Tag Archives: Temple football recruiting

05.29.19
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Temple’s recruiting reset button

footballs

You’ll be reading a lot about politics (though not here) in the next year and one of those things might be about this political candidate or that one hitting the “reset button.”

That got me to thinking about what all these coaching changes Temple has had in the last half-decade or so has done to recruiting. AMR (after Matt Rhule), both Geoff Collins and even Rod Carey now have had classes where they could at best provide a band-aid here and band-aid there in areas the Owls need immediate help.

That is an apt characterization of the first recruiting classes of both.

Now Carey, with a $10 million buyout that even a Power 5 school would think twice before eating, has an opportunity to hit the recruiting reset button. Let’s hope he takes it because a couple of band-aid-type classes thrown in every few years depletes the roster and a depleted roster eventually shows up on the field. The latest promising addition is running back Jeremiah Nelson and he put a lot of good moves on film, both at Iona Prep and Nassau County Community College.

 

Carey certainly has his own recruiting ideas from six successful seasons at Northern Illinois but Temple needs to aspire to get a higher level of recruit and has the geography to do it. NIU wasn’t located in the middle of 46 percent of the nation’s population, as Temple is, so the formula for the Owls would be 1-5 projects that the staff really likes on film and the rest three- and four-star prospects that not only the Temple staff likes but every paid P5 staff out there likes.

Trust, but verify.

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“My recruiting philosophy is simply this: Recruit an entire team every year. Eleven guys on defense, 11 guys on offense and a couple of specialists and you are never going to leave yourself short.” _ Al Golden

Temple has a lot to sell. Twenty-four current players in the NFL speaks well for the opportunity to play one part of your career in an NFL stadium and finish up the rest of it in another NFL stadium. That, plus the fact that Temple is a proven winner. Since 2015, the Owls have won one AAC title, appeared in another and have won more AAC football games than anyone else, including UCF, USF and Memphis. Plus, the school is nationally known as the sixth-largest educator of professionals so that sheepskin is something to fall back on should a pro football career not be in the offing. It’s in the middle of an exciting city and, unlike, say, Penn State,  not situated in the middle of nowhere. That appeals to “regular students” and it should also appeal to dynamic football players.

Fortunately, Carey has a gem like Fran Brown to head up the recruiting effort. In recruiting, Brown is the starting pitcher and Carey has to be the closer. Brown knows how Al Golden and Rhule build this team from the national bottom 10 to respectability.

“My recruiting philosophy is simply this,” Golden said when he got the Temple job. “Recruit an entire team every year. Eleven guys on defense, 11 guys on offense and a couple of specialists and you are never going to leave yourself short.”

That kind of sound thinking is the Cherry and White reset button Temple recruiting needs to hit now.

Saturday: The Long Game

Wednesday: The Bright Side

05.07.19
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The Wisdom of Collins’ recruiting

Screenshot 2019-05-06 at 9.16.38 AM

One of the benefits of arriving at Cherry and White Day a couple of weeks ago was the Temple football informational sheet they handed out to every guest.

On one side was the complete roster, broken down alphabetically at the top and numerically below.

On the flip side were the football schedule (Bucknell, ugh), quick facts, coaching staff, pronunciation lists and football recruits.

The recruits–mostly the guys who arrive in July–seemed like a thin list but you could always find a number of guys who could be immediate contributors.

Not this year.

This year we found one: Wisdom Quarshie, who is listed as a 6-foot-3, 310-pound tackle who could play on either side of the ball. Todderick Hunt, the “Ted Silary” of NJ.com wrote this about him: “Senior defensive tackle Wisdom Quarshie is, arguably, the most violent offensive lineman in New Jersey. His highlight tape is a non-stop real of pancake blocks and on-field devastation. And he’ll now bring his lunch pail to Temple, less than 30 minutes away from his home, where his family, friends and all who support him can watch him live his dream.” (Note he called him a defensive tackle but said he was the most violent offensive lineman in NJ.)

