The only misses I feel we really had at DT were Bostwick and Valentine. The Valentine situation I have said repeatedly stunk to high heaven, kid was being led around by a notorious street hustler that sells players, and flipped to one of the dirtiest programs in the $EC. The kid changed his story every other week as to why he was wavering. Whole thing was shady.
Bostwick seemed like a straight forward, low key kid. This one hurt the most IMO. I thought we were in it down to the wire, but as NFC said, this was one that maybe the NCAA "cloud" tipped things against us in a race that came down to the wire. I mean we will never truly know, but all that sh8t certainly didn't HELP us, and there have been recruits that mentioned last year how they had been scared off over the NCAA stuff from UM. So its not inconceivable at all, that in a very tight competition with UF, the kid decided to play it safe and not come here.
Keith was somewhat of a miss, but the guy was a total @ssclown. The kid turned into a sideshow fool, and obviously the staff really stopped caring about the guy at some point in the process. From what it sounds like so far, it wasn't much of a loss.
Cerenod was an UNDERSIZED kid, who we looked at as a "maybe" Plan B guy, and in the end, they chose not to really go hard after him. Im not sure how you call that a "miss". For whatever reason, they just didn't think he fit what they wanted.
One thing I don't understand is why we aren't recruiting Texas more for DTs. Butch spent a lot of time hunting for DTs in TX. They have always produced a decent crop. Florida just doesn't have the quality DTs it used to have. Every year there is a small handful, but between the intense competition with FSU, UF, grade casualties, the $EC trying to raid the state, its probably the single most competitive recruiting environment in the country, with a limited crop of quality options.
Im not sure what the solution is. I DO think that we got a **** of a steal in Jenkins. Ive been on that kid's bandwagon since last year, when he just started exploding after he slimmed down and got in shape. I think he's going to be VERY pleasant surprise.
Our problem could ALSO be, that we keep trying to recruit guys to fit a NT profile for a 3-4. And frankly, that means a much SMALLER pool to draw from. When you run a 4-3, you can recruit DEs, OLs, and other type players that could GROW into a 4-3 DT. Look at Kamalu now. Sapp came here as a TE. But when you are looking for a 325 lb NT to clog the middle, those options just aren't there anymore, so you are limited to going after really big boys that already are big developed DTs or NTs, and those just aren't as common.
