i also think a good key indicator is what other schools offer/end up offering. If UF is the only premier offer for a kid, I don’t have confidence to say “oh, I trust our coaches over every other single coaching staff in the country to evaluate talent every single time” other schools -Bama, Georgia, etc have more off field staff and higher recruiting budgets. I’m sure those extra hires don’t just tell Sagan - here is 247’s list of 5 stars. They are evaluating film for sure. Just like us, if we are the first premier school to offer a guy and other schools follow, like Travez with Clemson last year, that is a solid indicator we got on someone early who is under rated. If no one else offers the player but UF and some G5 and division 2 schools - like 2-3 of our initial O line commits (that got processed) last year, the kid is likely, unfortunately, not UF caliber.
Everybody misses on the majority of recruits, that's recruiting. Worry about who we get...are they quality players that fill needs and can play at the highest level. OL is my only real area of recruiting concern at this point.
I think we should be concerned about all of these: Offensive line Linebackers Safeties Corners Wide receiver
I think that you are generally right (i.e. generalization by you) to say that the recruiting services are pretty good about getting it right because they follow which coaches give scholarships and generalize fairly close to what is a somewhat fair ranking. Some talent is just undeniable, and that is where we miss the most at the top 50 talent. However, the services are often quite wrong about recruits that don't go the camp circuit and are less known and shut their recruitment down early and don't play the game. A guy like Hawkins will never be ranked near where he should be despite how much of a mismatch he is and regardless that Bama, Uga, and Texas were after him as well. Just like Weston in a previous class was a complete unknown to recruiting services, and Chris Thomas was a fringe recruit, despite putting up huge numbers on the field. You are really out in left field when you bring up LB. We may have at this moment the most talent at LB we have ever had.
Ventrell is good but besides him, who is reliable? Diabate shines at times but he isn’t even pre all sec 1st 2nd or 3rd team. Burney disappeared last year. Who else? This is a long way from Kearse, Rutledge and Peterson.
Many times last season it seems like posters noticed poor LB play. Ventrell Miller was our leading tackler last year. I'm not saying that's bad but if I were recruiting a talented LB and I thought our LB play and coaching to be better I would talk about it. Maybe our coverage is the issue not tackling?
Kearse, Rutledge and Peterson became great players, not were great players when they stepped on campus. The same will be the case with this group. I don't necessarily expect Burney to shine, but he could. Diabate showed at the end of the season that he was picking up the position in his first season at the position. He will end up being very good. Almost no one is on the All SEC team after their first year at the position.
We definitely have a handful that came in with high expectations. James is the number 2 lb in this class. If they pan out, we should have some lb talent for a few years to come.
Diabate will be a junior this year regardless of position. There are plenty of juniors on the all sec team. Hopefully wingo and James develop because overall the position was very disappointing this past year albeit that no one played well on defense.
Yeah, remember being at the old Fl-Ga high school all star game and he was playing safety. Everyone knew he was a freak athlete, but took a while for him to adapt playing closer to the LOS Mike Pete was a QB in high school and actually transitioned faster to LB IMO. Rutledge and Kelsey were pure LB from the start.
