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The family forces that guide 2024 top recruit Dylan Raiola
Buzz is constant about Georgia, Nebraska and USC, the perceived favorites in the wake of Raiola's December decommitment from Ohio State.
theathletic.com
Dylan Raiola’s ‘warrior spirit’ and the forces that guide the nation’s top QB recruit
Mitch ShermanFeb 3, 2023
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The talent in Dylan Raiola’s right arm, the effortless motion, the body awareness and rare processing skills that his father’s former quarterbacks from the Detroit Lions began to notice when the kid was 13, they’re all plain to see.
His innate qualities, in fact, developed more quickly than even they envisioned, rocketing Raiola from an unknown junior varsity QB after his freshman season of high school two years ago in Texas to the No. 1 prospect in the Class of 2024.
“Recruiting is an imperfect science,” said Drew Stanton, the former second-round pick out of Michigan State and 13-year NFL QB who has mentored Raiola. “But when you look at him, it’s a safe bet that he’s going to be an elite quarterback in college.”
Buzz about Georgia, Nebraska and USC, the perceived favorites in the wake of his December decommitment from Ohio State, often feels inescapable. He pledged to the Buttguys last May, then played his junior season at Chandler (Ariz.) High School and threw for 2,435 yards and 22 touchdowns.
Raiola enrolled this week at Pinnacle High School on the north side of Phoenix, from which he plans to graduate in December after playing as a senior, flanked by his brother Dayton, a 2026 QB prospect. In Arizona, their transfer generated more noise and questions about Dylan’s immediate eligibility in the fall.
Nationally, it’s a subplot amid his journey, which resembles — more than upon first glance — the path traveled by Texas newcomer Arch Manning, the top-rated prospect in the Class of 2023 and next in an esteemed family line of quarterbacks.
Dylan, from a family of linemen, was unwittingly raised as a QB. He is readymade for college at age 17 in part because of competitors like Matthew Stafford with whom his parents afforded him to rub shoulders early in life.
“I trust my parents,” Dylan said, “for letting God lead me through all of this.”
Faith and family loom always for the Raiolas as grounding forces. They figure to guide Dylan as he chooses a college destination as soon as this spring.
Dominic Raiola played 14 seasons as a center for the Lions after an All-America career at Nebraska; his wife, Yvonne, starred as a swimmer and water polo player in their native Honolulu. She competed collegiately at Hawaii.
From them, Dylan inherited his athleticism, poise and a fighting spirit rooted in their heritage.
“What resonates with Polynesian athletes and within the culture itself is just this warrior spirit,” Yvonne said. “There’s such a loyalty that you have to each other — the brotherhood and sisterhood. Faith and family is at the root of who we are, what we stand for and what’s important.
“Football comes third.”
Dylan gained an ability, too, to compartmentalize — to tune out the noise. Yvonne keeps track of Dylan’s Twitter account. His sister, Taylor, a junior on the TCU volleyball team, monitors his Instagram profile on her phone. Dylan sees limited bits of the public bickering and commentary.
“I played for as long as I did and did what I did,” Dominic Raiola said, “because I always kept the main as the main thing. You can get caught up with what people are saying, the stars (in recruiting) or how they’re negatively talking about you.
“But if you don’t take care of business at home, there is no field. And if you don’t take care of business on the field, there are no accolades.”
At the small gym setting in a north Scottsdale industrial park, across town from the site of the upcoming Super Bowl, Dylan Raiola found peace this week. He worked out with his brother and a few other athletes.
Dylan, at 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds, redistributed weight in recent months. He’s got the build of a college QB. Dayton, too, has grown physically impressive this winter. He shot up to 6 feet, adding 3 inches after Nebraska extended a scholarship offer, his first, in October.
On Monday, Dayton wore a red Nebraska sweatshirt to the workout. Dylan donned a black hoodie from the Polynesian Bowl. In the gym, though, no one is interested in Dylan’s choice of clothing and what it might signal about his recruiting.
His time here is an escape. It reminds Dominic of a different day, nearly 30 years ago in Hawaii at the open-air garage gym owned by Olin Kreutz’s grandfather, George Perry.
Raiola and Kreutz, teammates at St. Louis High School, learned discipline and humility as they pushed the rusted plates.
Kreutz played at Washington and was drafted by the Bears in 1998. Three years ahead of Raiola to enter the NFL, Kreutz also toiled for 14 years as a center — the first 13 in Chicago.
“Olin and I grew up together and constantly were being challenged to uphold this standard that we created,” Dominic said.
He feared every year in Detroit that he would get cut.
“It was almost like we never made it,” Dominic said.
Dylan was born in 2005 after Dominic’s fourth year in Detroit. That spring, the Lions drafted Dan Orlovsky in the fifth round out of UConn. A year later, the franchise signed Jon Kitna. The Lions drafted Stanton in 2007 and Stafford with the No. 1 pick out of Georgia in 2009.
The quarterbacks fit tightly into the lives of Dominic, Yvonne and their family.
“Quarterbacks are the CEO of the building,” Dominic said. “I always wanted to make sure my CEO was good. I took care of them, protected them.”
