A note on Landon Ibieta

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Didn't Renfrow walk-on? Are we offering Ibieta as PW? Are we now making the exceptions, the rule?

Those guys were lottery tickets for those programs that hit without risk bc they didn't use a scholly initially.Yet here we are taking up a spot on a kid that would be a walk on at any respectable P5 program.
:haha-smiley:
 
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I know I'm late...
But there is 100% a stigma surrounding white skill players. I watched it first hand with Restrepo's recruitment.

A kid can have all the elite measureables, good tape, etc...and most major P5 schools will STILL not recruit him.
Why do yall think there's so many white WR's in the NFL but almost none in major P5 football? (Renfrow was a walk-on)
The major P5's generally won't recruit them and many times they end up balling out at smaller schools.

Most schools also will not (or cannot) take a chance on a lower ranked kid. Boosters and fans expect expect their schools to sign the best of the best, and they pay attention to recruiting. If you reach for too many "hidden gems" and they don't pan out, you're gonna get your a$$ fired. These big schools want to win the off-season almost as bad as they want to win the regular season. Many of these schools are mainly just recruiting by stars and rankings these days. The only schools that get the benefit of the doubt when recruiting hidden gems are Bama, Clemson, teams that are competing for NC's. But the thing is, they generally don't need to recruit hidden gems cause they got bigger fish to fry. They can have almost anybody they want.

With that said...I'm willing to give Likens the benefit of the doubt on recruiting for the same reason people give the benefit of the doubt to Clemson/Bama... he's had 1st round WR's so I'm assuming he knows what a stud college WR looks like.
100% accurate. Boosters want to win the class rankings leaderboard almost as badly as they want to win titles. It's a huge source of bragging rights.

Even schools like Bama and Clemson would rather recruit big raw project WRs than smaller skilled ones who are lower rated. Ajou Ajou and Agiye Hall are current examples.
 
This kids measurables are every bit as good as Michael Irvin’s and he’s a junior in HS. Better than Jerry Rice’s, too. He’s already faster than Lamar Thomas and with a couple years of S&C could match Reggie Wayne. He’s not far off of Jerry Jeudy, either.

We need better WR EVALUATIONS not better measurables. The mindset underneath this exchange is the root of the problem with our WR recruiting for 20 years. A kid with a 4.5 flat 40, 37” vertical and 4.0 short shuttle isn’t ‘enough’ physically so he’s just a blue collar recruit?

Most of our really good WRs historically weren’t top 5 HS prospect elite types. The mindset that we need another Andre or Santana Moss is what’s messing up our WR recruiting. Find guys who can catch, take hits, use their bodies, block and run routes. And hopefully create some separation, take decent angles and run smoothly.
I’m not disagreeing with you..I will take another Andre or Santana Moss in a heartbeat..ijs…
 
I'll be honest. I don't quite understand the move, but I do like him more than Lee. With limited space, I didn't think we would take more than 2 wideouts and out big fish are still out there. Again, I do like this kid more than Lee and those numbers are top tier. Thanks.


...we NEED Gibson.
Agree with the Gibson part big time. Really not excited about WR recruiting and none of the commits are being pursued by any big time programs.
 
100% accurate. Boosters want to win the class rankings leaderboard almost as badly as they want to win titles. It's a huge source of bragging rights.

Even schools like Bama and Clemson would rather recruit big raw project WRs than smaller skilled ones who are lower rated. Ajou Ajou and Agiye Hall are current examples.
I never knew boosters cared about the rankings like fans do. That's interesting.
 
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I’m not disagreeing with you..I will take another Andre or Santana Moss in a heartbeat..ijs…
Andre was a grandma kid (your grandmother could identify him from his HS tape).

Santana was a walk on iirc. (yes butch, yes sanctions….)

No one is suggesting we shouldn’t take guys with eye-popping ability when available and properly evaluated. But we’ve evaluated poorly on that account for ages (since Butch, sadly). And we aren’t eactly turning down any Andres this cycle to take a Quan or Ibieta.

My point is we’ve not had the grandma options for years, and we evaluate and reach poorly to try to find them - often taking kids who measure well but are soft over kids who are better prospects, just not prototypes. Plenty of people on this board were’t excited about moore 4 years ago because he wasn’t a grandma kid. I’m persoanlly happy to see the staff focusing on kids who seem to be tough, competitive and willing to do the work of a WR, not just run fast in a camp. I count both Quan and Ibieta here as those types of kids. If we get ‘better’ options, I trust they’ll figure out how to work it out. Neither Quan nor Ibieta is local so changing path later isn’t the same complexity as it would be if they went to a feeder school. Not that I’m predicting that, just noting the point.

We go from almost no recruits to a few commits and we already got complaints lol. Not from you QP, just the board.
 
This kids measurables are every bit as good as Michael Irvin’s and he’s a junior in HS. Better than Jerry Rice’s, too. He’s already faster than Lamar Thomas and with a couple years of S&C could match Reggie Wayne. He’s not far off of Jerry Jeudy, either.

