More unratred recruits this year? Or is it normal
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I've noticed a lot of other schools getting commits from unrated players too. I wonder if the recruiting services have been cutting back their staffing?
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No, it's common in June to haver unrated recruits commit - even happens at Bama and Georgia.. There is no way they can evaluate thousands of HS kids
I looked and posted this elsewhere but the class of 2025 (ending sophomore year) had about 450 rated recruits on On3 in mid-June, the class of 2024 had about 1500 and the class of 2023 had about 2024. A lot of kids are just starting to come on the seen now - maybe they played part time as juniors and are no attending camps, or they are late-bloomers, etc.
The sophomores rated right now are probably mostly the kids that matured fast.
A lot of kids get rated initially because they get good offers or show up well at camp. Barta falls into that latter category, All of a sudden, he was defensive MVP of a big ESPN regional camp this spring, and his measurements improved significantly - not unusual for a kid who is likely just turning 17.
The recruiting services don't have armies of analysts going around rating players.
Someone has to be the first to offer. Schools don't wait for recruiting services to bless kids.
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My theory is this…they’re locking up developmental guys that have good measurables and saving room for more highly touted guys for when the season hits and they win some games and get those guys in for visits to get or flip. Could be completely wrong. Because I don’t know shit about crooting or care much to follow.
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I've accepted we're either going to win or lose doing it the way our current head coach wants to do it and that's just what it is
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The fact that there seems to at least be a strategy, and that he’s done it before allows for just a smidge of optimism… and it’s refreshing change from recent staffs.
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Yeah he's pretty much done exactly what he said he was going to do. See guys, make offers, trust his evals. I haven't the foggiest idea if it will work out but whatevs
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Pretty good measurables for Plan D guys.
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They took a couple of lightly evaluated camp guys and cancelled this weekends visit by Coen Echols a 3 star OL from TX who is uncommitted and has already been on OVs to A&M , TT, and Auburn this month. He confirmed it was Nebraska that cancelled. So theyre not plan D OLs. They liked them better.
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Rhule has proven he can identify and develop. He's done it at two previous stops. This early in the process, with his previous success not only identifying, but then developing players, I think it is wise not to overreact to signings of guys who aren't rated highly or at all. It is early, players start getting their rankings after camps and once more offers come on with coaching staffs getting to see and test them first hand. Even then, we can't properly judge all of these kids until they have had a chance to practice and develop in a P5 college system.
That does not guarantee success, but it is a template that our now head coach has used in the past successfully. I would not be surprised to see a decent number of these currently lower ranked guys ending up quite a bit better than their current rankings. You gotta give the cook time in the kitchen to work up their dish. This is not a microwave oven rebuild. Let it simmer and develop.
That does not guarantee success, but it is a template that our now head coach has used in the past successfully. I would not be surprised to see a decent number of these currently lower ranked guys ending up quite a bit better than their current rankings. You gotta give the cook time in the kitchen to work up their dish. This is not a microwave oven rebuild. Let it simmer and develop.
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So you believe Rhule and staff are just far and away better at identifying recruits than anyone else in the country who’s had more time to identify these guys? It’s just a coincidence that the P5 staff with 4 months on the job is offering 2024 guys at camps and accepting their commit a week later? Half our commit list didn’t have recruiting profiles until this summer!
I get it, they have to get late bloomers for 2024 because playing catch up with dudes who have 20+ offers is probably a waste of time. But don’t paint the situation as rosy.
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If I was going to complain about Rhule getting unrated recruits I would have complained when he said it he was going to do it, not now that he’s actually doing it.
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I'm not painting it as rosy. I am just stating facts. They took these two 2024s OLs based on camp performances, and subsequently disinvited an OL recruit that had already taken two SEC and one Big 12 OV. They liked these two better.
I never said this staff evaluated better than everyone else. They were never going to get top 250 2024 guys who had been recruited already for well more than a year by everyone else. There are a lot of guys who measurables are much better now than last fall; that's part of growing up. The are going to the places were they can find the good players that don't yet have a well-established recruiting relationship with someone else.
I think a lot of people are melting down like there is a disaster going on for no reason E.g., lots of people loved Ajay Allen. He was not rated the June before his senior year. He did not get an offer from anyone, much less a P5 team, until August going into his season year.
There are a number of good players left now who haven't been rated or offered by P5 team. As the OP says, 37% of the players Nebraska took in the prior 4 cycles were not rated at this time in their recruiting cycles.