He watched film with quarterbacks and made calls at the line of scrimmage for them. Taylor said she recalls finding notebooks as a kid at their home in Michigan filled with her dad’s play calls and meeting observations.
“Probably the smartest player I’ve ever been around,” Stanton said. “Dom would be able to see things in real time. It allowed the quarterbacks to just be able to go out and play.”
Dominic asked the quarterbacks and other teammates to “pour into” his kids.
“Why not put your kids in the best situation?” he said.
They were all uncles to the Raiola children.
“I know there’s a bunch of kids who would have killed to play games with my uncle Matthew,” Taylor said, “or to have Calvin Johnson pick you up and take you for a jet ski ride.”
But all that glamour, she said, meant little unless the Raiolas understood how to accept what the pro athletes offered.
At a young age, Dylan gravitated to the quarterbacks.
“I look for what they have in common,” Dylan said. “They love their families. They use football as a platform to show the world what they’re all about. They’re great people, always looking to give and provide.
“I would be dumb not to listen to those guys. I absorb everything they tell me.”
Dylan studied the movements of Detroit Red Wings goalkeeper Chris Osgood. Same drill when his parents took Dylan to the College World Series.
He talked about it nonstop, Taylor said. And his fascination with other sports only served as a preview of what came after Dylan began to play quarterback.
Kitna noticed it first. Dylan had a rocket launcher for an arm. And more than that, he possessed a feel for the QB position.
Dominic and Yvonne moved their family from Michigan to Arizona four years into his NFL retirement to live closer to her family and for Taylor to complete high school at Scottsdale Christian Academy.
In 2018, Kitna, following an 18-year pro career, took a coaching job at Brophy Prep in Phoenix. He reconnected with the Raiolas and insisted to Dylan, upon watching him throw in the backyard as an eighth-grader, that he was undoubtedly a quarterback. Kitna predicted that Dylan would rise to rank as the nation’s No. 1 college prospect.
Dominic and Yvonne didn’t know what to think.
“I thought they were linemen,” he said of Dylan and Dayton, “that they were an extension of my wife and me. But God had this crazy plan that they were going to be quarterbacks.”
Dominic said he recognized Dylan’s savviness and that he could throw the ball well. As a catcher in baseball, Dylan attracted attention. His pop time, a scouting tool used to measure the number of seconds that elapse from when the ball hits a catcher’s glove until it is delivered to the center of an intended base, put him on par with some professionals.
In Arizona, Dylan met with Todd Stottlemyre, a mindset coach and former big-league pitcher. Stottlemyre gave Dylan books to read and provided tips. When the sessions ended, Dylan went to the quiet of his bedroom for 40 minutes, Dominic said, and unloaded all of it into a notebook.
But quarterback?
“I didn’t want anything to do with coaching quarterbacks,” Dominic said. “I don’t know it. I do know where my lane is, and it ain’t quarterbacks.
“I was fortunate to have connections.”
When Taylor started college at TCU in 2020, the Raiolas moved to Texas. Dylan enrolled at Burleson High School, south of Fort Worth, where Kitna took a job as the football coach.
Dylan played on the JV squad as a freshman, and he starred as a varsity baseball player in the spring of 2021. That June, the Raiolas set out to tour college campuses, matching football camps with baseball competition.
Their first stops: Nashville for an Elite 11 event, then Georgia. Dominic said he knew no one at the school, just that Stafford had played for the Bulldogs. Dylan threw at the camp and got a call back to Athens a few days later. Georgia coaches extended an offer, his first.
Yvonne called Taylor to deliver the news.
“I was like, ‘What? That’s crazy,'” Taylor said. “I don’t really know a whole lot about college football, but I knew that Georgia was good.”
The offers did not stop.
“Everybody kept telling us, ‘This dude is the best quarterback we’ve seen, no matter the class,'” Dominic said.
Dylan started at the varsity level in Burleson as a sophomore. He threw for 3,341 yards and 42 touchdowns and was crowned with the top spot in the 247Sports Composite.
Offers from Texas, Alabama, Ohio State, Notre Dame and USC poured in.
“I don’t like to speak in cliches,” Stanton said, “but the kid absolutely lives and breathes football. And he does it in a genuine way. It’s not just his dad saying, ‘Hey, we want to do this.’ He’s pressing the envelope on his own accord. And I think that’s what is going to make him great.”
The ball jumps from Dylan’s hand. His understanding of arm angles and how to generate force with his body is next level, Stanton said. But Dylan separates himself from the pack in other ways.
“He was asking very pointed questions about specific things,” Stanton said. “It was impressive. I realized that I wasn’t dealing with a high school kid as we were having these talks. I was dealing with a high-level thinker.”
Said Stafford, the Rams’ Super Bowl-winning QB from a year ago, in a statement provided to The Athletic:
“I’m so happy for Dylan. He’s gonna do great things at the next level. I’ve watched him grow into a great young QB. I told him to make sure he enjoys this time in high school and to always have fun playing the game; and pick a school that you believe in and love.
“I also told him a couple months ago, by the time he’s done with college, I’ll be done and he can take over my job!”