Quarshie, a two-time first-team All-State player at St. Joe’s (Hammonton), appears to be ready-made to help but, of the 15 players listed as “recruits” on the info sheet, his sticking out like a sore thumb among those ready to make an impact points out the, err, Wisdom of Collins’ recruiting. Or lack of same. Hard to see anything but redshirts for the other 14 guys on the list of incoming recruits.

Collins had three classes and the only one worth much was unveiled on St. Pete Beach at the Gasparilla Bowl. In that one, he got two immediate offensive line starters and a grad transfer who became a second-round NFL draft choice.

Wayne Hardin once said recruiting was easy at Temple because you could “put a pencil in the middle of Broad Street and draw a 200-mile circle around it and come up with enough players to win.” Collins got away from that formula by concentrating his recruiting in the South. Good for him and his Southern-centric coaches, but bad for Temple.

Now that Fran Brown is back in charge of the important business of Temple recruiting, the Owls should return to their neighborhood roots where the fruits of Brown’s earlier stint here produced a championship roster.

Fran knows what he’s doing and, with him supplying the guys and Rod Carey coaching them up, that should be a productive partnership.

Friday: The Listerine Bowl

 

 

12.21.18
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Recruiting: About as good as expected

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Roughly a year ago at this time, Geoff Collins was on the beach sitting on a chair by a table with signatures of 24 commits all while prepping for a bowl game.

What a difference a year makes.

Coaching changes always cause upheaval so that’s probably one of about 99 good reasons why Temple needs to fix the revolving coaching door office at the Edberg-Olson Complex.

Just about every story coming out of AAC schools on Wednesday, including Temple, talk about how happy everyone was with the early signing day.

That’s great, but as an ex-President once said: “Trust, but verify.”

This is where Temple stands nationally, according to Rivals.com this morning:

rivals

This is where Temple stands where it counts, among its fellow AAC members, according to Scout.com:

scoutIf Temple is really going to be pleased with this recruiting haul, it should come in February, not December, this year because, while Collins just about nailed every target by now, new head coach Manny Diaz is going to have to use some of his Power 5 coaching connections to flush out the remaining eight scholarship recipients. If Diaz can bring in a lot of guys who have Power 5 offers between now and then, the Temple rankings go up considerably. Temple hasn’t had the No. 1 recruiting ranking in any league its played in since Rivals.com ranked the Owls’ 2012 recruiting class No. 1 in the MAC.

If recruiting rankings really mean nothing, then why are teams like Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia and Ohio State in the top 10 the last three years? Temple can get lucky on the Tyler Matakevichs and Muhammad Wilkersons of the world, but those are anecdotal stories and outliers to the whole recruiting process. It’s nice to get five of those type kids in every class, but it’s even nicer to get a boatload of four-star commits in the other 20 signees.

Maybe Temple shoots up the charts with a bullet in these next two months or so.

Hold the celebrations for February, though, because anything else is seeing things through Cherry and White-colored glasses.

Monday: Reasons To Be Optimistic This Game Week

07.06.18
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Recruiting: Fireworks or Dud?

hardwork

It’s quite possible this recruiting haul on the beach last  year was better than this year.

For nearly two weeks now, the Temple football twitter site promoted July 4th fireworks with at least a hint or two that a big-time recruit will be committing on that day.

That’s the deal with fireworks. The more promises you make, the greater the expectations. Sometimes they go off in multi-colored extravaganzas and sometimes they blow up in your face. This latest rollout qualified more in the latter category than the former from what I can see.

Our thoughts on Temple football recruiting, particularly since Al Golden brought his binder to town, have simply been this:

TRUST BUT VERIFY.

The Philly.com article did not mention where the six July 4 commits received offers from in addition to Temple, but Shawn Pastor’s excellent site, OwlsDaily.com, did.  One of them was Kennique Bonner-Steward, a 6-4, 215-pound, dual-threat quarterback from William Amos High in Cornelius, N.C. Bonner-Steward had 17 offers, most from FCS schools and his top “other” FBS offers were from Tulane, Old Dominion and Georgia State (err, not Tech).

