Wednesday, February 04, 2015

Making sense of Signing Day

Steve Addazio signed his third recruiting class (only his second full class) Wednesday. All the rumored BC verbals came through leaving little surprise or drama to the day. Although it was another large class and filled plenty of needs, the group of players was not highly regarded by the various recruiting services. Here are the rankings:

Rivals: 46th nationally | 10th in the ACC
Scout: 57th nationally | 11th in the ACC
247: 57th nationally | 12th in the ACC
ESPN: Not ranked and outside the Top 40

I have never really cared about the rankings, so I am not going to start now. What I care more about is BC's ability to identify the players they want and then close on them. Addazio is great at that. Most of these guys camped at BC before verballing and we didn't have any stragglers or guys who flipped away from BC.

Addazio spent a good chunk of his press conference emphasizing geography. He's spent two years building a class within five hours of campus and focused on recruits within three hours of campus. This left former BC strongholds in the Midwest relatively under recruited this year. Once again, I don't care where the recruits come from as long as they produce. TOB liked to hit Cincinnati and it paid dividends for a decade. Addazio made his career at other schools picking off New England, so it only makes sense that he thinks he can build a BC class here. For years BC coaches slagged off Massachusetts football for lacking depth and top end talent. Addazio doesn't share that belief and he's betting his future on it.

The other news of the day was the arrival of 5th year transfer Evan Kelly. 5th years are always welcome and I expect another one or two over the summer.

With this class, the roster is now Addazio's. It's young and raw, but it is all his. If he is going to be a great coach, he will need these kids to be great and out perform their rankings. I think they can, but only time will tell.

I will have more on the recruits in the coming days.

14 comments:

mod34b said...

Some bright spots, but as a whole, an underwhelming class, esp. given Daz's big rep as a recruiter and closer.

To repeat a prior comment, BC's efforts in NJ-PA-OH is 4 for 100.

EL MIZ said...

really like this class. would give it a B+. top to bottom it looks strong, adds a ton of depth, a lot of speed and athleticism to the Defense, a bunch of meat to the OLine, really solidifies the QB position. man, if we had only closed Wilkins, i wonder if ESPN would've moved him from a 4* to a 3*. instead he goes to clemson and is bumped up to a 5. well, that's how these things work.

mod, your recruiting stats ring even hollower than your "we ran the ball 50 times ergo our offense must stink!" complaints. as ATL wrote, we didn't lose any commits and the vast majority of these guys summered with us, were offered early, committed and stuck with us. insinuating that 96 guys said "no" and we wound up with the bottom 4 who said yes is comically misleading. to quote the GOAT, "nice try."

i'm most excited about the D. we add a ton of athleticism to the secondary, along with some interesting pieces in the front 7. i picture Grice being used a lot like Keyes was.

Glines in the slot should be interesting, and Borgesen's gotta have talent. timed running a 4.3 and set state records in NJ? sign me up.

excited for 2016. who is gonna be our OC?

mod34b said...
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MUD said...

I like that Daz is recruiting within 5 hours, he's building a dude program. College sports really build around community. If Daz can build a good community we can be successful and upset some of the 4/5 stars who are too individualistic. Coaching > Talent at this level, that's what I like about it.

Hoib said...

El MIZ

Mods Day slam has morphed into a Daz slam. Gives him something to do while he waits for his interview for the OC job!

Tim said...

Matt Ryan, Gosder Cherilus, Mark Herzlich, Nate Freese, Luke Kuechly, and Andre Williams were all 3* Rivals recruits. Comically, Jamie Silva, Anthony Costanzo, and Montel Harris were 2* Rivals recruits.

These rankings are meaningless.

mod34b said...
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mod34b said...
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CT said...

Good post ATL.

Agree with Miz on this. The star system is very obviously an independent industry whose aim is to garner a profit. I have no problem with that. I also don't agree with that system in general. I'm pretty certain that most people can recognize a 5 star talent, but differentiating between a 4 star and a 3 star or even 2? Especially when if Saban calls you, your talent level mysteriously improves whereas if Daz does, it logically plateaus?

I really like how Coach Johnson down here at Ga Tech addresses this issue.

"Do you think anybody can really really really tell you who the No. 56 offensive guard in the country is? I couldn't tell you who the No. 6 guard in Atlanta is. Now I can tell you who the best five players are, maybe. But once it gets past four or five, it's a crapshoot. "

I think Mod's point about targeting certain areas is getting subsumed by his increasing distaste for the staff. And that's fair. But the bigger point is the one ATL makes. This is now Daz's team.

I'm looking forward to seeing how they develop.

Welcome to BC, signees. What a special place to be.

Hoib said...

CT

I think coach Johnson is an excellent coach and takes a very smart approach to dealing w/ his programs limitations. He plays a different style of ball which means on offense at least he can recruit a different kind of player and not have to go head to head against the factories. In doing this he puts an offense on the field that your average college defense doesn't normally face. Which his record shows has given his team a big edge.

I think Daz is trying to do something similar which makes sense for a place like BC. I think Ga Tech and BC are the 2 most similar programs in the conference. I hope Daz is able to match Johnsons success over the next few years.

mod34b said...
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Knucklehead said...

Two legitimate gripes about this class: 1)No size brought in to fill holes on the interior of the defensive line(I foresee one of the offensive linemen moved to D line and 2) NO KICKER. The number one priority based on the performance of the team last season should have been a kicker.

Bravesbill said...

ESPN has BC 51 nationally and 13th in the ACC......and have them named the Golden Eagles.

eagleboston said...

Folks, ignore the star rankings and the ratings. BC is never going to win that game. It's pointless anyway. You can't even start to rank a class until they are juniors. Only then can you begin to judge the success of a class.

By the way, the average star rating of a participant in this year's Super Bowl was 2.4....right in BC's sweet spot.