Dominic was fined multiple times by the NFL for altercations on the field. An incident in November 2014 against the Patriots cost him $10,000 for a cut block and club from behind a defensive player. He was suspended one game a month later for stepping on the ankle of an opponent.
Though not as fiery, Yvonne competed in water polo with notable ferocity. “People thought I was a sweet, nice person,” she said, “but if you grabbed my suit, there was definitely a feistiness that would come out.”
Yvonne passed her blend of intensity and compassion to Taylor. She’s undersized at 6 feet but plays as a six-rotation outside hitter with a scrappiness, according to her mother.
Dylan, Taylor said, got the best of both parents.
“He does a good job of being level-headed,” she said. “People call him names, stomp and stand over him. They’ve thrown cans at him as he comes off the field. Dylan is intense. He’s always had that fight in him, but he handles it in a much more quiet way.”
The family returned in January 2022 to Arizona, near Yvonne’s family. Stanton operates out of Phoenix. And Dylan, a year after the move from Texas, has traveled to Los Angeles multiple times to work on weekends with instructors at 3DQB, a comprehensive program that offers biometric training, mechanical analysis, nutrition, mental prep and strength training. It touts connections with the likes of Stafford, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Dak Prescott, C.J. Stroud and Bryce Young.
Through his dad’s connections, Dylan met Joe Burrow and worked out alongside Patrick Mahomes in Texas last summer at APEC, another training center.
“It was a surreal moment,” Dylan said.
Mahomes offered great advice, Dylan said, though he doesn’t know if the Super Bowl-bound QB, to whom Dylan has been compared, even knew him from other athletes at the facility. It doesn’t matter, Dylan said. He hopes they cross paths again.
In the seven months that Dylan spent committed to Ohio State, recruiting attention slowed, but it did not stop. The fit with the Buttguys felt right last spring. Things changed.
“They do a great job,” Dominic said. “But if you don’t feel the way you did when you committed, it’s too big of a decision to leave it.
“But Dylan’s fortunate. He knows what he wants.”
Said Yvonne: “Dylan’s got a second chance at recruiting. So OK, how can we be better as parents so that he makes the right decision? We’ve made a commitment to being better listeners.”
Dylan wants a relationship. Personal connection is fundamental to his family’s beliefs rooted in the Polynesian culture.
He’s found connections with Kirby Smart at Georgia and USC’s Lincoln Riley. New Nebraska coach Matt Rhule gained significant ground for the Huskers after his Nov. 26 hire. Nebraska sent nine assistant coaches to Raiola’s new school last Friday in the final hours of the January contact period.
Rhule used his lone visit of the month on the first day that coaches were allowed to travel.
Per NCAA rules, Raiola, as a junior, was allowed only to say hello to the visitors, with the exception of Donovan Raiola. Dominic’s brother, retained by Rhule in December to coach the Nebraska offensive line — the only holdover from the Huskers’ 2022 staff — is subject to no restrictions.
While other recruiters can’t see Dylan again in Arizona until April 15, uncle Donovan can visit at any time. He can stay at the Raiola home.
Dylan, too, senses change at Nebraska, which has endured six consecutive losing seasons.
“Matt Rhule is exactly what Nebraska needed,” he said.
Of course, USC and Georgia offer immediate opportunities to contend for the national championship.
Dylan attended the 65-7 Georgia win against TCU in the College Football Playoff championship. He then suffered with the Georgia community through the deaths in a car accident of offensive lineman Devin Willock and recruiting assistant Chandler LeCroy.
LeCroy served as Dylan’s host when he first visited Georgia in June 2021.
“She had such a joyful heart,” he said, “always smiling. When you were around her, you could feel the happiness. She loved Georgia football, and she always looked out for our family.”
The Raiolas visited USC last weekend while in L.A. for the 3DQB training.
“Coach Riley is a pretty special guy to me,” Dylan said. “His track record is amazing, what he’s done with quarterbacks.”
He plans a return to USC. Trips are scheduled to revisit Georgia on March 18 and Nebraska on March 25. And other programs such as Michigan and Oregon might remain in the mix.
“Everything’s open,” Dylan said. “I learned from the first time. I want to be patient and make sure it’s the perfect decision for me.”
Otherwise, he said, he’s intent this year to take Stafford’s advice and savor his time in high school. “I definitely want to enjoy being a kid.”
Perhaps, he said, he’ll play baseball this spring. He didn’t last season.
His new school, by the way, sent five-star tight end Duce Robinson to Georgia in the Class of 2023 and four-star offensive tackle Elijah Page to USC. In the 2019 class, top-rated QB Spencer Rattler signed from Pinnacle to play for Riley at Oklahoma.
Rattler then transferred to South Carolina, playing in 2022 for offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield, the new OC and quarterbacks coach at Nebraska.
The plot continues to thicken.
Dylan’s sister Taylor said she believes the right fit, naturally, will feature an environment that feels most like a family around the five-star QB.
“He’s not rushing,” she said. “He doesn’t feel the pressure to be committed.”
Around him, everyone is waiting.
