Recruiting Show: 5-Star QBs Busts + Miami's Push for the No. 1 Class + Latest News & Notes

What's going on, y'all, Budella here back again for another episode of the Cover 3 Recruiting Pod, and that's Ainda Reibens, Director of Scouting for 24/7 Sports, what's going on, Aida? God, man, I'm doing good. I'm excited to talk about some quarterbacks. I think we need to define what is a good quarterback and what isn't a good quarterback because I don't know, man. I was on vacation this weekend and, you know, limited reception where I was. Come back. And, man, none of the quarterbacks are good, is what I've gathered here through Monday and Tuesday morning. So, I'm excited to talk quarterbacks, man. And, man, the parody in college football, it's talent has flattened and it's making for some fun weekends. It has, man. It certainly has. So, this exact weekend, a decade ago, 65% of games had a spread of two or fewer scores. This weekend, 92%. Now, look, part of that is certainly that games are shorter now due to the clock rules. We have about three fewer possessions now than we did a decade ago. So, it's harder to blow teams out if you're getting the ball, you know, one and a half fewer times per game on each side. But, I think to your point, it's also like, you just can't stack five stars on five stars on five stars because people want to play. Like, colleges by nature, a limited time, concept. So, you're going to want to go play the talent to spread out a whole lot. I think it makes it for a really exciting weekend, like, every weekend, like, just, I don't know which games are going to be good, but I know, like, the second half of that 330 window, there's going to be still five or six that I'm really interested in. Yeah, and I think it's the depth as well, right? I mean, injuries are mounting up. It seems like this weekend there were some guys have been dismissed from teams, some guys getting legal trouble, but I don't think we talk about that enough in August, in the preseason, like, all right, how good, how good is corner three and four for you? How good is that, you know, number three offensive tackle? Can you win with with wide receiver one down? And I think that's all playing out right here in the in the meat of the schedule. Dude, no doubt. All right, so while you were gone, this graphic going around, apparently, you need to be fired. Everybody needs to be fired for these quarterback rankings. I guess all the schools that also sign these guys and pay big money don't need to be fired. They must be working off a different set of notes that also mirrors ours pretty closely quite often. Yeah, I just think like, man, look, number one, this is a small sample in terms of ranking quarterbacks year to year. Number two, other positions, I think, are easier to rank because it's more of a heightweight speed thing, you know, like more of what you do on a Friday night at other positions translates to the field, then quarterback does on a Friday night because you're just seeing so many different defensive concepts in college than you're going to, you just can't get a high school defense to run a lot of the stuff that you're seeing, even the good ones, man, that you're seeing in college. And so you're not, there's just so many factors like and situations that we don't know how they're going to handle because they've never seen it and we've never seen them see it. So it's like, how do you rank these guys? Like, could you just randomly do it? Or do you think you should go with the dudes who are athletic, who can make a variety of throws, who, like, we, at least we've seen handle a little bit of pressure, who like to compete, you know, like, you, I mean, go into it more obviously. There's a lot of, there's a lot of like effort that goes into trying to figure out and kind of, you know, scientific wild ass guess, swag it, right? You know, as far as like, how is this guy going to handle that or that? But we don't know. And the schools don't know either. And they get to do work about private workouts on these visits now and they still get it wrong. This is, it's our position to rank. Well, but if it was easy, there wouldn't be quarterbacks going in the first round every year of the NFL draft, right? Right. I would encourage everyone to go, go pull up the, go back to the 2023 NFL draft. I think there was 14 quarterbacks selected. So you had Bryce Young and CJ Stroud. I think the, the juries may be coming around on, on Young, but in, in Stroud's case, it's gone the other way. After that, you got Anthony Richardson, Will Levis, hidden hooker, Jay Caner, Stetson Bennett, Aiden O'Connor, Clayton Tune, Dorian Thompson, Robin Robinson, excuse me, Sean Clifford, Jaren Hall, Tanner McKee, and Max Duggan. I think Tanner McKee's the only other one that's going to start this upcoming NFL week. And that's