This is the spin Pravda–otherwise known as Owlscoop.com–put on the day:

pravda

A little misleading as an astute guy named Steve correctly pointed out:

stevebest

You will never, ever, ever, find Pravda criticize a Temple football recruiting class perhaps because the editor of that site is a paid Temple employee. Everything ranks from honky-dory to downright spectacular over there. Just a theory based on years of observation.

Speaking of which, that elicited a very defensive response from Gauss’ boss (John DiCarlo, above). What the hell does Tyler, Tavon, Dion, Matt and Nate have to do with Collins under-performing against P5 competition this year? And what, exactly, did Collins have to do with developing any of those above players?

The answer would be zero.

Just because Matt Rhule got the job done doesn’t mean Collins will do the same.

The other commitments were  running back Jamal Speaks (Upper Marlboro, Md), Tampa (Fla.) wide receiver Josh Youngblood and two defensive linemen from Georgia, Zaylin Wood and Jacoby Sharpe. Speaks had an offer from Maryland and Youngblood had an offer from Minnesota so, on the day, those are the two most-high profile Temple recruits.

Not the kind of fireworks we were looking for considering that the Owls were able to land much-higher profile guys under both Golden and Rhule.

Here’s another take calling out Pravda:

another

 

Temple football has a highly paid staff of professionals in charge of these things but the thought out there is that other schools have more highly paid professionals in charge of the same things and that if the two ever agreed on a player that would be a good thing, not a bad one.

Temple is never going to win all the battles with the so-called Power 5 schools for players, but our formula for long-term success is that Temple should win at least a few of them—anything from a quarter to a half—and then trust its instincts on other type players.

Those instincts have served other staffs well with guys like Muhammad Wilkerson (a two-star who turned into a first-round NFL draft choice) and Haason Reddick, a walk-on who was a higher first-round choice. Then there is Tyler Matakevich, who turned his only offer (Temple) into a national consensus defensive player of the year (Bednarik, Nagurski Awards).

Those are the exceptions, though, to the general college football rule. The really successful programs develop players in addition to be able to win a majority of recruiting battles.

Ideally, that’s the kind of recruiting balance you are looking for in a good class. This one has leaned in the developmental direction and, while that might turn out to be a good thing, it leans more toward risk than reward.

No matter how Pravda spins it.

 

06.15.18
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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

05.30.18
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Impressive Early Camp Haul

buckethats

Recruits naturally gravitate to the charismatic Temple staff.

The official name of the Temple football camp currently underway at the beautiful $17 million Edberg-Olson Complex is “The Geoff Collins Football Camp.”

Like anything else, at least for branding purposes, that should be tightened up.

Call it Camp Haul.

Like the hotcakes served for camp breakfast, the scholarships available to recruits to a school in the top five in the nation for developing NFL players are going fast.

After the first couple of days, Collins quadrupled the number of verbal commits he was able to get by Memorial Day a year ago with four solid verbals as noted here in this article on Shawn Pastor’s excellent site, OwlsDaily.com. On Tuesday, he added another commit to bring the total to five and counting.

Some are smelling what The Rock (Armstead) is cooking and committing to the only school that plays FBS college football in a World Heritage City.

They are called verbals for a reason because the ink doesn’t even touch the dotted line until late December, but there is reason for optimism here. Last year, the Owls made the early signing date pretty much mandatory for their commits and that allowed them to lose none to Power 5 poachers. In each of the previous 10 recruiting seasons, either Al Golden, Steve Addazio or Matt Rhule lost at least two prior verbals to P5 schools. Probably the most notable of those was Akrum Wadley to Iowa.

Not only have the Owls attracted the interest of some pretty good players, they have been able to expose a culture of winning and having fun doing it to a whole other group of players. They’ve been able to point out to recruits that, in all of college football, Temple has been in the top 10 both academically and in producing NFL prospects and that’s a claim that can be backed up by the numbers.

