Ketch's 10 Thoughts From The Weekend (Nothing but good vibes)
- Thread starter Ketchum
- Start date
Frankly, if Sark keeps pulling in classes ranked as high as this, I don't care if he doesn't get every top kid in the state of Texas.
Watched three of the state title games. Simmons was an absolute unit and difference maker. he needs to clean up the penalties, 2 back to back with roughing passer and hands to face.
Dakorian Moore and Caden Durham are huge difference makers as well.
Need to close on Christian Jackson out of PNG (my alma mater) He is a monster.
Dakorian Moore and Caden Durham are huge difference makers as well.
Need to close on Christian Jackson out of PNG (my alma mater) He is a monster.
Offered and recruited are two different things under this staff if we are being honest.
I think far more important than a simple summary statistic of top 20 in-state players, is peeling back the layers to find out the why (they aren't committing to Texas) and the who (is replacing them from OOS or lower in-state).
@Ketchum already commented on the "Why"...seems primarily it was a weird year. We had a top WR have strong legacy ties to Tech, we have a staff that for whatever reason never really pushed hard for Bussey (I disagree here and think we should have but the staff doesn't seem to have a clean projection for him). Georgia came in and stole our lunch on Justin Williams and JJA - happens, they obviously have quite a few skins on the wall to show recruits, especially on defense. Our RB recruiting seemed to favor two OOS players - I'll go ahead and trust Choice on that front as he's earned that. OL I wasn't a huge fan of the in-state crop this year - IMO we got the best Interior OL Center prospect in Cruz; I think he'll be a stud. Then we got our 2024 can't miss guy in Simmons. On QB, I think we got the perfect post-Arch Manning QB recruit we could have - a guy who is willing to sit in our system and learn for 2-3 years, and I think his senior tape is pretty damn compelling. Hard to be overly critical on the in-state haul this year, regardless of what the ranking stats say.
I'm not sure I love the WRs ranked highly, so I could see why Sark and Jackson would evaluate elsewhere...which leads me to the "who".
Who are we replacing some of these "in-state misses" with. On receiver, we went and secured a 5* out of Missouri - that'll do. I discussed RB recruiting above, time will tell on that, but I'm of the opinion that Choice has earned the benefit of the doubt with how good our RB room has been.
We went and secured the best RT prospect in the country from powerhouse Mater Dei - that'll do and then some. We went into LA and FL to secure some big commits (literally) with Hills (iDL), Mack (Nickel, CB) and Robinson (DT), especially when the Texas iDL prospects were lacking.
Overall, this discussion just needs a more complete picture than saying "we missed on 16 top 20 kids! Need to do better!". I'm not implying Ketch is saying this, in fact, I think he captured it well. But as long as the why and who are answered, I really don't care where these kids come from - it's silly to have that outlook in modern football in 2024.
@Ketchum already commented on the "Why"...seems primarily it was a weird year. We had a top WR have strong legacy ties to Tech, we have a staff that for whatever reason never really pushed hard for Bussey (I disagree here and think we should have but the staff doesn't seem to have a clean projection for him). Georgia came in and stole our lunch on Justin Williams and JJA - happens, they obviously have quite a few skins on the wall to show recruits, especially on defense. Our RB recruiting seemed to favor two OOS players - I'll go ahead and trust Choice on that front as he's earned that. OL I wasn't a huge fan of the in-state crop this year - IMO we got the best Interior OL Center prospect in Cruz; I think he'll be a stud. Then we got our 2024 can't miss guy in Simmons. On QB, I think we got the perfect post-Arch Manning QB recruit we could have - a guy who is willing to sit in our system and learn for 2-3 years, and I think his senior tape is pretty damn compelling. Hard to be overly critical on the in-state haul this year, regardless of what the ranking stats say.
I'm not sure I love the WRs ranked highly, so I could see why Sark and Jackson would evaluate elsewhere...which leads me to the "who".
Who are we replacing some of these "in-state misses" with. On receiver, we went and secured a 5* out of Missouri - that'll do. I discussed RB recruiting above, time will tell on that, but I'm of the opinion that Choice has earned the benefit of the doubt with how good our RB room has been.
We went and secured the best RT prospect in the country from powerhouse Mater Dei - that'll do and then some. We went into LA and FL to secure some big commits (literally) with Hills (iDL), Mack (Nickel, CB) and Robinson (DT), especially when the Texas iDL prospects were lacking.
Overall, this discussion just needs a more complete picture than saying "we missed on 16 top 20 kids! Need to do better!". I'm not implying Ketch is saying this, in fact, I think he captured it well. But as long as the why and who are answered, I really don't care where these kids come from - it's silly to have that outlook in modern football in 2024.
Calling Adeleye a "Hit" is an interesting take, considering he's been kicked off his second team now and even before that made almost zero contributions.
The super blue chips.
I think it's just an odd year with a lot of reasons adding up to it.
Texas and Texas A&M literally combined to land 8 of the top 10 two years ago.
Ok, but they can do better in Texas than they are. There's room for growth.
Two people have mentioned it out of 10 pages of discussion. It can't matter that much.
Foster is a bust?
BTW, the it rate the way you've done it is 50%. Do you know the hit rate of most fives stars? Between 50-70% depending on the year.
I always thought Worthy was at X and Mitchell was at Z. Now I'm thoroughly confused.
Whichever it is, Cook is going to be in Worthy's role from last year, and I think he's going to be extremely successful in it.
I mean, sure? Obviously there are some of those guys (Hudson, Williams, JJA) that they recruited, and there are others (Smith, Durham, Bussey) that were offered but clearly weren’t recruited as priorities, right or wrong.
Just playing devil’s advocate here, possibly the staff prioritized the OOS recruits as better prospects this year?
I’m with you though, I wanna see 7 of the states top 10 in burnt orange every year. But ultimately, just win.
Oh and we have lots of other studs after those 2. No disrespect to Johntay, CJ, Malik and the rest
This loss stills irks me. Guys like this shouldn't be all conference for Ohio State.
Those Episcopal kids could care less about staying in-state. It's frustrating.
Walker LIttle - Stanford
Marvin Wilson - FSU