because I'm an injury to Jalen, Jalen Hurd. So it's certainly a difficult position to evaluate. It's certainly a difficult position to, I think what you just, you just brought up, you know, how are these guys wired? What does it look like between the ears? Because at the end of the day, talking about in a case like Bryce Young, me, Bryce Young was, or excuse me, Bryce Underwood, someone that's 17, 18 years old. Now they're multi-millionaire. Now everyone on campus knows who they are. And it's, it's a lot of pressure. And I think what's unique about the current era that we are in when you make a financial commitment when there's a number in place to one of these five star quarterbacks, you got to play them. And I, my eyes go right to this, the situation at Tennessee there in Knoxville. And, you know, George McIntyre is now the guy that is under center for the balls. I know, I know, Faison got dinged up there. But I don't know what I said a few months ago on the cover of three. I mean, I did not anticipate him being a guy that was going to play year one. And that's primarily because he missed a lot of his senior season due to a thumb injury. So I thought he was a guy where in the ideal world, he sits and he learns a little bit. He is not thrust into action. That has not been the case. So, I mean, I don't know how you want to go through all these five star quarterbacks. I'll say this, but, you know, I went cycle by cycle and looked at who we had ranked. And it's, you know, at the top of the board five star. And then who was below them? And there wasn't a lot of quarterbacks that I think if we went back to what they did in high school, what everyone saw from them, you can make the case that they should have been in that five star conversation. Now certainly, have we missed on some? Absolutely. Absolutely. We have. But at the same time, like, I don't know how we would have had some of these other guys higher. So I don't know what direction you want to go. I don't know where you want to start, but it's a fun conversation. It really is. And so, I hear a lot of second guessing, but I don't hear a lot of first guessing on this stuff, right? And that's pretty consistent. Everybody's recruiting expert after the fact, you know. Not a lot of people are like, Hey, you should have had Drew Mestemaker, who didn't even start for his high school team. Very high, right? Like, maybe if he had, we would have known a little bit more about that guy, you know? Well, well, Arch, Arch is the quarterback that's in, I think, in the scope, right, bud? Sure. So let's go back to our 2023 quarterback rankings. So Arch was number one, Niko, Emo, Evo is number two. Number three was Dante Moore. We had two other quarterbacks that finished his five stars. Jackson Arnold, Malachi Nelson. I will wave the white flag here. Yes, those guys, those guys are bus. They're not going to be first round NFL draft picks. But after this, stop me, bud. If, if one of these current power force starters, you think that they should have been ahead of that trio I mentioned at the top. So Arch, Niko, and Dante Moore, eight in childs, Avery Johnson, Lincoln Kindholz, Kenny Menchie, Dylan Longergan, Sam Levitt, Marcel Reed, Lennora Sellers, Austin Simmons, Anthony Kalandria, Hank Brown, Gio Lopez, Colton Joseph, Devon Dampier, and then Darien Minson. We can talk about him in a second. But I don't know how many of those guys you could make the case that you would absolutely right now. Hey, this Saturday, I'm taking him over that top three and let's say everyone's healthy. I mean, I think the answer is pretty clearly zero given what you had at the time. So you didn't decide to make that choice. 70 other power for schools. I'm going to throw Memphis and Boise in there because they throw a real money around at the P4 level. You know, also didn't like Mensa went to Tulane, right? Have you dug in? Have you dug it in in some Mensa's story? A little bit. Yeah, I remember I ran into summer all at the convention or somewhere. Like they knew pretty early on that they had something there, right? But even then, like the rest of the country didn't, right? Like he went to Duke and Benuke Duke, their GM got a lot of criticism behind the scenes in the industry for deciding to give him that much money. And you know what? Benuke was right, but there were still a lot of high level teams. He went to Duke. Duke was like a bottom 20 P4 program. All things considered, right? So it's not like even after a year or two, Tulane, a year was he Tulane for two? One, I might have been two actually. I think you're two on that. Yeah. So even after success at Tulane, which is a pretty high level G6, he still wasn't like leveling up to Oklahoma, right? So I think he's kind of a longer burn. You know, have you dug into his backstory much? Yeah. And originally