TekkNerd

All I know he is based on his highlights, he has TE size with WR speed. We can't predict the future, but the even the three stars we're getting these days are guys that P2 schools covet.

One of his team mates is recent WR commit Demarcus Brown. It's a really stacked league, and I'd imagine he is one of the better known QBs that even kids on other teams respect. Him reaching out will carry a lot of weight.

As good of an RB as Tuten was, he doesn't break out without the changes Brent Davis recommended in our run scheme.

For some reason Pry was pretty good at recruiting skill positions. Bowen had Jaylin Lane, Tuten, and Benji Gosnell who we often forget was a blue chip prospect, plus a few of the other WRs like Greene and the other Gosnell that were also pretty good. He had more than enough talent IMO to put a lot of points on the board and at times we did. Our skill guys really showed out in that heart breaking game we lost to Miami. Plus Drones wasn't as inaccurate then as he became under Montgomery. A good experienced OC would be happy to have that level of talent.

If you could get mid-season Bowen at the beginning of the season he would've been decent. He was much better than Montgomery which isn't saying much, he might have been the worst one we had in decades.

His recruitment makes me feel a little sorry for insiders, everyone keeps pressing them for answers but in this case I don't get the impression anyone really knows for sure which direction he is leaning. Even if they gave an answer it could shift. The only thing I know for sure is that even though they are a finalist, I feel like UGA fans are like Borque who??? They don't seem to care LoL. I think we have as good a shot as anyone else, and I'm not even sure Borque knows right now. We'll know something shortly before the announcement or maybe this evening. Kids tend to give the coaches a heads up if they aren't the school chosen. Hopefully that doesn't happen to us.

IMO he has always recruited really really well, and has had a tremendous amount of success. Admittedly he pretty much never beat OSU. However at the same time I feel like OSU recruiting was always better than PSUs, so if both teams are playing up to their level, OSU was usually a little bit better. They had a few close but no cigar battles though, so I suppose that's even more frustrating for fans. With that said at the level we're recruiting, beating most ACC teams on the field shouldn't be terribly difficult. I can honestly see our recruiting class finishing as high as second in the conference. Just behind Miami.

That means that the guys in one or more position rooms simply don't have it. I am fine with limited portal use. People say that's been the downfall of Clemson, as well as NIL, but I don't think that has been their issue. They have continued to recruit well enough to be a playoff team IMO. I just think it's hard to stay at the top of the hill. Pry said that Clemson copied VT when we were at our best to become successful, now it seems like they are intent on copying our decline. If they don't take a step forward this year I think they will remain a 7 to 8 win team for the forseeable future, because eventually kids wise up and start going elsewhere.

I do think Bourque cares who else his choice signs in this current class, another highly ranked QB in same class wouldn't work for him. However, given the schools he has narrowed it down to, all of them have good QB rooms. I'll add it's the same for all of our recruits. When you look at their final list of schools, none of these guys are going to play immediately, because they are only considering big name schools that recruit well.

We already beat out Miami for a defensive lineman this year. While the market has gone up for the cost of recruits. It feels more stable. Especially when it comes to a kid's final three or so, they are usually in the same ball park and you don't even make the final cut if you're not in range. Lastly on the coaching thing, Jason Taylor is comparable to Coach Chaos IMO, and he actually played in the NFL at a high level. Their defensive front has been nasty as of late. If he had a school like Kentucky or Vanderbilt in his final 3, then I'd believe it was only about the money.

He is a cane IMO, and it won't be about the money. He just likes them better.

He was only our coach for three seasons. Tuten was drafted, I think Overton probably will be, however I get your point, the bottom line is under Pry we were sprinkling in a handful of decent guys with a whole lot of average and below average.

If anything I think we were just excited to see a staff walking the halls of VA high schools. I'll start with the positive. As pedestrian as we were on offense, I feel like he did a decent job bringing in WR and RB talent. Overton was a legit blue chip recruit, and our transfer RBs were among the best. I also thought our WR recruiting was decent. He picked up some highly rated ones that haven't broken out yet, but I think one or two will. A few of them are guys that could have gone anywhere. However our recruiting in the trenches wasn't great under Pry, it's like we forgot that the offensive tackle position exists. I think we landed like two from HS in three years, and one of those washed out. In a nutshell I think the only classes that compares to what Franklin is doing right now on paper is Fuente's best class, and Beamer's better classes. With that said even though Fuente's best class was ranked 26th, there was high bust ratio IMO, so I really can't count that one. So IMO what Franklin is doing really only compares to Beamer's best classes. As for LBs I'm not sweating it, recruits are speaking very highly of Pry, and to be honest, he has a lot of help. We picked up blue chip 8th in the nation ranked LB Wiggins in Franklin's first recruiting class. I doubt we strike out this year.

