National Recruiting Report | Slow Start for New Coaches

Now that December is the time when most recruits decide to sign, things have sped up with the process. Everything was going faster already with offering players earlier than ever before. Now the level of urgency with spring official visits and one less month to get your class in order has increased dramatically.

That’s why securing early commitments are more important than ever. Notre Dame has five and that’s around where they need to be. Alabama, Clemson, and LSU are in great shape with twelve for the Tide and nine each for Clemson and LSU.

Other programs are off to a slower start and slow isn’t good in this new era of recruiting. Things can flip quickly and commits can rain down rapidly, but they better start for these schools or they could be in serious trouble in a few months.

Some new coaches haven’t been able to gain much traction yet. Mike Locksley at Maryland has one commit. Ditto for Scott Satterfield at Louisville. Mel Tucker at Colorado also only has one at this time.

For Locksley and Tucker in particular, they need positive momentum fairly soon.

As mentioned a few weeks ago in this space, the DMV is loaded with top talent. Locksley needs to land one or two of those top guys to hopefully persuade the others to join then.

Tucker is walking into Colorado with some highly regarded prospects from the state in the current cycle. That isn’t always the case in Colorado so Tucker needs to pounce. He’s already lost 4-star defensive tackle Aidan Keanaaina‍ to Notre Dame and other national prospects like offensive linemen Andrew Gentry‍, Roger Rosengarten‍, and Reece Atteberry‍ seem to be leaning elsewhere.

Tucker can’t let all of those players leave the state in his first full recruiting class. The first full class is often the most important one for a new head coach. The accelerated recruiting calendar is probably not helping them, although it hasn’t seemed to affect Mack Brown at North Carolina (seven commitments).

Last year Chip Kelly took over UCLA and it seemed like he was ill prepared for the new world of recruiting he was entering. He failed to sign a top-40 class.

These coaches don’t want the same thing to happen to them so they need to get it rolling in a hurry. They can’t afford to go into the summer with only two or three commitments on the board.

On to other stray national recruiting thoughts...

- Speaking of Kelly, UCLA only has one commitment so far for 2020. With USC a dumpster fire that keeps adding gasoline, it’s amazing that the Bruins aren’t taking more advantage of it.

I’m still in the camp that Kelly can be successful at UCLA, but I’m not sure if he can replicate what he did at Oregon if he things continue this way in recruiting for him.

- Matt Rhule and Baylor have zero commits for 2020 right now. I don’t know if Rhule consistently interviewing for NFL jobs every offseason is the reason for it, but it’s definitely not helping.

He’s done a good job turning around the program after Art Briles left him a mess to clean up. Let’s hope that Rhule doesn’t whiff on this recruiting class and then bolt for the NFL. He’d be leaving the next coach with a different kind of problem to deal with to fix holes on their roster.

- The under the radar prospect of the week is Khatavian Franks out of Fairburn, Georgia. At 6’2” 188, he’s a classic ‘tweener who is built like a safety, but plays linebacker for his high school program.

The nickel linebacker position (Notre Dame’s Rover) was made for a guy like this. He’s long, a good blitzer, and finds the football a lot. His only Power 5 offers at this time are Duke, Pitt, and Wake Forest. He’s an intriguing prospect if he finds the right scheme fit where he can excel.