We need better WR EVALUATIONS not better measurables. The mindset underneath this exchange is the root of the problem with our WR recruiting for 20 years. A kid with a 4.5 flat 40, 37” vertical and 4.0 short shuttle isn’t ‘enough’ physically so he’s just a blue collar recruit?

Most of our really good WRs historically weren’t top 5 HS prospect elite types. The mindset that we need another Andre or Santana Moss is what’s messing up our WR recruiting. Find guys who can catch, take hits, use their bodies, block and run routes. And hopefully create some separation, take decent angles and run smoothly.

Yes and no. We need to a better job evaluating WRs, especially locally. Devaughn Mortimer and Camden Brown are this year's local guys who may end up pros (they remind me of Tutu and Josh Palmer, respectively). I love the Ibieta take because he checks a ton of boxes physically and seems to have the intangibles that correlate with success at the WR position.

But make no mistake, the big-time programs live off highly touted WRs. Of the 18 WRs drafted in the first round the past five years, 13 of them were blue-chippers and a couple others were borderline. Eleven of those first rounders also played in the College Football Playoff.

We need to do a better job of picking WRs and we need to win big-time battles. That's what Alabama, Clemson, OSU, LSU and Oklahoma do.
 
Bama isn’t starting Slade Bolden? Clemson didn’t win a title with Hunter Renfrow?

We need more no-doubt, elite WR prospects. But this kid is also a good addition. Both can be true.
Slade Bolden was offered by every school in the SEC. This kid may get there but right now as a recruit he is not that level of a prospect. I think he may get there though like you said he is more than "a little white slot WR"
 
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Who do you take, him or Quan?

Ibieta all day.

I see Ibieta as a guy who can do damage inside or outside. When you watch his 7on7s, he is stacking cornerbacks with high-end P5 offers. His pure speed off the line is underrated. Combine that with solid size and you have a different type of player than Berrios and Restrepo.
 
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Ibieta all day.

I see Ibieta as a guy who can do damage inside or outside. When you watch his 7on7s, he is stacking cornerbacks with high-end P5 offers. His pure speed off the line is underrated. Combine that with solid size and you have a different type of player than Berrios and Restrepo.
Good pick up and by his film he looks like the fastest man on the field most of the time so the speed is there.
 
I dont feel like digging around for it but I remember the thread where Berrios got his offer and committed to UM. There were several people saying the same types of things that @JOE'CANE is saying here. We'll see how it plays out this time.

For now, I like what the staff is doing on the recruiting trail. My suspicion is that this Ibieta kid is gonna blow up this fall and will likely get his 4th star. Cant say our staff didnt get on this one early enough.
 
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Yes and no. We need to a better job evaluating WRs, especially locally. Devaughn Mortimer and Camden Brown are this year's local guys who may end up pros (they remind me of Tutu and Josh Palmer, respectively). I love the Ibieta take because he checks a ton of boxes physically and seems to have the intangibles that correlate well with the WR position.

But make no mistake, the big-time programs live off highly touted WRs. Of the 18 WRs drafted in the first round the past five years, 13 of them were blue-chippers and a couple others were borderline. Eleven of those first rounders also played in the College Football Playoff.

We need to do a better job of picking WRs and we need to win big-time battles. That's what Alabama, Clemson, OSU and Oklahoma do.
We keep coming back to a common issue. The big time programs do X, so we need to do X. I disagree with the rationale. It’s not that you’re wrong, it’s just cart before horse.

Call big time programs rich programs. Rich people have swimming pools, so we need a swimming pool is the logoc. But it’s mistaken. We need to become rich. Then we can have a pool.

No one is suggesting we don’t target the top kids and try to sign them, especially locally. And yes, I agree we need to scour local kids for prospects because they’re there every year.

But worrying about first round talent is wrong, imo. We need to evaluate much better, and if we do, we’ll start finding top 3 round kids, and when we do, we’ll win enough to sign first round kids more often.

I also don’t really care about first round kids because that’s an NFL matter. I want kids who can make plays at UM. Lamar Thomas, Horace Copeland, Wes Carroll, Dale Dawkins, Kevin Williams, Perriman, Br. Blades, Benjamin, Hurns, Hankerson….

Osborn and Berrios were 5-6th round. Benjamin was a 4th rounder. Coley was 7th. We’d be ecstatic to sign more of them.

The highest rated WRs (rivals) we’ve gotten in 2 decades were Leggett, Moore, Jolla, Aldarius, Pope and Bruce, followed by Mullins, McKenzie, Streeter, Coley, Payton, Redding, J. Thomas, Harley and Hightower. It’s not about ratings. It’s about evals. Only sustained success will put us in a position to land top 5 kids, but we can win just fine without them if we evaluate well.
 
My older stepbrother from Fairway Heights played LB at Troy with Osi and DeMarcus Ware said Matt Jones was the best athlete he's ever went against....
Issue with Matt is he was addicted to alcohol and booger sugar. One of many in the long line of degenerate 1st round Jaguar WRs…Blackmon, Soward, and Williams. Without a doubt Matt had the most God given talent. I’m not even sure he worked out and ran 4.3 with ease. He could throw it 70 yards too.
 
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