Daily Short #112, December 12th, 2017: Junior Angilau is a Beast
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The first thing you take note of when reconciling the commitment of Junior Angilau is the fact that Tom Herman and staff pulled this dude out of Utah all the way to Texas -- and it wasn't like he was flying under the radar to schools out West. Angilau holds offers from every big boy out on the left coast as well as in-state Utah and BYU who you would have to consider serious competition given Angilau's Mormon background.
In a lot of instances, schools like Texas might think giving the hard pitch to this kind of kid isn't worth the time, effort or dedication of finite resources. When you look at the offer list, it's a four-star offer list to be certain, but the only out-of-region blips in the thing come from Texas, Wisconsin and Alabama. The talent is easy to see, but pulling the guy out of Utah and the Western United States was going to be the tall task all along. With the massive need for depth (and early impact depth at that) along the offensive line at Texas, it's nice to see the staff pulling out all the stops -- but even nicer to see it connect with landing a longshot like this.
Clearly, the "in" with Angilau was Patrick Vahe who is related to Angilau. The recruiting pitch to Angilau came complete with a play to his Tongan heritage given the hashtags in the recruiting tweets of #DisTonga from Darek Warehime and recruiting coordinator Bryan Carrington when responding to his commitment on Twitter.
You can also see that Herman looks to have had Jake Langi of the Texas recruiting staff, who is of Pacific Islander heritage and recently joined the department after previously working at Texas State, handling some of the recruiting work while Angilau visited Austin with his family in November.
I hope it isn't insensitive (who knows what the hell is and isn't anymore sometimes?) for me to say the more Tongans the better around here. In my experience, they are some of the nastiest sons of bitches on the football field and many come from tight-knit community upbringings, which usually translates to being good locker-room guys.
In the run-game, Angilau engages with excellent pad-level, effortless at times, climbing to the second level off of double-teams and engaging linebackers with leverage. He's a beast. If he gets his hands on you, it's over. I've seen him projected as an offensive tackle at the next level and some of that will depend on how his body fills out, but he'd optimally continue to hone his skill-set around what he seems to do best which is getting his hands inside and demoralizing folks as a road-grader. I like him best at guard like he played in high school based on the limited amount of footage available and clips from recruiting camps. (As always, I reserve the right to change my opinions greatly on players I haven't seen live and in-person once I do get that opportunity).
Angilau has the feet to play tackle, I think. I do know he has better and more natural feet than Patrick Vahe did coming out and his high school highlights show better attributes to build on than Vahe's did. More flexible hips, equivalent and maybe just a little bit better balance but Angilau can still lose his feet at times and get overextended. Angilau appears to have a little bit of a longer wingspan than Vahe and the only area where you'd say Vahe was probably superior as a high school prospect was in the pure power department, but it's close. Vahe came in with what seemed to be a small bit thicker lower body and more of an explosive power base but Angilau seems to have more flexible hips and less stiffness.
Based on one game, it doesn't appear that SLC East was exactly an air-it-out spread system like we see in Texas sometimes, so there isn't much to go on on tape regarding Angilau's abilities as a pass-protector. Lots of option stuff for the Leopards. You can watch through the game just to see the movement that Angilau generates off the line of scrimmage, though. He's a force.
You can see in camp highlights that his pass sets aren't bad, but he's still a tad raw. He certainly mirrors his hips well enough through engagement in these reps and when he keeps his feet moving, he's not going to have too many problems. It's going to take some time to develop him into a well-rounded enough player to handle D1 competition, but maybe not too long. His high school tape is miles more impressive from a workable-attribute-standpoint than Derek Kerstetter who just got finished playing the third-most snaps (684) of any Texas offensive lineman in 2017 as a true freshman.
