June recruiting thread.... let's get it, dudes.

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vailhusker said:
Steve Marik • InsideNebraska
Staff Writer
@Steve_Marik

On the afternoon of June 6, Ty’Quan Parker’s eight-hour shift as a material handler at a Educational Testing Service building in New Jersey had just ended. After grabbing his cleats and other workout gear he hopped in a car with a friend and drove 45 minutes south on I-295 to Monmouth University.
It was at Monmouth where Parker — everyone calls him "TP" — competed at a football camp for post-graduates, junior college players and those in the transfer portal. There’s a lot to like about Parker, a big cornerback who stands 6 feet and weighs 200 pounds. He can move, too, and was recently clocked at a laser-timed 4.36 seconds in the 40-yard dash by his trainers, one of which is Zack Valentine, a former second-round NFL Draft pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Valentine has personally trained multiple athletes who went on to play in the NFL, such as former Alabama defensive back Anthony Averett, former Wisconsin fullback Chris Pressley and 12-year offensive line veteran Bryant McKinnie.
There's a lot to like, but there are questions about Parker, too. He turned 25 years old May 10 and has only played in nine games total since graduating high school in 2017, and they came at the junior college level last season at Sussex County Community College in Newton, New Jersey. Now in the transfer portal, he has three years of eligibility remaining.
The path between Parker’s senior year of high school and now has been a long, winding road with plenty of roadblocks. It hasn’t been easy to navigate, but Parker never lost sight of his goal to play Division I football.
Confidence isn’t an issue. Parker believes he can play at the highest level of college football. But he needs a program to give him a shot, an opportunity to show what he can do. Could it be the Huskers? Parker will work out at a Nebraska camp this Friday in Memorial Stadium.
Though Parker has scholarship offers from programs at lower levels, he wants a crack at impressing the Husker staff. He currently has one FBS offer, Arkansas State, and said he’d likely be at Rutgers but the Scarlet Knights told him they were out of available scholarships for defensive backs. Parker has an offer from FCS programs Albany and Austin Peay and several more from Division II programs.
This opportunity means so much to Parker, and he is so invested in reaching his goal, that he spent what money he has on plane tickets to and from Lincoln. He won’t have enough for a hotel room, so he’s planning on spending the night at a current Husker player’s off-campus residence.
“I don’t have a designated home to go to. I had to use the last little bit of my money to pay for the flight to get out there to Nebraska to compete and meet the staff,” Parker told Inside Nebraska. “It’s a lot. This process is not an easy one, I make a lot of sacrifices. I know this isn’t going to be a walk in the park. I may sound crazy and some people might look at me and go, ‘Oh, this guy needs to just give up, he can easily finish school, get a degree and be a regular individual.’ But that’s not what I see myself doing. I know I have the talent, I know I have what Power Five schools are looking for, I just need an opportunity.”

