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One thing about this staff....

TheSwagger1 said:
Gray Crow
Brandon Holifield
Josh Witt
Rashawn Scott
Thurston Armbrister
Corey King
Junior Alexis
Eddie Johnson
Danny Dillard
Ricquan Southward

They are clearly (read that in Coach Golden-in-a-press-conference voice) not afraid to take kids that not many other programs (or, in some of those cases, not many big time programs) deem worthy of an offer. They are going all-in on their own evaluations. As a fan, that's a little scary, even though they did find some diamonds at Temple. I will say at least most of these guys seem to have some nice qualities on film (some more than others... some I just don't see it at all)
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I agree with you and have said this for a while. They are not afraid to trust their evals. I like that, as a quality. I am skeptical about some of their takes, but I think they have a plan, and aren't just randomly offering kids, so I am not yet concerned at all. To the contrary, recruiting comes down to evaluations, and way more of the evaluation than people realize is picking the kids who will put in the time and give the effort needed to become legit players. Butch knew how to find that in kids (still does). Hopefully AG does too.
 
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Well our best freshman contributors are Dorsett, Chickillo, and Perryman, and all of those guys were going to be here for Shannon or for Golden. Out of guys that are here specifically because Golden went after that, its too soon to tell. Finnie's played some, he's looked ok, not flashy by any means but its early in his career. Gionni Paul looks a little overwhelmed right now. Darius Smith was a nice pickup, Pierre and Grimble look like solid players, but neither looks like they will turn into a superstar down the road.

Up to this point, Golden's guys look like hardworking JAGs. Maybe a little better than that, but not much. But its early, its unrealistic for Golden's guys to look like world beaters so soon. I'm sure the cloud of sanctions isn't helping recruiting at this point anyway.
 
Ethnicsands said:
I agree with you and have said this for a while. They are not afraid to trust their evals. I like that, as a quality. I am skeptical about some of their takes, but I think they have a plan, and aren't just randomly offering kids, so I am not yet concerned at all. To the contrary, recruiting comes down to evaluations, and way more of the evaluation than people realize is picking the kids who will put in the time and give the effort needed to become legit players. Butch knew how to find that in kids (still does). Hopefully AG does too.
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I agree with the bolded 100% and its something that gets overlooked a lot. You need guys that love football.

I'm not to worried about these "commitments":
1. Its still really early and I'm sure not all these will stick
2. For the 1st time in awhile I feel we are prepared in the recruiting game
3. I really like Golden's approach of trying to see as many guys as possible in person.
 
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NorthFlaCane said:
Well our best freshman contributors are Dorsett, Chickillo, and Perryman, and all of those guys were going to be here for Shannon or for Golden.
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I made this point some weeks ago. Some may deny it, but it supposedly took some convincing to get this staff to take his commitment. He wasn't their type of LB, I guess. You can ask a few close to the situation why they kept delaying acceptance of that commitment.

And, look at how well he seems to be turning out. Sometimes it's good to be lucky.
 
I feel like we're not taking advantage of the Big Class that every new coach gets at a big time program. Shannon had that '08 class and then fell off. As much as people want to bash the star system, as a whole it is on point. The schools with the most 4/5 stars are the best teams.

To me it's one of two things: Either the staff really is made up of average recruiters OR it's just becoming increasingly difficult to get the 4/5 star guys to come here. Im leaning towards the 2nd scenario.
 
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Cans4life04 said:
To me it's one of two things: Either the staff really is made up of average recruiters OR it's just becoming increasingly difficult to get the 4/5 star guys to come here. Im leaning towards the 2nd scenario.
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Or they're really, really, REALLY confident in themselves and their evaluations... that's definitely a legit 3rd possibility (and what I'd lean towards). My boy ethnicsands makes great points about it appearing that there's a coherent strategy, these people are intelligent and extremely thorough planning types, etc., which is a comforting thing to think about. But, no one's immune from ego, and I just hope they aren't too in love with the idea of outthinking everyone else.
 
