am following closely (including two that I understand were offered as safeties – I am not sure what to do with them at this point). You can find a complete list, as well as basic info about their recruitment, at the top of the original post in this thread.


I expect decisions this month from highly-ranked targets CB Sir Patrick Scott, WR Larry Collins and probably LB Elysee Mbem-Bosse (more on him below). Unless their offers are not committable, I would expect decisions from camp attendees WR Greg Dortch, OL Tyler Watson and S/ATH DeAndre Delaney this month as well.

That could leave Sulaiman Kamara, Tremayne Anchrum and Jordon Brown as the only players on my Board still undecided by late-August/early-September.

Some quick notes on the players mentioned above:

Note that I’ve moved up the timeline on LB Elysee Mbem-Bosse’s decision – and that is probably not a good thing for Wake. He is planning on narrowing his top 7 down to a top 5 any day now and then making a commitment in the next 2-6 weeks. The earlier the decision, the more likely it is that he will choose Auburn since they appear to have all the momentum right now. Mbem-Bosse has visited there 3 times in the last six months and has developed a strong relationship with DC Will Muschamp. However, I’m not giving up on him yet because he’s just a different type of recruit. I know his recent tweet about trying to launch a nonprofit organization in the next two months caught the attention of some of you.

I’ve crossed DE/OLB Keith Simms off my list again despite his visit to Wake last month. He’s never mentioned a specific interest in Wake (at least not to my knowledge) and there has been a recent surge in speculation that he will join Maryland’s “stay at home” movement and commit to Terps soon. Demetric Warren – who nailed the Moe Neal prediction – just dropped a Crystal Ball prediction on Simms to the Terps.

CB Sir Patrick Scott travelled to Ann Arbor yesterday to start his unofficial visit at Michigan. He is now acknowledging that Michigan is the outright leader. In his most recent interview he put Wake Forest in a group that also included Arizona, Indiana and Wisconsin.

One of the South Carolina insiders switched his Crystal Ball prediction for WR Larry Collins from the Gamecocks to “foggy”. I think you will see the same happen for his other South Carolina Crystal Balls, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see a Wake Forest prediction sometime in the next few weeks.

A couple of quick notes on the general recruiting process, which I continue to find fascinating, and sometimes laughable:

We are now just a few weeks away from the start of the period where official visits can be made. Once a recruit has started classes at their high school for their senior year they can take official visits. Presumably this means the NCAA doesn’t mind a student-athlete’s high school studies being disrupted by visits, as long as their summer isn’t interfered with :) . So we could start to hear about official visit dates for a few recruits.

August 1 was the first day that colleges could extend written scholarship offers to 2016 recruits (note: I’ve never understood the reason for this rule). Wake has likely sent offer letters to current commits and targets but also probably a lot of Rivals 250 types (even if they are committed elsewhere). To be honest I am eager to see how Wake’s offer letter looks this year. Around the country many teams have changed their offer letters to include impressive looking graphics, because they realize that the letters will end up being posted on social media by recruits that are eager to show them off. There wasn’t anything wrong with Wake’s offer letter last year, but it was the boring, plain letterhead type. You can see examples of what some of this year's offer letters from around the country look like (including Miami’s, which gets analogized to a nightclub flyer) in this article: http://www.sbnation.com/college-football-recruiting/2015/8/1/9084945/ncaa-football-scholarship-offer-letters
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We already have 16 commits.......bigger than many of us thought this class would be.
With the recruits still on your list, we could get close to 25, but we know that isn't possible unless there's a pending mass exodus of current scholarship players that we're not aware of. I'm sure there will be a few loses - there always are - but not enough to make room for more than maybe a couple more.
Realistically, how many commits does anyone think we can actually take this year? 16? 18? 20? more?
 
We have 8 5th year players and 17 4th year players, and we were 2 short to begin with. I will be interesting to see how this works out. I think that some of the lesser known commits might become Blue/Gray shirts. Too much drama 6 months before NSD.
 
Just trust the staff that they know what they're doing. We can only count things based on what we think we know; the staff knows what's really going on. No one has the standing here to wring their hands about scholarships. If signing day comes along and we're underwater with them, then you can bitch about the staff. Not before.
 
DEACS76 said:
94, Do you have any idea who will (likely) be a gray-blue-red shirt in the class of '16? With all these targets still out there, can we defer what we have til '17?
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I am going to answer this question in an indirect and long-winded way.

I have been thinking about the subject of greyshirting, and I’ve changed my opinion of the practice. There are some real advantages that would allow a team to maximize the 85 scholarships – if it’s done right. (NOTE: Although I have researched it further, I am going to ignore the possibility of blueshirting for purposes of this discussion. I have some questions about how exactly blueshirting works, and it appears to have its own unique set of advantages and disadvantages.)

Here is how I would handle it if I were managing the process. Maybe it could shed some light on what the staff might be doing:

First off, let me say that my objective would be to not to actually greyshirt anybody. I know that I will have attrition during or after the academic year – probably 3 or 4 players, although I wouldn’t know who they will be – and my goal is to have 2016 recruits to slide into those spots once they open up. So I wouldn’t be looking to greyshirt, I just want the option to greyshirt if the actual attrition is lower than my estimate. But my expectation is that these recruits will be taken as regular enrollees once everything shakes out.