Parker understands it’s a long shot he’ll get an offer from the Huskers. It’s unclear how many they even have available. But he doesn’t believe it’s a long shot that he’ll impress someone at the camp, and it may lead to an opportunity elsewhere. That much he’s certain.
“I’m giving every and any school the opportunity to evaluate me and get myself out there. I do have offers, I do have scholarships, but those aren’t schools like Nebraska,” Parker said. “I’m very excited, pumped up and anxious for it because it’s an opportunity to put myself out there and give myself more exposure. Get other programs to know about who I am and get to see me in person, not just on Twitter.”
In late May, Parker competed at a UConn camp and will attend one at Penn State later this month. He’ll make a decision on where to play following the Nittany Lions’ camp.
While at the Monmouth camp, Parker was approached by a couple Big Ten staffers who made a pit stop there while on their way to a larger satellite camp: Purdue cornerbacks coach Sam Carter and Minnesota senior defensive analyst Dennis Dottin-Carter.
Both showed interest in Parker and wanted to know more about him.
“He (Dottin-Carter) was like, ‘I love the way you move. I love you at corner. Don’t take this the wrong way, but what do you think about safety?’” Parker recalled. “My exact words were, ‘I’ll play anywhere as long as I’m on scholarship,’ and he laughed and said he liked that answer.”
Nebraska entered the discussion in late April when Parker connected with CJ Cavazos, the Huskers’ director of football operations. Parker said Cavazos was impressed with his size, length, movement and overall playmaking ability from his film, which only included four different games, the ones where he saw the most action.
"When I first saw Ty'Quan, yeah, he was a nice-sized kid. I told myself, 'This is a nice-sized corner, but I wonder how well he runs, I wonder about his hip motion,'" Valentine said. "He has all the tangibles for a corner, but he's a complete defensive back. If need be, he can play linebacker because he's a physical kid as well. And he has a grown-man mind, because he had to grow up fast. And by growing up fast, he learned a lot of things and he saw a lot of things."
After connecting with Cavazos, Parker didn’t waste much time trying to figure out a way to get to Lincoln for the workout. He knows a little about Nebraska’s program already because he’s good friends with former Husker Lamar Jackson.
“That’s my guy,” Parker said of Jackson. “I told him I’d be out there on the 16th. He told me about how you guys have new facilities.”
Parker’s list of players he knows from past camps and junior colleges is long. He’s friends with Buffalo Bills teammates Damar Hamlin — yes, that Damar Hamlin — and Dane Jackson, and even modeled Hamlin’s clothing line at one point. He knows current XFL players John Lovett and Sal Cannella, as well as current Green Bay Packer and former Rutgers player Bo Melton.

Other campers at Nebraska likely don’t have the story Parker does​

Parker is from the inner city of Trenton, New Jersey. He attended Trenton Central High School until he transferred to Ewing High School about four miles away following his junior football season. During that transition he moved in with his godmother, who gained custody of Parker from his biological parents.
While at Ewing, Parker proved to be a dynamic playmaker and earned first-team all-state and all-conference honors. He gives credit to the late Darvin Henderson, who trained Parker his senior year. Parker wound up setting Ewing’s all-time record for most kick return touchdowns (eight) and kick return yards (980) in a season. He was an every-down starter at corner on defense and the primary return specialist while sharing carries at running back.
With those kinds of stats as a returner, Parker gained recruiting steam. At one point he was verbally committed to Rutgers due to the recruiting job of then-Scarlet Knights offensive line coach AJ Blazek, who’s now coaching the O-line at Vanderbilt. Parker had even attended a camp at Temple when Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule was coaching the Owls and gained more interest after competing at a Virginia Tech camp.
"I'm right next door to Temple, it's right across the the bridge," said Valentine, who coaches and teaches at Woodbury, New Jersey. "So I'm familiar with Temple, where Matt Rhule was years ago before the NFL. Matt should know what type of player Ty'Quan is. If he gets his foot in the door, I guarantee Matt will be happy. Not just him, but that entire team will be happy."
But while Parker was talented enough to play Power Five football, he was forced to go the JUCO route due to not taking care of business in the classroom. He was academically eligible.
Parker will never forget the time his high school coach at Trenton Central, Tarig Holman, a former Cockeye Hawkeye player who’s now the head coach at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in New Jersey, got real with him.
“He asked me, ‘How many people do you know who live comfortable lives with college degrees, doing what they love, making a significant amount of money?’ I didn’t have anyone I could name,” Parker said of what Holman told him. “Then he asked me, ‘How many guys do you know who are dead or locked up due to violence, gang affiliation or whatever?’ I named a multitude of people who I knew personally who were my age at the time who lost their lives due to that type of violence. That, right there, showed me at 15- or 16-years-old what kind of choices I wanted to make from there on out. That’s when I chose football.”
From there, Parker’s goal of playing major college football took him all over the country.
Parker signed with Garden City Community College in Kansas out of high school in 2017. Money was tight for Parker, the third oldest of four siblings who was raised by his mother, who worked job to job. So when it came time to leave for Garden City, Parker couldn’t afford a plane ticket. So he caught a Greyhound bus from New Jersey to Kansas to start his college football career as an early enrollee.
Parker’s time in Garden City didn’t last long, however. He left after only about two months because he didn’t feel comfortable with the then-coaching staff’s conditioning techniques during the hot summer months. About a week after Parker left the team, Braeden Bradforth, a player from Parker’s home state of New Jersey, was found dead in his dorm room. An autopsy revealed Bradforth had died of heatstroke. Garden City Community College reached a settlement with Bradforth’s family.
Parker went back home to New Jersey to continue working out with his trainers, Josè Gumbs and Valentine. Like Valentine, Gumbs played in the NFL, too. Not too long after that, Parker was offered a scholarship to play at Scottsdale Community College. Parker made his way to Arizona in January 2018, but after five months on campus, bad luck found Parker. The Maricopa County Community Colleges District announced it was eliminating football from its four campuses that played: Phoenix, Mesa, Glendale and Scottsdale.

