And whose fault is that? Had he recruited at a higher level we would have more upper classmen playing in the secondary.
He wasn't just left with this secondary. He built it, he should have been aware of these glaring deficiencies and recruited for it years ago.
What were your expectations as far as recruiting goes? We lost elite 5 stars to the bag schools that have been in the top 5 the last few seasons. You don't just go from mediocre to elite overnight and Miami had a chance in 2018 to push into the top ten and instead **** the bed and went 7-6 because the offense/ST tanked. Back to square one again. So what were they able to do during our slow climb into relevancy and after our crash back to the middle of the pack.
2015 - Doritos last defensive class had both Jaquan and Sheldrick in it. Also Knowles.
2016 - Nothin. Ced Wright and Jeff James in a transition class coming off the Gorlden era. Surely you can't blame the coaches for this haul. Ced Wright could have been a player if he stayed right.
2017 - 1st true class after a decent season in what was a down year for safeties in South Florida. We snag Amari Carter and Derrick Smith. We all liked Carter's game. He's been ok here but probably isn't quite the caliber of player you need in the secondary. Smith was also a player with good physical talent but got beat out, then quit on us. Misses were Cyrus ***an, Daniel Wright, and Shawn Davis.
Sidenote: We brought in Bubba Bolden (and Jaelan Phillips) from this class. Bolden is rated higher than any S in FL that year
2018 - Gurvan Hall. Everyone agrees he was supposed to be a bad man. We will see if he becomes the player we all expected. Maybe at this point Manny as a coach should have been projecting forward and seeing that 2016 and 2017 were busts. But in all honesty you gotta give a kid more than a year to up his game so at this point we know 2016 was a bust but 2017 and 2018 still look good. We missed on Jobe as a S prospect
2019 - Keontra Smith and Bubba Bolden off the transfer portal. Everyone was on board with Smith and Bolden was an elite talent out of high school. If he had been cleared by the NCAA maybe he takes a starting spot and we are 2-0, who knows? Stevenson was listed a sa CB but I think we all projected him at safety, hurt us but we know the story with these big time SF recruits. Only other guys on the board higher than Smith was Brendan Gant and Jordan Battle.
I don't think looking at that timeline and understanding that we got out bagged by schools with much better on field performance than us that the staff completely blew it recruiting the position.
So to sum it up. Manny stepped in to a program with decent starting safeties and good young talent. He got ****ed in his first recruiting class. His second year was just not very good in his territory and he grabbed two of the better realistic targets available then retroactively brought in an elite prospect from that class in Bolden prior to this season where you hammer him for not being aware of certain deficiencies. The next year he got an elite prospect for the 2018 class in G. Hall and in 2019 he got another upper level prospect in K. Smith. He did miss on the whales but his recruiting of the position is far and away better than the 2016 class that dropped in his lap.
If Bolden plays or Manny has the ability to recruit in the 2016 class maybe we are 2-0. I'm going to save my criticisms of our recruiting depth for next season when Manny has been involved in the recruitment of all of the players on the roster and isn't dealing with deficiencies created in the fallout of Gorlden and Doritos mess.
Manny's gotta win and he needs to start doing it soon if he wants to have momentum going into the end of this recruiting cycle. Looking back on what has transpired I don't believe it was some huge recruiting ineptitude that led to us being in this position just some bad luck and hard reality.