In a parallel universe where Franklin is still coaching at PSU, he probably still would have stolen this kid from them. Looking at their class, anyone can see that Brown doesn't belong. They claim we're spending more of our budget on high school recruits, but that doesn't explain why our portal class was also twenty spots ahead of theirs.

They try to say that the portal is their strategy, but I think it ended up that way because they are bad at recruiting. It's not like they aren't trying at all, kids are just choosing to go elsewhere. On Brown, it would be cool to steal him because I believe he is their highest rated recruit.

Sometimes a guy from the a Sun Belt Conference school moves up and takes P4 by storm. Sometimes they get here and play like a guy that should have stayed in the Sun Belt conference. In Davis's case it's still early, but it's starting to look like the latter.

I'm guessing they probably wanted a bigger bruiser type of RB to go with Overton and Hawkins. He gets mentioned a lot for someone who at best was supposed to be third on the depth chart. When he first got here Franklin didn't appear happy with his weight, now Franklin is saying he still has a lot of work to do. I'm thinking it's to motivate him, but those comments would probably just hurt my feelings LoL.

I think that's pretty good, I also think Stewart is a solid back and he is definitely the real deal when it comes to making the first or second guy miss. If it wasn't for Hawkins and Stewarts ability to evade tacklers, we may have won even less games than we did last year...and that's a scary thought. I do hope we keep recruiting guys that have a high forced missed tackle rating. Bill Davis did not, and while Franklin hasn't given up on him. His comments to the media about him do indicate a little bit of buyer's remorse.

To be honest even SEC graduation rates are decent these days. These kids are in school a long time and usually on campus during summer sessions too. Finishing school really isn't a heavy lift. However I still give props to dudes in tougher majors with a high gpa average.

I actually looked him up and I'll admit I was surprised. It seems he earned his Masters in business management at Vanderbilt and carried a 3.7 gpa. He's definitely still a jerk, but he'll be fine if the football thing doesn't work out.

Why on earth would we hire an OC that wanted to implement the air raid with our group of players? It was never going to work. I still stand by my opinion on ranking Montgomery behind Cornelson as an OC. He should've known his system wasn't suited for our personnel and adjusted accordingly. Clearly he didn't do that.

Just looked it up. Fuente and company were probably really upset about that, looks like he was commited to us for about 9 months. It's not like we weren't using TEs back then, Bucky Hodges, Dalton Keene, AND James Mitchell all had brief NFL stints and were drafted. But....you can't argue how things turned out for him at PSU. I'm going to go ahead and go on record and say Montgomery was worse than Cornelson as an OC, he doesn't know teams have TEs.

He was also a HS QB projected as a TE with a recruiting ranking of 88. I'd bet they told Salster he could be the next Tyler Warren. IMO Salster looks a half step quicker than Warren in his highlights.

College position coaches love to highlight the better players that played for them on their resume. It doesn't make sense to do that if a guy only played under you for a year and you already knew he was a stud when you got him.

Nothing against the guys pursuing their dream, and I hope it works out. However three wins in P4 indicates you don't have enough talent. You can literally get to .500 or a little above it with bad coaching if you're talented enough. If we had multiple drafts picks, we would've won more games.

Of course there is more to being a DE than one on one, but I do like how he moves.

Looking at their recruiting classes with the exception of Franklin's first class at VT last year, I'd gladly take any of their recruiting classes the past few years over ours, and to be honest the only reason I would keep Franklins first class over theirs is because it seems they just don't recruit QBs anymore, at least not good ones. There really is no excuse for how they are playing these days.

I'm not trying to knock VA recruiting as it does fluctuate annually, but if you're going by rankings, once you get close to 20th ranked in our state, you're probably going to have another guy from a state within driving distance that is higher on your board.

Okay, I will revise my previous statement. I think the highest we'll ever finish in recruiting under Franklin is second in the ACC. I still have a hard time believing we out recruit Miami, even though we did just beat them head to head for a recruit. I think it's because he just wasn't a Miami guy as he described the school as, "having a lot going on" and it didn't sound like a complement. While it is possible that we out recruit them, I think Cristobal is the best coach they've had in a long time and the road to winning the ACC is through Miami IMO.

I don't think we'll ever have a class ranked higher than Miami or FSU, however I do think we could find ourselves as high as third in the ACC sometimes, however UNC and Clemson are also formidable in recruiting.

Also Jeff Overton 2.0 could end up being a better back than Marcellous Hawkins.