from California, had three scholarship offers. He mentioned Tulane where it's where he ended up signing Idaho State had offered and Lyndon Wood had offered only played in five games as a junior. And we always talk about how important these junior seasons are, how accelerated the quarterback recruiting market is. There was a story in the athletic, I think earlier this week by Mani Navarro just kind of asking some personnel, GMs, those type of figures in college football. Yeah. He does a great job. and someone brought this up, like, schools aren't watching senior seasons and they're barely getting into the junior seasons before they make a decision. So, there are events that only five games due to a transfer as a junior, and then as a senior, I mean, you attend at three, 25 touchdown passes to eight interceptions. So, it's not like this kid threw-- Not a good ratio. Yeah, it's not like this kid threw 40 touchdowns. So, he's an interesting one. And I think every cycle these guys are going to surface, right? They are late bloomers. I mean, Fernando Mendoza, last year, obviously, you know, three-star prospect, okay? He's a kid that before his senior season, he threw for Alabama, he threw for Clemson, he threw for Miami, he threw for LSU, and he threw for South Carolina. None of them offered him a scholarship. Neither did Florida Atlantic, which was right down the road. So, he commits to Yale. And I think a lot of people don't know this about the Fernando Mendoza story. He would have went to Yale if the Ivy League had the national letters of intent. If you could sign during your early signing period, Mendoza didn't do that. He ends up still being available. Cal loses Justin Martin, former Ohio State Maryland court, I mean, he's been all around. And they go on Mendoza. And certainly, you know, I always said, okay, you know, how did you guys miss on Mendoza? Well, he had a big frame. I think it was the IQ, how he processed, he was a perfectionist. I think he really turned it on there. And, you know, it's funny, there's people in this industry that that will pull up the Mendoza tape and be like, oh, I could have seen that. Well, yeah, hindsight's 2020. I remember seeing Mendoza play Shamanana Madonna, and he completed three passes as a senior. So, I mean, he's a guy that perfected his craft, and he's won that everyone missed on it. And the other quarterback in that class too, Jada Mayeva, didn't play junior season, just lost his junior season due to the global pandemic. So he started his career, high school career in Nevada, then he was in Hawaii, didn't play as a junior, finished in Nevada, only had one other scholarship offer besides UNLV, and that was Louisville. So, you know, those examples come up, and then obviously Drew Mestemaker, I mean, walk on, you know, punter, I think that's the term that's that's getting thrown around out there. So everyone's kind of on a different developmental timeline, and there's going to be late blimmers. Yeah, it's just a numbers game. Like, there's so many QBs out there. If you like, I think to your point, if you're going to do this, who would you do differently? And even Mendoza, like for a guy who we can assume probably got better mentally in college, but was probably all like, like always a pretty sharp guy. How much of that are you really seeing in high school, man? Like, there's not a lot. These guys are not operating super complicated offenses in high school, is even if you got a QB that can do it, the other 10 guys can't usually, right? Like high school, the jump from high school to college, I think now that you see a lot of these different defenses being run in college, like, I think that from a quarterback standpoint, you jump from high school to college, before talking like major college, I think you can argue that's a bigger jump than from college to the NFL. And even in the NFL, right? So let me pull up my stat here. I stole this from a Fox, from a Fox sports article, right? So the 61 first ground QBs drafted from 2002 to 2023, 64% were misses. Those were NFL teams using a first ground pick, investing millions in their diligence and their scouting with four or five years, sometimes three of college film to watch. So they defined a miss as somebody who did not become a solid starter or better. So they're, they're about like, they're missing about two out of three times there at the NFL level. At least you're getting to see, you know, guys throw against similar athletes in college when you're making those NFL picks. So it's, I think it's just the nature of the position. Ivan's in like, would you have gone back and, and, and, and ranked, ranked, you know, Jayden higher? Maybe, but like, maybe not, right? Like, that's a pretty small sample to go on. Like, you're talking about a one year, you know, sample, because the guy didn't