This is what happens when you hire a guy as a head coach who was a recruiting coordinator for Georgia Tech and Alabama. He not only has connections, he knows how the job is done and is able to pass it along to his own recruiting coordinator.

By our math, these verbals leave 21 spots open in the current recruiting class.

Like hotcakes, they are going fast.

Friday: Colors and Karma

02.09.18
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The King of All Classes

 

 

 

Cincinnati has Tavion Thomas, Temple has Travon King.

While no one really knows if either one will make an impact with their respective schools, the takeaway from National Signing Day on Wednesday was that Temple went for length and speed and character and Cincinnati reached for the stars.


You can talk about length,
speed and character until
you are blue in the face,
what matters most is wins
on Saturdays. That’s really
all that matters

Thomas, a 6-foot-2, 225-pound running back from Dunbar in Dayton, picked his nearby hometown squad after decommiting from Oklahoma. His final three were Cincinnati, Tennessee and Ohio State.

File that name away because what Cincinnati and the other AAC schools do is important in comparison to what Temple does. Cincinnati had the No. 1 recruiting class as ranked by the website 247.com (recently merged with Scout.com) and while the same service ranked Temple’s class as its best ever, it was still behind the Bearcats.

All you have to do is check the number of five-stars and four-stars on rosters like Alabama and Ohio State over the past few years to determine what the meaning of them on the field can be.

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Geoff Collins, also a second-year coach, has not signed a four-star yet.

Maybe next year.

No one at the signing ceremony at the Aramark Facility (a huge upgrade, by the way, from the Student Pavilion) seemed to mind.

There were many of the obligatory ohhs and ahhs watching the highlight films of the Temple recruits. Here is the complete breakdown with heights, weights, 40 speeds and even some academic achievements. Nary a negative word will be found about this class on Pravda or any other site that covers Temple regularly using notepads, pen and tape recorders and “making phone calls”, but we will try to offer some balanced objective perspective here untainted by receiving a paycheck from Temple.

At the end of the presentation and remembering the similar feeling I had watching recruiting highlights the last three years, I got up out of my seat and the first thing I said to Temple linebacking legend Steve Conjar was: “How do we ever lose a game with these kind of players?”

(I did not have the heart to mention maybe it’s because we do some questionable, OK stupid, things like passing on first-and-goal at the Army 1 when we had the best fullback in the country available to lead block for a running back who gained 151 yards that day.)

It’s what you do with the players once you get them that determines wins and losses.

King represents what Collins is trying to do with this class. Collins called King a “designated pass rusher” and he had a couple of those in this class. If Temple can find a DPR who is also able to play the run well, that will be the guy who sees the field.

It would be nice to have reached up and grabbed a (five) star or four stars, but this is the process at Temple now and we won’t know if it’s a better one than the other teams in the conference until a couple of years from now. You can talk about length, speed and character until you are blue in the face, what matters most is wins on Saturdays. That’s really all that matters.

For now, though, the guys already in the program will have to make their mark. For the guys signed with this class, a little more patience is required.

Monday: Possible Johnson Replacement

Wednesday: Notes, Quotes and Anecdotes

Friday: Developmental Program?

12.29.17
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TU Recruiting: Collins Deserves An A

beatty

Trad Beatty is the jewel of Geoff Collins’ second recruiting class here.

When I think of Temple football recruiting the words of Ronald Reagan come to mind:

“Trust, but verify.”

Reagan’s words came during nuclear armaments talks with Mikael Gorbachev when both the United States and the then Soviet Union were casting cautionary glances at one another.

It also helps to apply the same formula to judging Temple recruiting.

Al Golden never asked Temple fans to accept him at his word when he said he came up with a great recruiting class. He cited other sources as well. Golden was proud that both Scout.com and Rivals.com rated three of his five Temple recruiting classes as No. 1 in the MAC but even prouder when he could point out that at least five of his recruits each year were offered—not just getting interest—by Power 5 schools.

In just one month in his first year on the job, Golden—already having solid East Coast recruiting connections from stints at Boston College, Penn State and Virginia—convinced guys like Adrian Robinson to turn down Pitt for Temple and Kee-Ayre Griffin to turn down Boston College for the Owls.