However when Huhn has a good day, it's a really good day. I guess we'll see. We still have spring and summer to go, but if its close I think they'll give the nod to Baker as QB 2.

While rankings aren't everything he was higher rated than Huhn, and that ranking is as a pass first QB. I keep reading people say that he has a different element to his game, or we should do packages just for him. Why? He isn't a runner. That does however make sense for Brand, and we're doing that, as he has been seen in wildcat formation at practice. Checking Baker's stats he rushed for 233 yards for the year in his last season in high school in a 12 game season. That to me means his coaches were barely running him at all and he got recruited on his arm. Huhn may unseat him, but it won't be in his freshman season.

However I think that's over, so long as the money is close I don't think recruits would Shane Beamer over Franklin. IMO his VA relationships are stronger than Shane's. I also think Beamer is on the hot seat, switching coordinators doesn't save coaches most of the time. It can work, but most times it doesn't. Lastly I'm not sold on Sellers, he isn't as bad as Drones was at passing, but I would't call him good at it either

I was always under the impression that most of them "shrink" when they arrive for their freshman year. With that said they do all get stronger over the years.

My read on things based on Franklin's quotes is that he has been fairly hands off on defense and more involved on offense because he has more trust in Pry because of his experience. With that said I don't really see the point of asking him about LB cross training, because I can only assume Pry did the same thing at PSU, and I assume it worked out for them because they recruited better players. I guess every LB coach has their quirks. I swear Bud never subbed out his LBs. If you were second on the depth chart you simply didn't play. Like ever. I won't complain about what we're doing so long as the LBs don't look confused out there next year like they did at times under Marve and Siefkes's system.

If you're a natural instinctive LB that plays fast you're fine. If you're an athletic guy that is trying to learn the position, he may not be best coach to get you up to speed. On a completely unrelated and different note, apparently Caleb Woodson is having quite a spring down at Bama.

I remember reading somewhere that we even told him we would make it the Percy Harvin show in Blacksburg. However, he never had much interest in coming here. I actually prefer that as opposed to a kid visiting just to be nice.

This kid is a composite four star player, and ranked as the number 10 player in the state of Ohio by 247 sports, and it does not appear that he has an Ohio State offer. VT fans would be rioting if we had an in state prospect with a ranking as high as his that didn't have a VT offer. For comparison sake he would be roughly the sixth or seventh player in VA's rankings this year.

I also wonder if they can pick up a double major instead??? In any case they have to be enrolled in school otherwise they can't play on the team.

While I don't know the exact cause of his death. Anytime someone implies he took his own life on social media. Those close to the situation immediately refute that, and several have stated it was an aneurysm. So suicide can be ruled out IMO, I'm mentioning that because I saw a few posts saying, "check on your friends", when he passed away. While that is good advice in general, because none of us know when we're leaving here. It appears Whitaker's death was just a freak thing that just happens sometimes, and wasn't related to mental health.

So I can't tell you if a 96 or 97 is a five star, or a four star. I suppose if I digged into previous player rankings I would get the exact cut off. I just wanted to provide a general explanation of it. In any case if you land a 96 or 97 it's safe to say the dude is a stud.

The purpose is to give a guy a numerical ranking within the star system. Anyone with a 98 grade or above is a 5 star recruit, and there are only 13 in the entire country, four star players receive a 90 to 95 ranking, so if you're a four star player ranked 95, in theory you should closer to a five star player than a guy ranked 90. Same thing for three stars, a three star with an 89 ranking is closer to being a four star than one ranked 83. As an example Ayden Green was an 89 coming out of high school, and his performance shows that IMO. In recent years it feels like most of our recruiting classes have had an average numerical ranking of around 86, which means we have recruited mostly mid and lower level three star guys. Our 2021 class had an 85ish average and I don't think most of those guys panned out. So IMO it makes a difference.

This is of course just my opinion, but I would think a scout would feel the same way. It's also quite possible that he might not be as injury prone if he was lighter. I think back to DJ Coles. I thought he had potential too, but he also was too chunky. Sometimes you can just look at a guy and tell. Funny thing is. Usually the guys that need to lose weight miraculously start dropping it when they realize it's time to be considered by the NFL. If Stewart has dropped some weight on our pro day. You'll have your answer. I'm betting he does.

He also happens to be a really good athlete, so he was productive. Both things can be true. Personally I think losing a few pounds would have been good for him. Lots of really good college players whose careers would have benefited form either gaining more weight or losing weight. When it comes to gaining weight I think guys like Tre Turner and Keyshawn King would have been much better players if they bothered to take advantage of our S&C program.