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I could be painting things with a broad brush here, but doesn't the transfer portal give any coach a little more "wiggle room" to take a chance on some developmental guys? Nebraska has shown they can attract some older guys out of the portal. And I think that will continue with Rhule at the helm. Find high school players with raw athleticism and the right mental make up. But more importantly, find those guys who want to be here. Develop those guys for 2 to 3 years down the road and fill gaps with transfers if needed.
And I am not some fan who fails to see the correlation between elite recruiting and winning national championships. The proof is there. Its not some false narrative. But Nebraska also needs to prove they can consistently field an 8 or 9 win team before we can even think about a National Championship caliber football team.
If Matt Rhule gets to a point where the results are similar to the Bo Pelini years, then we can reevaluate the recruiting philosophy. You need to crawl before you can walk. We've got some fans who think Nebraska needs to go from the toddler stage to sprinting immediately.
And I am not some fan who fails to see the correlation between elite recruiting and winning national championships. The proof is there. Its not some false narrative. But Nebraska also needs to prove they can consistently field an 8 or 9 win team before we can even think about a National Championship caliber football team.
If Matt Rhule gets to a point where the results are similar to the Bo Pelini years, then we can reevaluate the recruiting philosophy. You need to crawl before you can walk. We've got some fans who think Nebraska needs to go from the toddler stage to sprinting immediately.
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It's absolutely true. But the star system/rating system is antiquated technology. It a subjective judgement based on a lot of inputs which yield directionally correct results in total for a large group of athletes but is very inaccurate on an individual athlete basis.
I like the data-driven approach Rhule employs.
Isn't this what the NFL teams do? The NFL takes a pool of guys who look like they might be able to play pro ball and run them through testing and measurement and from the results of that teams rank order who they want to draft. Analytically it is a much better methodology.
It you take a kid who has athletic aptitude based on participation history, and then find that by the beginning of senior year he has grown to 6'2, 210, runs a 10.7 100M, a 4.43 40, can do a 10.5 standing broad jump, wouldn't you take him in a heartbeat even if he had only played football one year and hadn't been rated or offered by a P5 school yet? Probably the first P5 school that offers would get a kid like that to commit. It would be stupid to wait.
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I don't think you're wrong on the transfer portal point as long as you have a coaching staff that is really shrewd with how they manage the roster. Rhule has already shown that he is by ballooning it to 110 scholarships for spring ball and then cutting down to get to 85.
Another point worth making here is that there are coaching staffs who consistently outperform their recruiting rankings and put guys with raw athleticism into the NFL and onto all conference teams. It's unclear if we have a staff in place that is going to do that, but there is nothing that precludes the possibility that they are and the head man has shown historically that he can find and develop these types of players into something.
I don't want to make excuses for the lack of traction they seem to have gotten with top tier guys who have visited to date, but Rhule is selling "vaporware" at this point. He's selling the idea that he is going to turn Nebraska football into something players want to be a part of, but he's selling for a company that has had a product that is rotten festering asshole for the better part of a decade. I think high end talent is rightfully skeptical that he can deliver on the big promise when stacking them up against companies that have delivered time and time again for that same time period.
I think everyone should be at least a bit skeptical of whether this is going to work out, but to date Rhule has done exactly what he has said he's going to do and every single person in the building seems to echo that unified mission and at the 7 months mark of his tenure that's not nothing.
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Yes - guys like Chris Petersen - modest recruiting classes, lots of NFL draft choices.
I haven't checked this myself for accuracy, but I read somewhere that Rhule has had several more guys drafted from guys ne recruited from 2013 until now than Nebraska has, and Rhule only coached at Temple and Baylor.
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These are high school kids who in some cases are developing & growing quickly. We've all played ball with some kids who hit that growth spurt or grew into their frame. Or in some cases players who didn't fit the coach's systems or were injured the year before. Rhule seems to have a history of finding these types of players who are late developers or overlooked. Can't doubt his track record. Under Pelini Lavonte David wasn't going to start until Sean Fischer got hurt and he went on to become an NFL great.
I have no problem with them offering players who are still a bit unknowns if they have been able to run them through the litany of test at a Camp. Get the athletes on campus and then the job of the coaches is to coach them up. It's a sustainable long term plan if we aren't going to be able to compete with the bigger schools on NIL. Gotta think more like KSU, Cockeye St, Cockeye & Wisconsin if we can't throw money around like the bigger schools.
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