So what kind of recruit would I be I looking for? Well, it would have to be someone that doesn’t have a P5 offer that is committable. I’m probably not going to beat out a P5 offer with a greyshirt offer. But I can’t take just anyone. This isn’t a one year commitment, it’s a 4-year commitment, and they will be using my most precious commodity (scholarships). So I need to be very confident about these recruits. That leads me to recruits from the June/July camps because I’ve seen them perform in person and under my coaching.

What is the ideal scenario? Ideally I would like to find a recruit with parents that are willing/able to pay the bill for a semester as a walk-on, but only if absolutely necessary. I want to avoid making anyone come out of pocket if I can help it, but this option has the advantage of guaranteeing that one way or another the player will enroll with the rest of the class in the fall. However, the reality is that I wouldn’t sacrifice quality of recruit in order to get parents that could pay for a semester, so I don’t know how often this would happen anyways.

Here is my last key: I would take measures to make sure the arrangements aren’t disclosed. There’s nothing to gain other than satisfying the fanbase’s curiosity. But there are two big downsides to making the info public: 1) I would increase the chances that another team could flip them (even a team like Marshall or Georgia Southern) if they step up with a regular offer - also keep in mind that I may not be able to have them sign an LOI so I would be exposed to losing them even after NSD, and 2) I give the recruit a stigma by effectively tagging them as a second class commit (in some eyes, not mine). The second point is particularly important when you consider that my goal is really to get them in as regular enrollees.

So to circle back to Deac76’s question, if the staff is using any kind of similar strategy I think any of the camp offerees that had no or very little P5 interest might have handshake agreements to contingently defer scholarships. That would include Essang Bassey, Jacquez Williams and Lukas Masterson. However it is worth noting that Clawson’s word choice when he discussed this topic at ACC Media Days led me to believe that no greyshirt offers had been extended at that point (Bassey and Williams were already committed). The fact that the outstanding offers to DeAndre Delaney, Tyler Watson and Greg Dortch haven’t led to immediate commitments piques my interest about whether the Wake offers are greyshirt offers that are competing against full offers from non-P5 schools.

To answer Dekin’s question, if you use this type of strategy you might be able to get up to 19 or 20 commits. Maybe 15 or 16 regular scholarship offers and another 4 with some type of deferral option. Possibly more if you already know of players that intend to leave after the season, or if we have mistaken assumptions in our scholarship chart (i.e. we don’t know the long-term arrangement with Grant Dawson).
 
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Jamie Newman posted his written scholarship offer from Wake. I am sure that some of you will critique something about it, but I really like it. It is a BIG improvement over what was sent last year. This doesn't surprise me. Just another example of a detail-oriented staff that appears to be committed to across-the-board improvements. Even smaller details like offer letters.
 
Thank you, 94. I like your point about keeping poachers away from our lower hanging fruit (poss. gray shirts). That's why Benzinger and Freudanthal were handled the way they were last year, and the way Ray, Masterson et al are being handled this year. I appreciate your point about the last three offerees not jumping on the scholarship right away. Why not wait til after their senior year for something better.
 
Deac94 said:
Jamie Newman posted his written scholarship offer from Wake. I am sure that some of you will critique something about it, but I really like it. It is a BIG improvement over what was sent last year. This doesn't surprise me. Just another example of a detail-oriented staff that appears to be committed to across-the-board improvements. Even smaller details like offer letters.
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Where? I didn't see it on Newman's twitter.
 
Any idea if Neal was at the Cuse game last year?

That was one of the more horrific Wake games I've attended
 
BDL said:
Any idea if Neal was at the Cuse game last year?

That was one of the more horrific Wake games I've attended
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Moe Neal visited Wake for the Syracuse game. Robert Washington came with him. He also visited Syracuse the week before that.
 
Deac94 said:
Moe Neal visited Wake for the Syracuse game. Robert Washington came with him. He also visited Syracuse the week before that.
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bummer. that Cuse visit the week before would have been for their biggest crowd of the year (FSU)
 
Deac94 said:
Sir Patrick Scott committed to Michigan
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I don't think this is a surprise to any of us.

Also, thanks for your thoughts, analysis and strategies regarding our scholarship availability, greyshirts, blueshirts, etc.
The coaches obviously have a plan and know their numbers. We don't............but we really want to know.
 
91deac said:
This is the first I have heard about this type of limitation - "The curveball in this situation: Penn State will pull Colon's scholarship if he takes an official visit to another school, Neal said." Seems like a smart play, when someone commits taking a spot away from another potential recruit.
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I think Georgia Tech has the same policy. This approach can be costly. For example we might have lost Welsh last year if the staff had taken this approach.

There is another variant on this policy where your spot will be taken away if you visit another school without first informing the school you committed to.

I think Maryland has a reasonably strict policy on this as well.
 
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