So Parker moved back to New Jersey yet again, looking for a new home and a place to play football. But his passion had to take a backseat to life this time around. Parker’s godmother, who took him in as a junior and senior in high school, was experiencing serious health issues. Unable to work, she needed help financially. That’s when Parker found little jobs here and there to do his part.
“I had to come home and provide and help out, pay rent, contribute within the household I was living at,” said Parker, who during that time enrolled at the local community college, Mercer County, and did not play football while just being a student.
Parker credits his girlfriend for keeping his head on straight and telling him to continue on with school. It would’ve been easy to quit going.
“She was the person who was keeping me afloat,” Parker said. “She was the person who told me, ‘Just because you’re not playing football right now, you can still be academically good and in good standing for when football does come back around for you.’ That’s why I went and registered for courses at Mercer, just so I can be academically good for when I graduated from Mercer or got back on a team and got some film to then send out to get recruited.”
When Parker wasn’t working at a car lot to earn a paycheck so he could help out at home, he’d be working out, trying to perfect his craft as a defensive back. He wanted to keep his body right while waiting for the opportunity he always knew would come around. And there were opportunities. He unofficially visited West Virginia in October 2019 and was planning on joining the team once he received his Associate in Arts degree.
But another dose of adversity hit not only Parker, but the entire world. The COVID-19 pandemic happened, and it derailed Parker’s plans to join the Mountaineers. The pandemic made it tough to do just about anything in regards to finding a program to play for. That time during COVID was some of the most difficult of Parker’s life.
Once the world started opening back up following COVID, Parker had a couple childhood friends from New Jersey who were playing for Lackawanna College in Scranton, Pennsylvania, put in a good word for him. Those friends were William Hackett, who later played at Albany, and Ji'Ayir Brown, who starred at Penn State and earned third-team All-Big Ten honors in 2022 before being drafted in the third round by the San Francisco 49ers. Parker joined Lackawanna in the spring of 2022.
According to Parker, he had a disagreement with the Lackawanna coaching staff and never played for the Falcons. Parker transferred out again and landed at Sussex. It was there where he finally got to play football for the first time since his senior high school season in 2016. He appeared in nine games, racking up 53 tackles, eight pass breakups and one interception while starting at corner. There weren’t many targets thrown Parker’s way. The opportunities Parker did get, he usually won. He gave up just two receptions for 12 yards all season.
“That season went phenomenal,” Parker said. “I’m the corner that you can put anywhere, either side. I can play boundary, I can play field. I’m a big corner — I’m 6-2, 200 pounds. Typically in high school and JUCO, they put me on the best receiver and I’ll shadow or travel with the best receiver.”
Parker also showed how much he had grown off the field. When he left high school, he had a Grade Point Average of 1.4. He left Sussex with a 3.1 and has his Associate of Arts, which will allow him to transfer to a Division I program. Parker will be the first to earn a college degree.
“You’re dealing with a person who really, really loves football,” Parker said. “It’s not a choice for me, it’s a destiny. I know I have what it takes and I know the type of person I can be.”
What will the Husker coaching staff be evaluating on Friday? Valentine has a good idea.
"He's ready to play. He's a kid who's almost like a lion in a cage that's been in that cage for a while. It's just a matter of time until that lion gets to hunt," Valentine said of Parker. "When he gets on that football field, he's just going to tear up things. He's going to be an amazing football player. He just needs an opportunity to come out of that cage and hunt. He'd be an amazing asset for a football program."
www.hudl.com