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Cans4life04 said:
I feel like we're not taking advantage of the Big Class that every new coach gets at a big time program. Shannon had that '08 class and then fell off. As much as people want to bash the star system, as a whole it is on point. The schools with the most 4/5 stars are the best teams.

To me it's one of two things: Either the staff really is made up of average recruiters OR it's just becoming increasingly difficult to get the 4/5 star guys to come here. Im leaning towards the 2nd scenario.
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We're not that program anymore. With Shannon, (a) our decline was more recent and less severe; and (b) he benefitted from a mess of highly rated kids from mnw and btw. Since them, uf leveraged it's success in so fla, fisher has recruited well, Lsu and Alabama are making inroads, etc. Meanwhile, we have sanctions hanging over us. And AG isn't a big name hire. It will take good recruiting, great evaluations and some success on the field for us to get back in regular contention for national type kids.
 
Ethnicsands said:
We're not that program anymore. With Shannon, (a) our decline was more recent and less severe; and (b) he benefitted from a mess of highly rated kids from mnw and btw. Since them, uf leveraged it's success in so fla, fisher has recruited well, Lsu and Alabama are making inroads, etc. Meanwhile, we have sanctions hanging over us. And AG isn't a big name hire. It will take good recruiting, great evaluations and some success on the field for us to get back in regular contention for national type kids.
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Exactly, to recruits nowadays we just aren't elite. We're more like a 15-20. Like you said, its going to take a couple of things to go our way for us to get back to landing elite prospects on a consistent basis. Golden definitely has his work cut out for him.
 
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TheSwagger1 said:
Or they're really, really, REALLY confident in themselves and their evaluations... that's definitely a legit 3rd possibility (and what I'd lean towards). My boy ethnicsands makes great points about it appearing that there's a coherent strategy, these people are intelligent and extremely thorough planning types, etc., which is a comforting thing to think about. But, no one's immune from ego, and I just hope they aren't too in love with the idea of outthinking everyone else.
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Also, I made this point in another read I think, but IMO AG knew we were going to get crapped on over the Shapiro thing and recruited smartly with that coming up. If we didn't have a bunch of commitments before that came out, we'd be ****ed. And if our commitments were high profile national kids, they'd have bailed. His strategy makes sense in light of how events have unfolded. I just hope he can evaluate, as my friend swagger highlights. If he can, we'll be fine, and if not, no amount of high profile kids will be enough (think shancoker).
 
I'm leaning more with 1775 and C4 here. I think the staff is finding that it's getting harder to bring kids here or keep them in SoFla, and so they have no other recourse but to bring in these blue-collar JAGS and we rationalize them to make ourselves feel better.

Ethnic Sands' commentary is what we all hope is true, but I have my doubts and certainly wouldn't go so far as to say that I don't have any concerns like he said. That being said, wtf does Ethnic Sands really know?
 
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Interesting. If true, that's at least one instance where their evaluation was way off because Perryman is a future stud.

LuCane said:
The current one. From what I was told dozens of times, they were hesitant on Perryman. Surely, that may be denied now. Some on here can vouch, though.
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wushah said:
I'm leaning more with 1775 and C4 here. I think the staff is finding that it's getting harder to bring kids here or keep them in SoFla, and so they have no other recourse but to bring in these blue-collar JAGS and we rationalize them to make ourselves feel better.

Ethnic Sands' commentary is what we all hope is true, but I have my doubts and certainly wouldn't go so far as to say that I don't have any concerns like he said. That being said, wtf does Ethnic Sands really know?
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Oh, I'm sure it's hard to get high profile kids to commit right now. I haven't disputed that. It's a separate point from how they evaluate, and what their strategy is.
 
TheSwagger1 said:
For my sanity's sake I'm just going to pretend I never read this.
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Think about the size of their LB recruits this year. The only outlier is a talented legacy at a local school that produces talent.

Maybe they just didn't feel Perryman fit their system? Ultimately, they took it, but I was told for multiple weeks that they were hesitant.
 
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