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Both of those guys are gone from this earth too soon, but certainly not forgotten to Temple fans. They were part of the core group of kids who stopped a 20-game losing streak and turned around a program many said could not be resuscitated.

That’s brings us to Geoff Collins’ second class of recruits and there are signs that this class is verifiably good. While we gave him a C for gameday coaching, we have to give him an A for recruiting based on the fact that other, even more highly-paid, staffs wanted kids who could have gone anywhere, but chose Temple.

It’s nice to trust him, but nicer that the trust can also be verified.

Think of it this way:

While Collins did not rely on East Coast recruiting connections, he certainly extended the circle of good recruits to areas where he was more comfortable recruiting: Namely, the South.

Getting quarterback Trad Beatty here from Ben Lippen High in South Carolina was a major coup because Beatty had solid offers from Mississippi State and North Carolina State.  You don’t win in college football without a big-time quarterback and Beatty has that kind of pedigree. Let’s put it this way: He’s likely closer to Adam DiMichele and P.J. Walker in skill set than he is to Chester Stewart and Vaughn Charlton. Get me to DiMichele and I’m happy.

Running back Kyle Dobbins, from South Jersey, had offers from Rutgers, North Carolina State, North Carolina, Northwestern, Boston College and Virginia Tech.

New York City wide receiver Sean Ryan had offers from places like Purdue, Nebraska, Syracuse and Maryland and defensive end Dante Burke had offers from Maryland and Georgia Tech.

I think the biggest impact player could be defensive end Nick Madourie, a JUCO, who had an offer from Purdue and 15.5 sacks this past season. Nick because he could be an immediate starter opposite Quincy Roche (and ameliorate the losses of rush ends Sharif Finch and Jacob Martin). Khris Banks, the top two-way lineman in New Jersey, could play right away as well.

Dobbins could play right away at running back, providing some needed depth behind Ryquell Armstead and David Hood. (Here’s hoping Jager Gardner—who has the longest run from scrimmage in Temple history—returns to full health. Plus, Tyriek Raynor, a former Arizona commit, could be healthy next year as well.)

Collins worked hard on this recruiting class and deserves an A. That he was able to wrap almost all of it up by the first signing date even with prepping the team for a bowl win is all the more impressive.

We’ll be able to determine the true value of this class five years down the line but, if you want to beat Power 5 schools (the Owls have a few of them peppered on the schedule), you’ve got to beat Power 5 schools for quite a few players.

Don’t trust Geoff or me, trust the more higher-profile Power 5 coaches who verified much of this class. It helps ease any anxiety that a whole different set of professionals watched the same film and see the same things Collins and his staff does.

Monday: High Hopes

Wednesday: Stadium Thoughts

08.04.17
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Recruit Edition, Where Are They Now?

Some Sean Ryan highlights from last year are here. 

Most Philadelphia 76ers’ fans of a certain age will remember Brooklyn’s Erasmus Hall as the place where one of that high school’s greats, Billy Cunningham, put the organization on top of the basketball world twice.

Once, as a player for arguably the greatest NBA team ever, the 1967 Sixers, and once as the coach of the 1983 champs.

Now the City of Philadelphia has dipped into “The Hall” to pluck another great athlete, Sean Ryan, and if he has the same effect on the Temple football organization as Cunningham did on the Philadelphia basketball one, it will be a great ride.

erasmus

Ryan, a wide receiver, already has had an impact on the recruiting rankings. He is Temple’s 19th verbal to date and, so far, the highest-ranked player, period, of any position, head coach Geoff Collins has been able to reel in with his first full recruiting class.

More importantly, the class is ranked No. 47 overall in the country by Rivals.com and No. 1 in the AAC. If the Owls are able to hold it together until the early signing date of December 20th, they stand a very good chance of bettering their highest-ranked recruiting class in the last 10 years.

