The Football Brainiacs

Image of Grayland Arnold via beaumontenterprise.com

In recent weeks OU fans have seen a number of Oklahoma’s top 2016 recruiting targets either commit elsewhere, or leave the Sooners out of their list of top schools entirely. I know this can be a cause for concern for fans and understandably so. After all, recruiting is the life blood of every program. But even in spite of recent events, I still believe there is still plenty of time for Oklahoma to put together a good class.

Now I obviously don’t sit in on meetings, nor am I an actual decision maker, so I can’t tell you exactly what the OU coaches will or won’t do going forward. What I’ll do, however, is offer up a few thoughts on how I look at building a class.

Overall Objective

Some will say the overall objective is to fill needs. And there’s no doubt there is some degree of truth to that. But that leaves me a little unexcited. That objective, on the surface, certainly doesn’t sound like a lofty goal for a team wanting to compete for national championships. “Needs” sounds like the bare minimum.

I would say the objective is to fill open positions with players who have high ceilings, guys willing to put in the effort, and fit the overall dynamic of the class. In an effort to try and cut down on the length of this post, I’ll break these into three separate stories addressing the ceiling, effort & the fit of the recruits.

High Ceiling

You hear these two words in recruiting a lot. And I suspect most of you understand what they mean, even if not everyone can recognize or project a player’s ceiling. It simply means that you’re looking for someone whose ability will exceed a coach’s teaching. In other words, assuming proper development is taught, there won’t be any physical or mental limitations to what the athlete can eventually accomplish.

Obviously people cannot fly but if you have a 6’3″ OT, you already know that no matter how much a coach gives him and no matter how bad the player wants it he’ll likely be limited by his lack of height and length.

Which brings me to one of my primary points. There are still plenty of high ceiling prospects available.

Let’s take the safety position for example. OU is in on some highly recruited targets like Chanse Sylvie and Shurod Thompson. Whether OU gets either, both, or neither, there are still targets available that have every bit the ceiling of those two. I’ve mentioned Arnold Azunna on here multiple times. In fact, I just mentioned him yesterday when I was talking about Thompson. Azunna is not a true safety prospect in that he doesn’t play the position for his h.s. team. He actually plays cornerback, but there are certain clues you can look for in a corner to help project whether they could play safety at the next level.

When you look at size with the safety position Azunna has plenty of it. He’s a solid 6’0″ and a very well proportioned young man. When you look at his speed, I think for a cornerback he’d fall on the slower side but for a safety, he gives you all the necessary speed for the position. His first downhill step is incredibly quick. In fact, all his transitions are clean. He’s ability to close space and destroy a ball carrier…second to none.

Azunna’s primary weakness is that he’s still learning the game of football. I’ve seen him at a couple of camps and watched him do both transition work and 1-on-1’s. He always looks great in transition, and you can see that on film. In 1-on-1’s, at times, he looked amazing while at others he can look more pedestrian. The question being what’s the reason for the difference?

As I observed Azunna over multiple reps, I noticed he was relying almost exclusively on reactive transition. Meaning it appeared to me that he had no idea what route was coming. I pulled him aside at one of the camps and specifically asked him, “are you gathering clues and reading the possible routes?” Clues like foot placement, body lean, release, etc. Arnold’s answer was, “no.” So while other onlookers may see a prospect who just lost a 1-on-1 rep, I’m thinking, “wow, he had no idea what was coming and still managed to be in the vicinity of a receiver who has nothing but green grass all around him!”

Azunna told me that he immigrated to the U.S. from Nigeria when he was nine. He only started playing the game of football two seasons ago. He’s never had private training. He’s built like a linebacker, hits like one as well, but has the speed and transitional ability of a defensive back. That’s a nice physical combination. All this young man needs is some additional skill development.

I can offer any number of examples of recruits at various positions that, like Azunna, are prospect with a high ceiling.

And if you don’t believe this strategy can work consistently, ask Michigan State how much competition they had when they were recruiting Darqueze Dennard or Trae Waynes. I’ll give you a clue. Not much. Both Dennard and Waynes were back-to-back first round draft picks. One time may be luck, but twice is skill.