play as a junior. It's half-cute pull up the, uh, the, the 2025 quarterback ring. Because I want to talk about the other guy that's, I think, uh, firmly in the conversations, and that, that's that's Bryce Underwood, right? That, that Michigan. And I think this is another fun one, but it's like, okay, let's start, let's start ripping through these rankings. Obviously, Bryce Underwood number one, number two, you got Keel and Russell there at Alabama. You have two other five stars, Tavine St. Clair and, and Hassan Longstreet. So these are the other guys that have started power four games, Malik Washington at Maryland, Jaren Keeave, Sagabatela. I still have hopes for those two. Right. And then I would, they, they can get into a better situation than, than Cal and Maryland. I, I still want to buy low on those two. And then you got Camario Taylor at Mississippi State, uh, Julian Lewis at Colorado. We've seen a little bit of Matt Zollers. We've seen a little bit of AJ Hill. Uh, then you really got to start scrolling George McIntyre, Tremel Jones at, at Florida, who picks up, you know, big ranked win in his first career start. Bear Bachmeier. I want to come back to him in a second. Um, Mason, Heisenheadle and Bird Ficklin. So, you know, we, we keep kind of focusing in on, on Bryce Underwood at the top. I would bring up, okay, who else in this class? Would you put in a similar situation? Are we more sure? Guaranteeing is going to be having success. So, um, I, I don't know if you have any other thoughts on this, on this 2025 group, but I, I did find that interesting. What you kind of really, really start digging into it. Taff scroll back up to the top. Right. Look at the logos next to these signings, Michigan, Alabama, Ohio State. You know, Maryland's not in this group that I'm going to say, but like sure, Auburn, Oregon, let's keep scrolling here. Right. You know, Mississippi State, no, Missouri, no Colorado, no, you know, Memphis, no, um, you know, Carolina, no Georgia, yes, Oregon, again, yes, Miami, yes, Tennessee, yes, like Texas, yes. I think there's about 20 schools that have a real mandate to be like national title, deep playoff run aspirational. Right. Bama, Georgia, Texas, LSU, Oklahoma, Florida, Tennessee, Auburn, Texan, M, Old Miss Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Oregon, USC, Notre Dame, Clemson, Miami, FSU. That's 20, right. I mean, I may be missing a school there or something that you can argue, but those schools are not looking to hit singles. Right. Those schools are taking home run swings. They're not looking to get a seventh round pick out of the quarterback that they sign. Okay. Their optimal outcome is to bat 250, but to have that one go over the fence because they're trying to make a deep playoff run. Those schools have enough money to go to the portal and get somebody who's slightly above average if they miss. So for them, it's not like, yeah, let's make sure we consistently get, you know, get on base here. On base doesn't win us the ball game. Right. When your face is better teams, like a Rocco bet is not going to get it done for me. You know, like so, why do you take a table and say Claire, who apparently is not won the backup job for Ohio State? Because on physical talent, if he hits and clearly Ohio State thought and look, certainly he could still hit, right. It's still very early in this process. I think it's a little bit concerning. If I'm being honest, that he got beat out by Fei, you know, but we knew he was raw, right? Like we knew he was raw. We knew he had big time tools. That's who you're going to bet on. If you have a gold deep in the playoff, compete for a national title mandate from an organizational and funding and program gold standpoint, you're not going to bet on the guy who's just accurate and 5/11 and can have a nice college career. You know what? And sometimes the variance on those guys with the big time tools, it's going to be pretty wide. You're going to have big hits and you're going to have big misses. And like, I mean, we can just say this now because these guys are paid. You flush the big misses, right? And you hope to hit more often than you don't. But like some of these guys, oh, you could just go get this portal guy, portal guy, the hell you can. It's easy to point meant, like, you know, Indiana going to get Mendoza, right? There's a lot of these dudes out of the portal that can't take you to the promised land. You know, like you want to have that really high upside guy. So people are like, are we going to keep signing these five stars at high school? Yes. Because you need to hit the home run if you want to hold the trophy at the end of the tournament. I agree with everything that you're saying, bud. But I thought I have doing this exercise and coming out of the weekend. I wonder if there are some schools