Ty’Quan Parker on Hudl

Watch Ty’Quan Parker's videos and highlights on Hudl. More info: Sussex County Community College - Sussex County CC Football / CB / Class of 2023 / Newton, NJ
www.hudl.com www.hudl.com
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Awesome story there. I'm sure that this kid has made some mistakes along the way ("disagreement" with his third Juco coaching staff is pretty ambiguous), but he's also been dealt more setbacks already than most people face in a lifetime. I mean, Trenton is an absolutely hell hole and the fact that he left his mother's house to live with his godmother, who he then had to give up football and work to support financially, tells me that nothing in his upbringing was easy. The fact that he's got his associates and is still following his dreams, while being able to get his bachelors paid for, is outstanding even if he never plays another meaningful down of football.
 
HCFord1 said:
Awesome story there. I'm sure that this kid has made some mistakes along the way ("disagreement" with his third Juco coaching staff is pretty ambiguous), but he's also been dealt more setbacks already than most people face in a lifetime. I mean, Trenton is an absolutely hell hole and the fact that he left his mother's house to live with his godmother, who he then had to give up football and work to support financially, tells me that nothing in his upbringing was easy. The fact that he's got his associates and is still following his dreams, while being able to get his bachelors paid for, is outstanding even if he never plays another meaningful down of football.
Click to expand...
Was an interesting read. We've all made mistakes but the winners find a way to learn from them. He does not seem afraid of the grind. Can you imagine all of the stories and interviews about him if he did get a scholarship to Nebraska? The local and national media would eat it up. I could see him making quite a bit of money off of NIL once people hear his story.
 


Greg Smith • InsideNebraska
Senior Recruiting Analyst
@GregSmithRivals

Three-star offensive lineman
Kaedin Massey wrapped his second trip to Lincoln since coach Matt Rhule has been coach. This time the Kansas native was back for an official visit. It sounds like things couldn’t have gone much better.
“I got to watch workouts. I also spoke to the strength, nutrition, academic staff,” Massey said. “It was very cool to talk to Coach (Matt) Rhule. I also enjoyed hanging with the offensive linemen as well as touring and meeting with the engineering school.”
The 6-foot-8, 255-pound lineman has built a strong relationship with offensive line coach Donovan Raiola. He was able to get in the film room with Raiola which is another highlight of the trip.
“I did watch film with Coach Raiola and it was great,” Massey said. “Coach Raiola is a very knowledgeable coach. I love his philosophy and his coaching style. He tries to keep the offensive line with as much natural and athletic movement as possible.”
Rhule has become a big positive for Nebraska on the recruiting trail. Players, parents and high school coaches have all said they enjoy his presence on visits. Maseey mentioned how much he enjoyed his time with Rhule. I dug into that further to see what exactly made that talk so good.
“It was amazing to meet him for the first time in person and speak with him several times over the course of the visit,” Massey said. “I was able to have dinner with him multiple times too. He is very dedicated to building a family culture with not only his coaching staff and players but with the players families as well.”
Massey said that that type of tight-knit bond is something he is strongly taking into consideration with his college decision. He also noted the bond he witnessed within the offensive line. He got to see that up close and personal with his player host Teddy Prochazka.
“One thing that really stood out to me about Nebraska’s offensive line is that they are a very tight group,” Massey said. “At every school you see the offensive line be a tight group but I have never seen a group as together as the pipeline.”
Next up for Massey is a visit to Oklahoma then a trip to Kansas State. Then it’s decision time as Massey plans to commit at the end of June. As he gets back home to Lyndon, Kansas, the family feel that Matt Rhule has created in Nebraska’s program will stick with him the most.
n.rivals.com

Kaedin Massey 2024 Offensive Tackle Kansas State

Kaedin Massey - 3 Star Offensive tackle for Kansas State on EMAWOnline
n.rivals.com n.rivals.com
 
vailhusker said:
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Season 3 Nbc GIF by The Office
 
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