Posted on a 247Sports board: Around this time last year: - Malik Jefferson was an A&M lean, people still thought Baylor had a shot and he wasn't coming to our summer camp because of his brother's birthday. - Kris Boyd called A&M his "biggest offer of all" and was universally considered an Aggie lock. - Charles Omenihu, who was unknown until we offered him, was wavering and considering Arizona State. - Anthony Wheeler was going to be a Sooner. - We offered Connor Williams because Madison Akamnonu's mom didn't like us. - The Florida Five didn't exist — we'd offered them but no way any of them would turn down FSU and Miami and Florida to come to Texas, right? - We had 0 commits in the Rivals top 100. - Damarkus Lodge committed to A&M and people were bitching about how stupid Strong was for firing Wyatt. - The Travis Haney report (subsequently debunked, like almost everything Haney's ever written) about Strong bombing at a coaches' clinic came out. - People were claiming this would be A&M's greatest recruiting class in history. Charlie Strong has done this before — many times before, including just a few months ago. (HOW THE $#@! HAVE YOU $#@!%& FORGOTTEN ALREADY?!?!?!?!?) Not only does he not press for early commitments, more often than not HE DOESN'T WANT THEM. I can explain why if I need to. To add to that, he's having to be even more selective this year since we'll probably take no more than 22. If you can't follow Texas recruiting under Charlie Strong without soiling your Batman undies every summer and fall, do those of us with nuts that hang and memory spans longer than 14 days a favor and go away. It's going to be like this. Every. Year. This is how he does things. I promise you, right now, no one on the Texas staff is worried about recruiting. Charlie Strong is not worried. He's waiting to see which teenagers have the balls to come to Texas' camps the next few weeks and put their reputations on the line in front of him and Vance Bedford and Pat Moorer. Then he's going to narrow his focus on the ones he likes and become their best friend. He's going to watch them play their senior years and narrow his focus even more. When the season's over, he's going to step off his throne and drag his butt across the state, through Louisiana and around South Florida. No one is safe. Greg Little's going to punch Nick Saban's ugly daughter in the face just for the chance to visit Austin. Kendell Jones' dad is going to bitchslap his son until he understands that Tuscaloosa is the sweaty hairy taint of Alabama, which is itself the sweaty hairy taint of America. Dontavious Jackson will present Longhorn fans with Dontaviousmas. Charlie Strong will have to block Kam Martin's phone number because we're only taking one running back and someone better already took the spot. (For real, stop calling, Kam. You made your bed in Waco, now you have to $#@! in it with the rest of the Bears in whatever bowl game you go to). This is how Charlie recruits. He's not an insecure little man who has to corner 17-year-olds in his office, away from their parents, and pressure them until they commit. And he sleeps just fine at night without having a pinky swear from a $#@!ing teenage boy that he's going to sign a piece of paper eight months from now obligating him to attend Texas.
Right now, and probably for a few more months, I'm not worried about it. Everyone got too comfortable with Mack's having a nearly full if not full class by summer with kids that he wouldn't let take visits. We're fine and there are more guys that are ready to jump on board, but I speculate that CS told them to take their visits and enjoy the process, then commit to Texas.
I hope Charlie's not too far from Mack in his results. Most years Mack did an excellent job of pulling in talent.
The proof is in the pudding, and right now, the pudding has a 6-7 record. We'll see how the team does this year. Last year was a wasted year on so many fronts. The offense looked worse as the year went on. The bowl game was the worst offensive performance I've seen in a bowl game, ever. 67 yards of offense? In a game? The defense did nothing against anyone good, and would tire/fold up at the start of the 3rd quarter, leading to many teams blowing the game out then. If Texas has another stinker year, it won't matter what Charlie says/does/doesn't do in person, the results are there on the field for all to see. Opposing coaches will say, correctly, that Texas is going nowhere in a hurry, so why go there when you can go to well, Waco, and win the B12 two years in a row? Texas needs at least an 8-4 year, and a good bowl win, to stay competitive for top recruits.
I'll agree with that. But to have the talent that was here and win only 2 Conference Championships and 1 NC during that period wasn't stellar by any means. He did have 4 BCS bowls and won 3. But he struggled with winning the conference. If CS can pull in talent equal to Mack, I believe we will be in for some great years ahead.