that look at a quarterback, like Bearbock Meyer, and they opt to go that route. And what is Bearbock Meyer? I think he's a tough, I think he's a gritty. I think he's a win at win at all costs type of quarterback. Sure. That has some limitations, but has that has that fire in him. And I think there's some other guys that you could put into a similar bucket, a Gunner Socton, a Devon Dampier at Utah. I wonder if that route becomes potentially more, track the now if that is the choice, the roster around you has to be everything's got to be kind of humming and there's got to be an identity. So, you know, he's the name to me just coming off the big win over the weekend against Notre Dame and he's exceeded my expectations certainly. Now, do I think he's a day one, day two of the NFL draft? I personally don't think so, that doesn't mean that won't be the case a few years from now. But he's clearly winning games at BYU. So, I also wonder if that path, that roster build becomes more and more attractive as schools kind of, you know, deal with what's happening at Michigan and elsewhere. Yeah, I wonder if they structured some of these contracts to give them different kind of outs. We also don't know like what kind of outs Michigan has in price under what's contract. Unless you see and like the overall numbers have certainly been, you know, reported in and like they get the big headlines. We don't really know what kind of outs Michigan has in this thing, right? Michigan was not the only player in that recruitment. Obviously, LSU was pretty heavily involved. There were others as well, right? So, again, like if you're a five star like national title aspirational program, it's also a big risk to go get a bear boxmire because we can't treat going to get a bear boxmire like he's a certainty to become bear boxmire, right? He might have a smaller range within he, you know, like he might develop and become as far as potential outcomes. But like, I mean, also, give me like a generic worst version of boxmire and like you don't even make the playoff, right? Can boxmire take that team on a playoff run? Possibly. Well, I think all the love for Camario Taylor in September that kind of speaks to what you're talking about, right? Lottery, take it program changer, beat you with the arm, beat you with the legs. Everyone's looking for that and it's easy to see why when those guys are 100%. I do think like if I was a school, I would start taking two if I could. Like if you're going to bet on the little bit wider variance lower cost guys, I think you need to start stacking two because you're going to start to see, I think a lot of these schools know kind of early on whether they have something or they don't, you know, just because like getting into a college program is just different, right? You're getting them on the whiteboard consistently. You're getting them in practice reps consistently. You're going to start to see something or you're not. Now, there's flaws in that as well. Like mainly you have to get like both kids to say yes, right? Because they're both going to know that they're being recruited. But I texted you last Friday, I said, what was the stat about how many first-year coaches at the power four level are rolling with homegrown quarterbacks or what was the number ask? No, it was so programs that lost their starter at the power four level. 32 of 38 decided to not promote internally, right? Yeah. Which is kind of wild. I think it's probably a little bit of I think it's probably a little too conservative in terms of going out and like just having to have somebody proven, you know, because you don't want to roll the dice. I think maybe we'll start to see a bit of a change on that when you see some of these portal takes at these schools took this year that are just kind of duds. And like that's at worst missed to me when you take a guy out of the portal who has real college film and he just can't play or is not a difference maker. I don't want to keep going back to the Rockville Beck example, but because I don't think Penn State had a whole lot of time to put that class together given, you know, how they handled the coaching search. And, and you know, by all accounts, like it wasn't a bad take at the time, like he didn't really progress much at Iowa State. He was just an okay kind of above average college QV with a lot of experience, and you could certainly do worse that you could also, you know, do a lot better. And state probably wasn't an additional title, like aspirational this year. I just don't know if I think the, sorry, let me phrase this. I do know that, like, punting five star high school QBs and just say, we're just going to live out of the portal is not a plan that can work if a couple more teams start doing that too. Because then the price of those guys is going to go up