Recruiting: Encouraging Signs in Early Returns

smiling

Not every recruit gets to experience this championship feeling like they do at Temple

College football recruiting ranking this early in the game are like exit polls in politics.

They don’t mean much except to a small core of addicts but do give some insight into where the process is headed.

For Temple football, that apparently is a good place because the Owls through their early camps—the places where the hard recruiting work is done—seem to be doing just fine with their AAC peers and, more importantly, the future regional P5 schools on the schedule.

Let’s take the Temple versus Rutgers and Temple vs. Georgia Tech  comparisons for instance. It’s important because Temple plays GT in 2019 and 2020 and RU in 2020 and 2021.

On Scout.com, which now encompasses the old 247.com site (with 50 full-time recruiting experts on the staff, Temple is ranked No. 63, while Rutgers is ranked 54. Both teams have six commitments with RU having five “three-stars” and Temple three of the same. Both teams are ahead of schools like Kansas State and Texas Tech.

On Rivals.com, Rutgers is No. 58 and Temple is No. 58—also ahead of Kansas State and Texas Tech. GT is 44 on Scout and 46 on Rivals. These numbers, of course, could change for the better or the worse but a lot of the groundwork has been laid by this charismatic coaching staff who connects well with the kids.

To use a political term, that is within the “margin of error” meaning that depending on how the respective staffs “coach up their player” could mean give one school or the other the overall talent advantage a couple of  years down the line.

Given Geoff Collins’ proven track record at places like Florida, Mississippi State, Alabama and Georgia Tech, that’s a good sign for Temple.

Collins was the defensive coordinator at two of those schools and the recruiting coordinator at the two others so he knows the talent coming and going.

By this time, Collins should know what he’s doing in terms of what it takes to push the right buttons in the kids’ (and their parents’) minds to get them to commit. It certainly helps that he has a world-class university in a world-class city to sell.

Signing day will tell the rest of the story, but the exit polls are trending in a very good way.

Monday: Birthday Wishes

Wednesday: No News Is Bad News

Friday: Expanded Bowls

Monday (6/25): New Redshirt Rule

Wednesday (6/27): Under (Center) Pressure

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10 thoughts on “Recruiting: Encouraging Signs in Early Returns

  1. Come on, we all know these rankings don’t mean anything. Some of our 2 stars should be 4 and some of the 3 stars should be 2.

    The only rankings that matter are 4 and 5 stars, since they’ve proven to have won multiple reps in the 5 minutes the scout looked at them.

    • They certainly mean SOMETHING in that the top 10 teams nationally are usually (not always) in the top 10 of the recruiting rankings. In college football, like in the economy, being in the top 1 percent means something.

      • In the end, a lot of P5 schools had better recruits than us but we developed guys like Adrian Robinson, Mo Wilkerson, Tavon Young, Matt Ioannidis, Tahir Whitehead, Tyler Matakevich, P.J. Walker, etc., into pros ahead of their higher-rated recruits. Let’s hope the kids we are recruiting now against the P5 schools see that and factor it into their decision-making process.

      • So does this mean Temple will be in the Top 63 teams this year ??

  2. two things come to mind, AG’s house of brick and ‘impact’ players. you need both to be a Top 25 program.., just look at our recent history, yes we developed some great players, and we also had a few impact players who could change the game on a single play…, BP, TM, Wilkerson, Reddick, Jahad, Anderson were all impact players.., who are the impact players on the 2018 team?

    • Other than Ventell Bryant, Isaiah Wright, Rock Armstead, Matt Hennessey, Michael Dogbe, Freddy Booth-Lloyd, Delvon Randall (a projected NFL first-round pick), Shaun Bradley, Rock Ya-Sin and Quincy Roche, I don’t think we have any. Not buying that Frank Nutile is an impact player just yet, even though he made a big positive impact in the second half of last season.

      • Randall and Bradley are ballers.

        none of the players on the DL have ever dominated a game or forced teams to double team them.., let’s hope someone emerges as ‘that guy’ and does it this year..,

        same goes for our WRs, and just how many receiving TDs Bryant and Wright have over the last two years? can Armstead stay healthy?

        point is we do have a ton of real bricks with only a couple of true superstars.., will that be enough to get back to the AAC Championship game?

        strange.., Nutile would be even better out of the pro set.., and PJ would have been better running Patenaude’s scheme.., we need to bring back the offensive scheme from 2016 to maximize Nutile’s skill set

      • P.J.’s best year was 20 tds and 8 interception. Bold prediction: Nutile is going to go at least 25 TDs and single digit interceptions this season. As far as Bryant, his three incredibly clutch receptions (and more importantly, getting up after getting his bell rung) gave the Owls arguably their most impressive win of 2016–a 26-25 win at UCF after being down 25-7. This kid has MEGA talent and he checked out after arguing with Patenaude on the sideline in the USF game last year. Hopefully, Foley’s promotion to head coach of the offense has smoothed things over.

  3. PJ was a disaster in the spread offense. He threw a ton of bad picks. The pro set let him air it out at the right time, and he could pick apart secondaries. Nutile is a high-impact laser-drone smart-bomb QB in the pro set. I have “high hopes” with Frankie Juice this year,

  4. Inky today listed several very good players who are considering the Owls. If they get verbals they will move into the top fifty. By the way, two Owl recruits, a receiver and a D-back played well in the Big 33 game last night.

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