The hope would certainly be that Angilau wouldn't have to contribute that early and could take a redshirt season. But as we saw in 2017, you never know what's going to happen. Plus, the addition of a new, highly touted offensive line prospect is a development that doesn't really need to be explained around here as to why it's so important. It's not just a key depth addition Texas got in Angilau. Texas appears to have gotten beast.
presented by the Dental Offices of Wendy Swantkowski, DDS
The Absolute BEST in family and cosmetic dentistry for the Houston-Memorial Area
Now Accepting New Patients --- 281-293-9140
The first thing you take note of when reconciling the commitment of Junior Angilau is the fact that Tom Herman and staff pulled this dude out of Utah all the way to Texas -- and it wasn't like he was flying under the radar to schools out West. Angilau holds offers from every big boy out on the left coast as well as in-state Utah and BYU who you would have to consider serious competition given Angilau's Mormon background.
In a lot of instances, schools like Texas might think giving the hard pitch to this kind of kid isn't worth the time, effort or dedication of finite resources. When you look at the offer list, it's a four-star offer list to be certain, but the only out-of-region blips in the thing come from Texas, Wisconsin and Alabama. The talent is easy to see, but pulling the guy out of Utah and the Western United States was going to be the tall task all along. With the massive need for depth (and early impact depth at that) along the offensive line at Texas, it's nice to see the staff pulling out all the stops -- but even nicer to see it connect with landing a longshot like this.
Clearly, the "in" with Angilau was Patrick Vahe who is related to Angilau. The recruiting pitch to Angilau came complete with a play to his Tongan heritage given the hashtags in the recruiting tweets of #DisTonga from Darek Warehime and recruiting coordinator Bryan Carrington when responding to his commitment on Twitter.
You can also see that Herman looks to have had Jake Langi of the Texas recruiting staff, who is of Pacific Islander heritage and recently joined the department after previously working at Texas State, handling some of the recruiting work while Angilau visited Austin with his family in November.
I hope it isn't insensitive (who knows what the hell is and isn't anymore sometimes?) for me to say the more Tongans the better around here. In my experience, they are some of the nastiest sons of bitches on the football field and many come from tight-knit community upbringings, which usually translates to being good locker-room guys.
In the run-game, Angilau engages with excellent pad-level, effortless at times, climbing to the second level off of double-teams and engaging linebackers with leverage. He's a beast. If he gets his hands on you, it's over. I've seen him projected as an offensive tackle at the next level and some of that will depend on how his body fills out, but he'd optimally continue to hone his skill-set around what he seems to do best which is getting his hands inside and demoralizing folks as a road-grader. I like him best at guard like he played in high school based on the limited amount of footage available and clips from recruiting camps. (As always, I reserve the right to change my opinions greatly on players I haven't seen live and in-person once I do get that opportunity).
Angilau has the feet to play tackle, I think. I do know he has better and more natural feet than Patrick Vahe did coming out and his high school highlights show better attributes to build on than Vahe's did. More flexible hips, equivalent and maybe just a little bit better balance but Angilau can still lose his feet at times and get overextended. Angilau appears to have a little bit of a longer wingspan than Vahe and the only area where you'd say Vahe was probably superior as a high school prospect was in the pure power department, but it's close. Vahe came in with what seemed to be a small bit thicker lower body and more of an explosive power base but Angilau seems to have more flexible hips and less stiffness.
Based on one game, it doesn't appear that SLC East was exactly an air-it-out spread system like we see in Texas sometimes, so there isn't much to go on on tape regarding Angilau's abilities as a pass-protector. Lots of option stuff for the Leopards. You can watch through the game just to see the movement that Angilau generates off the line of scrimmage, though. He's a force.
You can see in camp highlights that his pass sets aren't bad, but he's still a tad raw. He certainly mirrors his hips well enough through engagement in these reps and when he keeps his feet moving, he's not going to have too many problems. It's going to take some time to develop him into a well-rounded enough player to handle D1 competition, but maybe not too long. His high school tape is miles more impressive from a workable-attribute-standpoint than Derek Kerstetter who just got finished playing the third-most snaps (684) of any Texas offensive lineman in 2017 as a true freshman.
The hope would certainly be that Angilau wouldn't have to contribute that early and could take a redshirt season. But as we saw in 2017, you never know what's going to happen. Plus, the addition of a new, highly touted offensive line prospect is a development that doesn't really need to be explained around here as to why it's so important. It's not just a key depth addition Texas got in Angilau. Texas appears to have gotten beast.