exponentially, right? Like, there's only a couple out there that you're like, oh, wow, like that could be it. You know, Mesto maker was going to follow his coach. Miami got Mensa. I mean, shoot, I don't know what that cost them all in, but I assume it's culture to 10 than five, you know? And like we know Miami offered Simpson six and a half to lead. Bam, I knocked out of the draft. Like that's been reported out there. So like that's a really expensive investment. And they're just not enough guys out there that deserve that kind of money. You can truly make a difference even out of the portal. Like, yes, Mendoza, there are not six or seven Mendozas every year. Like, who are your G6 transfers up this year? Right? I mean, three weekend, I'm looking for them. Dude, there's not enough, right? So, I think it's a hard endeavor. I'll end this on the quarterback thing. I think for us, you know, kind of diving in this morning back on all these five star quarterbacks. I think the wiring between the years, you know, as much as you can gather in that department is important as ever. And I'm not right now for archmaning. I'm not right now. Price Underwood, you know, revisionist history. I wish we had Keel and Russell ahead of Bryce, but hey, they finished one two. They had the same grade. I'll never forget when the grades finalize for that cycle. You know, the Michigan fan base was upset that we didn't have Bryce Underwood's grade higher than what it was. And he was the number one overall player in the country. So, I think that wiring, and you opened up with that, but on this conversation about these quarterbacks. And, you know, we don't have the opportunity to do 30 visits and get them on a whiteboard, but we're going to try to grab what we can. I do think this is something potentially, and I don't think it's there yet, but is there something technology wise that can come along that maybe allows schools to unlock? I don't know, something with vision, you know, field vision, stuff like that. That's not wiring this, sir. That's more like processing, which I do think like you're usually not missing on the physicals on this. It's not like you're going from a this guy could throw to now he just can't throw, you know, unless somebody gets the yes or something weird or an injury, which good luck predicting that. If you could find a way to better scout the processing to make up for the lack of sophistication in these high school offenses, and also like the lack of sophistication you see from the high school defenses, like that could take this to a different level, you know, maybe some school as smart comes up with that, maybe somebody has that, but it's not like there's one school is just consistently, you know, batting a thousand on the five-star QB recruits they take, you know, and I mean, they're like I talked to a school the other day, and they're like, man, we love, love our 28 we have committed. We also just found this other 28 who we love, right? And we just, we like the one we have a little bit better. Damn, I wish we could take two, but there's like, there's no way that the kid we have committed is going to go for that. Now, maybe that's a wiring thing, right? Like maybe that's a red flag, but also as a five-star QB, you have leverage, right? Like you could say, hold on, wait a second, like am I going to be the guy you go all in and invest on in this class or not, right? Like I'm finally competing with guys in other classes, sure, but I've got options, bro. I don't have to like, have you take two guys in my class? So I don't know, and the other thing is like on the mentality and the mental makeup stuff, it's great to say do a better job of that, but like actually being able to do a better job on that I think is hard. It's not like you don't make a million calls and try to dig in on these guys and figure out, hey, and like, anything you worry about here, is this kid a, was he a total dumbass on his visit, right? Like, like, you know, there's any real red, like, you know, I don't do the ranks anymore, but I've been in those meetings and we're like, hold on, I don't know, man, like, rubbed a couple of schools the wrong way with how he acted, you know, the sport systems weird. I don't want people to come away thinking this, like, Ivan doesn't also try to consider the off-field factors, like I guarantee you those are considered in these rankings already. So anyway, yeah, we can't put those ones on the message board either, right? Right. Yeah, exactly right. Anything else on the on the on the the QB rankings here? No, no, I, I think it's, I think it's fascinating. I mean, obviously it's in the spotlight, given everything that transpired this weekend. And, you know, you go back to that 2022 cycle. There's four, four, five star quarterbacks, three of them have been drafted. So, Aller, club