I can't see that as a fair statement. Strong had one month to recruit and one season with a handful of his own recruits, most of which were redshirted or only saw limited action. Throw in the patchwork/inexperienced Oline we had due to injuries and past recruiting failures, along with a necessary culture change, and the only "proof" is that most prognosticators were right - it was going to take a minimum of 3 years for us to get to 9-11 wins. It was that bad.
Golden Steer: What college football team is it that you most usually support above all others? I asked you once before and you never replied.
I don't think it is players being recruited or how they are being coached. Strong's problem lies in his belief that Watson is the correct guy for his offensive philosophy. Watson, like Greg Davis, will not be the reason our offense succeeds, if it does at all. Some player who is great will make it churn.
Per Scout: Strong's recruiting pattern of being careful and selective - knowing some players make "reservations" when they make a commitment - has played out time and again at Louisville and last year at Texas. Higs says all the time that following recruiting is not for the faint of heart. It requires patience. Strong expects kids to commit elsewhere at times. And he may not think as highly of some 5-star as you do. There are times Strong wants to watch the 5-star who has made a commitment to another school during his senior season and see if he gets complacent, cocky or loses focus. Strong isn't illegally contacting sophomores the way a lot big-time schools are. So some schools get off to a better start than Texas. But Strong believes in his recruiting methods and in his ability to size up a junkyard dog. Let's go back to this time a year ago. Last June, Texas couldn't get Anthony Wheeler to come to a June camp. Then, Wheeler was leaning OU. Now, he's out of his mind excited about being a Longhorn as part of maybe the best haul of linebackers in the 2015 recruiting class. Nine others in UT's 2015 recruiting class flipped from a previous commitment - when players canceled their "reservations" elsewhere and signed with Texas. The Longhorns are still talking to 5-star DT Kendell Jones and to 5-star OT Greg Little. Those players may not end up at Texas. Who knows? But Texas fans didn't think Anthony Wheeler was coming to Texas at this time last year. And they were probably smoking mad about it and saying Charlie Strong didn't have a clue. If there's one thing Strong and Co. should have taught Texas fans by now - eight months from signing day - is to avoid the sky-is-falling stuff and to put away the panic buttons. "Charlie Strong has a Texas-sized recruiting problem on his hands." That was the opening line of Jeremy Crabtree's story on ESPN.com last June 19. "Charlie Strong's poor first impression," was the headline of Travis Henry's story on ESPN.com last June 25. Eight months later, Texas had a top 10 recruiting class. Will it happen again? Who knows? But history shows since Strong has become a head coach - at Louisville and now UT - he may take his time, but he ultimately gets it right in recruiting. And he knows some kids are going to make "reservations" elsewhere before ending up playing for him.
Look, I don’t think anyone with any sense is saying Strong is not good at recruiting personally. He’s been successfully elsewhere and seems like a good role model. The Texas brand has a lot of appeal as well due to the history and traditions of the school. The sticker is results. If Texas has a good year in 2015, and a good bowl win or at least an exciting loss, recruiting will be fine. Add on another crap season like last year and neither Charlie’s smile, nor old photos of Earl/Ricky/Vince/Colt are going to bring in top recruits, at least the ones who haven’t dreamed of playing for Texas all their life. As to your excuses about why last year was a stinker, well, with almost no exceptions, every head coach who comes into a top-tier program is going to have a mess on their hands. Think about it – if things were running fine, why would the old coach have been fired? Oregon is about the only case I can think of where the program was in good shape – their coach just left for the NFL. Every other case in recent memory – Ohio State before Meyer, Texas before Brown, OU before Stoops, Florida before Meyer, FSU before Jimbo, Alabama before Saban, Michigan before both the previous coach (I forget his name - the fat one) and Harbaugh – the program had been a disaster, which is why the old coach was fired. The difference is, in all those cases, none had a losing season their first year, with less yards in the bowl game than minutes played. Closest anyone came was the 6-6 year Saban had. Note in that case he fired his offensive coordinator, M Applewhite, and moved to someone else, with better results, a decision proved out by various un-impressive performances Applewhite has since given as OC. Texas on the other hand, is sailing into 2014 with the same coordinators, and worst of all the same dreadful QB that it had in 2015. Maybe another year of practice will solve the problem – I doubt it. The only variable on how well last year’s QB played was the quality of the opposing defense, not the season’s progress, as evident by the toilet snake dropped out in the bowl game. The won / loss record for the year will provide the key to the success, or failure of recruiting. Another 6 or 7 win season, another Texas ish style bowl, and certainly another dreadful bowl performance will sink recruiting in 2015. Strong got a pass from everyone his first year, recruiting included. He won’t a second time.