Amazingly, that mark was not set by Al Golden or Matt Rhule, solid recruiters in their own right, but by Steve Addazio (54, also in his first recruiting year). No. 54 was the highest-rated national recruiting class we could find and that was by Scout.com. In his five years, Golden had the No. 1-ranked recruiting class in the MAC three of those years and he sold that ranking every recruiting night.

Why are recruiting rankings so important?

Trust, but verify. If your coach, like Rhule, is identifying the two-star kids and hitting on them, that’s fine. It’s even better if your coach is getting the kids other highly-paid coaching staffs want.

That’s true with most of Collins’ haul and that’s the main reason why Owl fans should be so excited. Another is that he is out-recruiting the Power 5 teams he will face in 2020, like Rutgers and Maryland. This is a guy who is recruiting like he plans to be around for awhile and not live off the Rhule recruits and exit stage right.

That’s a great sign.

Another player, Rondell Bothroyd, out of Connecticut, turned down his hometown school, Yale, and his home state school, UConn, along with Boston College, for the Owls. He projects as a DE and a really good one because he had 13 sacks as a junior.

The Owls need Bothroyd but might need Ryan more.

Ryan is just the player Temple needs now. While the Owls are deep at receiver, Ventell Bryant, Keith Kirkwood and Adonis Jennings will soon be gone and no one would be surprised if it’s to the NFL. Isaiah Wright is ticketed for stardom, but more in the slot than as a prototypical wide out.

Ryan is that prototypical wide out and, by the time he gets here, there will be plenty of opportunity for him to shine.

Just like another Erasmus Hall guy who made it to Philly.

Monday: Double-Jointed

07.07.17
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Class Warfare

offers

Without getting into names, this was a typical offer sheet for a Matt Rhule recruit a year ago.

Summing up Temple recruiting is pretty easy these days.

Matt Rhule had a bad year going out the door, Geoff Collins had a bad year (really, month) coming in and Collins seems to have rebounded with a nice crop if he’s able to water and harvest it by the new early signing day (Dec. 20).

Judging from a lot of the comments of the commits, that seems much more likely than not.

Collins was a recruiting coordinator at both Alabama and Georgia Tech and he’s learned a few tricks of the trade in addition to being an affable and amiable young man himself.

One of the Owls’ recent additions said what sold him on Temple was that when he got out of the car “the entire team was there waiting for me and shaking my hand and patting me on the back.”

People of any age like to be shown love, and that is a pretty innovative way of showing it.

Chalk that up to Collins’ experience.

That brings us to Matt Rhule.

Collins had an excuse for his first hastily put-together class.

Rhule, who hustled a pretty good class together even before he was head coach—for awhile, he was both Al Golden’s and Steve Addazio’s recruiting coordinator—showed signs of mailing in his final class.

While a lot of Rhule’s final class commits had offers from places like Old Dominion and Georgia State, a lot of Collins’ current ones have offers from Georgia Tech and Maryland.

It does make one pause.

Did Rhule have one eye on the door going into his final year at Temple?

All indications are that he was looking to get out.

When I saw this video posted by a guy called “Miami Mike” a year ago, I had one two-word reaction to his answer to the last couple questions here:

“He’s gone.”

He recruited with one eye on the door and he coached like it, too.

In addition to a final half-hearted recruiting haul, Rhule made no effort to get either of his backups, Frank Nutile and Logan Marchi, the kind of playing time they would need in order to be ready for this season. That point was made last week on this site by John Belli and it was a valid one. While P.J. Walker needed to play every down against teams like Penn State and UCF, he did not need to play nearly every down in games the Owls won 38-0, 48-20, 45-20, 31-0, 37-10 and 34-10. Those are the kind of games that big-time programs have the backups running the regular offense and throwing the ball in order to have guys ready. There was no excuse to sit Marchi or Nutile or have either of those guys handing off the rare snaps they had.

Add that to the recruiting, and Collins has a lot of catching up to do. He’s running pretty fast now. Let’s hope it’s fast enough.

Monday: House Money

Wednesday: Marketing Mayhem

Friday: The Mildcat