Nick Simpson and Wigman, Connor Wigman at Houston is third nationally in EPA. So, it's not like these guys can't play. Right. And I mean, look, like five stars get drafted. If you, if you separate out the quarterbacks, like five star non-quarterbacks get drafted, little over 60 percent, right? Quarterbacks get drafted at about a 48 percent rating as far as five stars. Like there's definitely a gap there. It's not like it's triple the rate, you know. There are still quite a few hits, obviously. If you define a hit as a guy that actually gets drafted, you know, which maybe you want to kind of narrow that range, um, certainly that gets possible. Uh, and we'll be willing to hear that argument. But let's go ahead and break here. And on the flip side, we'll talk with little, uh, little Miami Hurricanes who are absolutely crushing in recruiting. All right. I'll walk it back into the recruiting episode of the recovery podcast, that's Andrew Ribons right there, director of scouting for 24/7 sports. Little rainy game in Miami, Fort State pushes the hurricanes in double over time, and Miami ends up coming away with the victory we broke that all down on the Saturday night show. And of course, on the Monday upon, for the review episode. But here we're going to flip the page to a little personnel thing, you know, Marcus, to ball, you know, pretty famously pounded the table after force. They beat him a couple of years ago and was like, hey, this is going to change. We're building this thing the right way, like the players we have coming in. Our difference makers, he absolutely was completely correct about that. And they just keep rolling, man, like this class looks absolutely stacked. I know a bit of a shorter segment here, of course. But who do you want to spotlight for this Miami class? Because there are some guys we really like. Yeah, but in Miami, sitting number four right now in the 24/7 sports team rankings, I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for the opportunity to kind of show them some love here, right? And what they've been able to do. And obviously, they take down Florida State. It was a huge recruiting weekend for them at Hard Rock Stadium. Tons of targets there are going to have even more. I think in the stands, this upcoming weekend, when they host Pitt. And I think they have a chance to legitimately push for the number one overall class. Right now you look five different five stars committed. And to me, you know, the headliners are a plenty. I think the class starts with Amir Sears and Nick Linnear, two local prospects. I think these guys are the biggest alphas in South Florida, this cycle. And Amir Sears, the player comp for him has been Travis Hunter. You know, Travis Hunter finally doing it there in the NFL. You know, as you corner, as you wide receiver, I lean defensive back. But this is a kid that just makes plays. And he is a energizer bunny on the sidelines. Nick Linnear, same thing, six points off the bus. You know, I think it's route running. His ability to, you know, make timely touchdown catches. It feels like it's every single game for them in there at Carroll City. So those two are, to me, the headliners. Because I think, you know, five, ten years ago, these kids are going to Alabama. That is not the case. Mario Cristobal has changed that. The next one I want to highlight quarterback Izzie Abrams. And we just talked about QBs. This is one of the five star quarterbacks for us right now at this juncture. And he's a winner, 31 and two as a starter. He's already won two state titles going for a third here as a senior. 25 touchdowns this season, just two interceptions. He's also a brand for 11 scores. He's elastic. He can make high level throws to me. I think he's got one of the best arms in the class. And, you know, he's a kid that wants to put his foot on the gas. He wants to go, he has a dynamic lower half. You know, he's unconventional in his ways at times. But he can rip lasers, man, tight lines around the yard. He's got good throw variance. And he's a threat to find the end zone as a runner, especially down in that red zone. So, got to rain it in, but man, I think huge potential, huge ceiling. And most importantly, I think he fits what Shannon Dawson wants to do on offense. He can get the ball out fast. And it's going to be fun to see what it looks like in Coral Gables next year at quarterback. Because Miami has continued to roll the dice and hit big at that quarterback position with the transfers. And now they have a situation where five stars coming in. They got Luke Nichol on the roster, Darion Coleman on the roster. So, I think to me, it's going to be one of the more fascinating kind of quarterback battles when we head into that 20/27 season. And then finally, last guy want to talk about Jaden Bryant, edge rusher out of South