Griffen, Lenius and Ndoku all mght be major, and I might major, additions to this year's class. Maybe not south Florida kids, but we've had WRs from outside south Florida who have been very good, such as Reggie Wayne and to a lesser extent, that kid from near Lake City--I forgot his name, but he was a first round draft choice for the Dolphins. He was very talented by always hurt.
I was thinking of all the south Florida top drawer recruits who turned out to be rather ordinary: Magic Benton, Omar Rolle and Jammi German. They were all big name coveted recruits coming out of HS and the last two, Rolle and German, were, at best, rather ordinary.
The Lake City receiver was Yatil Green. When we recruited him, I heard indirectly that Pete Garcia was claiming we got a much better receiver than that Cooper kid (Andre?) who was the big name first team USA Today A-A out of Jacksonville. The problem was, Green played on some of our weaker teams over the last quarter century, and he was hurt a lot. Yatil Green was not from south Florida. I think he was much more talented than Cooper.
When Omar Rolle and Magic Benton came out, they were the elite of Dade. Rolle was very solid but average at UM, Benton was a bust.
There were probably others, I can't remember them all. We just don't know how Brady and Langham will turn out.
Another kid who was highly coveted, a can't miss stud, was Lance Leggett. Although not a south Florida kid, we wanted him every bit as badly s we wanted Lane, Rudolph and Dixon. By the time he was done, he was almost a wasted scholarship. I wish we had found some other kid somewhere in Florida with height, speed and some athletic ability, and desire, and coached him up. We wasted all that time fighting to get Leggett.
WR recruiting is really a crapshoot-we've gotten some of the best national products and many have busted: Ryan Moore, Akieem Jolla and Taj Johnson.We could go back to Tony Page in the mid 80's, another big name WR recruit. Like Johnson, he was from Oklahoma. Andre Johnson, orignally a Schnellenberger recrut was a second team USA Today A-A. He became a starter, but was not the second coming of Mike Irvin. Aldarius Johnson was a highly regarded recruit in that vaunted MNW class. What did he do?
If we can pick up some of the out-of-state kids (Lenius, Griffin, Ndoku) late, we'll be in pretty good shape, I think, and we can head into the '15 cycle and nail down some of the great studs for next year.
What I'm trying to say is: don't get all caught up in the marquee names. There are other kids out there who can turn out to be pretty good. Some won't, a few might, but some of the big names will be busts too.