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User-4525
Guest
The reason is obvious. We’re local. We sign guys like Duke Johnson and Don Chaney based strictly off our location.
People get mad because we finish in second for guys like Jerry Jeudy. Would we even be in his Top 10 if he was from Texas? We’ve sucked for fifteen years. How does going West help us land the kids with options?
Spot on.
You are banking on our evaluations improving. I hope they do. Our draft class would look a lot better if we properly evaluated Damon Arnette, Josh Uche and Zack Moss. That’s the low-hanging fruit.
Damon Arnette was offered by Ohio State in the summer before his senior year. He had been playing WR at STA and recently switched. Even if we had offered him earlier, we were never beating out OSU. As a five year developmental player, I wonder if he would've had the proper structure at Miami to become a first rounder. Probably not but would've been a Day 2 pick worse case scenario with his tools.
We actually did evaluate Moss and Uche, both were Miami commits that decommited. Which goes back to your point you made about Jerry Jeudy. Our decommit list in the 2010s is loaded with talent. That doesn't even include players like Calvin Ridley and Tyrique Stevenson who we missed on. Our second place finishes, mostly from south Florida, showed heavy interest but we developed bad relationships and gained no traction on the field. We improve in those two areas and we'll have more draft picks. Evaluations have been bad, but so has our actual recruiting.