A good friend of mine was out to dinner with one of the coaches from Missouri, and at some point they start talking about defensive linemen. As you all know Missouri seems to put out NFL defensive line prospects every year of late. I want to paraphrase some of the things this Missouri coach told my friend about their defensive line coach and his recruiting:

He (Craig Kuligowski) knows what he wants. He doesn’t want 4 and 5-star kids. He wants hungry kids. So he will take the 2’s and 3’s if he sees what he wants in them. I’ll bring him five defensive line prospects, and he’ll sit there quietly watching each one. He’ll pass on all of them then he’ll notice one thing about one particular player and he’ll look at me and say, “this guy…I want this guy.” I don’t know what he’s looking for, but he knows what he’s looking for. And the kind of environment he fosters for his players is intensely competitive. Those guys compete with each other constantly.

Like Michigan State, Missouri makes a living finding high ceiling guys (on the defensive line) that others don’t necessarily want, and they turn them into top draft picks.

I’ll be the first to admit, if this process was easy everyone would do it. It’s not, obviously. Not everyone has the nuanced eyes for talent, or the guts to stand on the table for the guy they want. A friend of mine who coaches FBS ball once told me, “recruiting is a copy cat game.” And I’ve seen exactly that time and time again.

I can tell you there are players in Texas right now that have stacked offer sheets that I personally don’t think can play in Norman, and yet I can almost guarantee you the fan base would clap and cheer if OU signed them. And whether you’d agree or not, I think everyone can agree there are plenty of examples of coaches who are making a living consistently finding truly high ceiling athletes and developing them into superstars.

Baylor picked up two of the top 2017 WR prospects in Texas yesterday in Jhamon Ausbon and Hezekiah Jones — As a side note, I know Jhamon. He and Hezekiah train together and are good friends, along with Donovan Stiner. So while it may seem like Baylor has suddenly become Alabama, those three all committing to the same school isn’t as surprising as you might think– and despite the fact the Bears are getting to a point where they can hand pick top rated wide receivers, I want you note the two wide receiver prospects in their 2016 class:

1. Jared Atkinson – only other P5 offers are Iowa State and Texas Tech

2. Denzel Mims – only other P5 offer is from Texas Tech. And Mims wasn’t even on Baylor’s board until early this summer. He showed up in June one day for a camp and at 6’4″ was destroying anyone they put in front of him. Add to the fact he won the Texas 3A 200m championship and you’re looking at the kind of wide receiver Baylor believes they can turn into a star.

Earlier this week Texas made an offer to a cornerback, who happens to be committed to Baylor, named Grayland Arnold. And this is a young man that doesn’t currently have the most impressive offer list, in fact prior to the Horns offering Arnold’s only other P5 offers were Baylor, Ok State (and they’re full at CB, so that offer likely didn’t stand anymore) and Miss. State.

When we talk about ceilings, we’re usually talking about speed, vision, agility, length, etc. So I’ll be the first to admit that Arnold doesn’t necessarily have ideal cornerback length. He’s right at 5’10”, but I know Arnold’s father a little bit. In fact, like myself, Arnold Sr was an amateur boxer. And what I know is that little Grayland’s father is nearly 6’0″ and his mother is 5’8″. 5’10” certainly isn’t short for a CB so even if that’s all Grayland gets, it’s enough (assuming the other elements are there). But in all likelihood Arnold isn’t done growing.

So as we continue to evaluate his ceiling, this is a kid who can two hand alley-oop dunk a basketball ball. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. He ran a 10.75 100m in the TX state finals and ran a 10.3 split in the 4×100. And he’s another kid that only recently started playing football. Point being he’s a phenomenal all around athlete and if you want guys that can keep up with the track sprinters that Baylor is rolling out there, Arnold is probably one of them.

I could go on and on but I’ll spare you all as this is already longer than I intended. But I know that recruiting has been on the minds of a lot of you, so I wanted to begin an organized discussion about it and the evaluation process. And really emphasize the importance of an evaluator knowing what they’re looking for and having the courage to either go get it, or the fortitude to pass on the kid everyone else wants.

Again, there are still plenty of quality prospects available. The ceiling is only the first part of the process. I’ll discuss the second two elements in later posts.