In-state OL recruits going for aggy and Baylor is really the only real issue. This will be an issue until Strong/Watson/Wickline decide to feature the predominant offense in Texas HS football.
Strong & Company know how to evaluate talent and in particular talent that that is needed for the schemes they run. Mack always seemed to be about the number of stars a recruit had and not how well the recruit the fit within the program and the schemes Mack ran. He was lucky for a number of seasons but after 2009, that luck ran out. Strong is out finding talent that he can develop to play at a high level. Mack seemed to be all about the "WOW" factor on signing day for signing a top 5 class based on stars by the names.
I think one of the biggest things about last year was keeping Heard's shirt. You couldn't play call QB runs with only one QB. Our line stunk to much to give pass protection. And Swoops was a deer in headlights sometimes. I think you will see a more open game next season and I fully expect to see both QBs play. I have faith.
I have the same opinion on this. Keeping Heard on the bench last season may prove to be a key factor in the next few years to improved QB play. But the Oline still needs to learn to play as a unit and get the chemistry going among them to improve the run game and provide the QB time to go through his check off of the routes. The only consistent player on the OL I've seen is Kent Perkins.
All I know is when Texas gets a new 2016 or 2017 commit I kinda roll my eyes and think "sounds great, but we'll see come NSD". Which tells me one thing, there's a whole lot of soft commitments out there these days. The recruiting landscape is so wishy-washy nowadays that I can't feel much excitement about our own early verbal commitments. So when we are trailing others at this point, I damn sure am not going to feel bad about it. A sizable amount of these top Texas recruits will flip to another school by next Feb. Some of ours will bail, and hopefully more of others will bail over to us. Applauding or condemning our efforts this prematurely is baseless. 7+ months is an eternity in recruiting.
Texas wins 9 - 10 games and the recruiting will take care of itself. Another 6-6 (or worse) and, assuming the issue is not the defense, Strong will have to let go all of his offensive coaches.
To me recruiting is going ok. Two positions are filled QB & WR. OL & TE needs adressing on offense. LB is in need of several recruits. One safty, one more DT a DE and a couple or more DBS would round out a very good class IMO.
Right now, we're fine. I don't expect much this year as far as record. The guys are going to be young but I believe they will improve each game. In two seasons from now, watch out! 2017 may be a great season.
This post is just like the Yahoo sports section. Every time a kid commits to another school there is an article that says Texas missed or Texas loses another recruiting battle. Talking down Texas is the flavor of the month in reporting and until coach Strong has a winning season that will remain. Also these star ratings have never impressed me and I think their only purpose is to sell subscription to bored football fans. What did people do before high school players had stars next to their names.
This is especially true at BON. It's like Eberts has some kinda issue with Texas - maybe he applied for the SID position and got rejected.
Unfortunately I remember those old news papers. Back then sporting news traveled so slow that recruiting was a wait and see game, and dam if you didn't have to go watch a local game or two if you wanted to see a recruit play. Now days it's just a click on the mouse.
Well, I just woke up from a three month coma, and the first thing I needed to do was check hornfans. Now to respond to the op's concerns. Like others said above, ITS TOO EARLY TO GET ANTSY ABOUT COMMITS. Let Charlie do his thing, get UT in a good position with top kids, keep in touch with the kid and his family, and we'll get our fair share, or more, in FEBUARY 2016. That being said, a vastly improved offense and winning 8 or more games would sure give the program cred. Watson's offense needs to succeed big time this year. FIFY: Watson's offense HAS to succeed big time this year.