Carolina. This kid was originally committed to LSU, flips to play for the hurricanes. You think about Miami? We saw all saw it on Saturday night. You know, what they're able to do with Jason Taylor coaching up those defensive ends. You know, it was Ruben Bain, a key method or the year prior. This year it's Marquis Lightfoot, Damon Wilson. Now they're adding Jaden Bryant to the fold. Eight games this season. He's got nine and a half sacks, 18 and a half tackles for loss. He was awesome at the underarm or all America game last year. He can go speed to power. He's a tough individual, plays through contact. I think he's a guy that's going to have a chance to make an impact here. One, and you know, what's fun about this edge group in the class of 20/27. I think there's, you know, five, six, seven absolute difference makers. You talk with schools. Everyone kind of views them differently. Miami thinks they have this kid. They think he's the one. This is the guy they circled. They're hoping to pair him with DJ Jacobs. The number one recruit in the country. He's supposed to visit this upcoming weekend. According to Tom Lloyd, but, you know, no surprise that, you know, Miami getting some past russures in the fold. So I think those are the headliners. Smaller group for Miami compared to years prior. But man, if they can flip a DJ Jacobs, if they can flip five star offense, the tackle Mark Matthews from Texas A&M. I mean, I just was playing around on the class calculator. We're going to have an opportunity to finish with that number one ranked class. Am I that important? You know, ACC hasn't had a number one finish in the 24/7 sports era, which dates back to 2010. I mean, look, if they were to land Matthews and Jacobs. Good lord. Like that is just building it through the trenches, you know, once again for my crystal ball. I agree with everything you said about Abrams. I stood behind him at the opening 7 on 7 for a lot of his games. And I just kept thinking, all right, like when he gets into a college program, college 7 on 7 is going to help him a lot, right? Because I mean, it is, it is swinging for the fences and awful lot. And connecting at a fairly high rate. And it's, he's throwing the guys who are, you know, generally open, but I'm like, man, these are small windows, right? Like in college, I think someone's going to like work on him. Like, yo, look, we can take the six yards on first down on this access throw. And you're just kind of working with them more. Like, look, like, your first read is this, okay? Like, this is a spread out. If we get the access throw, we're taking a profit. We're getting a second and four. That's a leverage down then because we can throw a home run all on play action, you know. So, but he does a lot of the things really, really. That's just, you know, and being out there and watch like, okay, like, it's not really bad reads. It's just greedy reads. I guess you know what I'm saying? Like he's not, he's not throwing the guys who are like double covered. But that's close. You know, like he'll be, he's, take a profit, you know? He's, he's splashy, right? Like he is, he is stylistic. And, you know, when he's around these, quarterback trainers and quarterback coaches, I absolutely get why, you know, there's a little hesitation because it's like a brash play style for the quarterback position. Oh, yeah. All right. Last guy I want to touch on with Miami just because I, I get, one of the few seniors where I was so fired up when you kind of dug into what he's doing here, this fall, Andre Hippolite, and he's inside the top two, four, seven. So it feels a little weird to call him a, a sleeper. But, bud, you look at Miami under Mario Cristobal two years ago, they hit on Bryce Fitzgerald, a, a freshman safety out of the South Florida area. This year, it's JJ Dunnigan who actually led the hurricanes and defensive snaps against Florida State. He was a kid out of Kansas. Andre Hippolite, uh, man. This guy, I, I just get so excited and he's at a unique school. North Miami Beach does not normally have a bunch of talent, but they've actually sent, I think five defensive backs to the NFL over the past 10 years. It's just a, a blue collar program in North date and I call this kid a textbook predator, right? Like he wants to create violence and he wants to get the ball back for the offense. Miami beat out a bunch of schools for Andre. He was flying a little bit under the radar. He doesn't do camps, doesn't run track, doesn't play seven on seven. One of these kids, you got to kind of really study him and learn about him. But man, uh, I, I think he's a difference maker with his vision and physicality. So Miami, adding another safety to the mix in, in my opinion, another difference maker. Be really interested to see what they do. Let's go to hit our second break here. I know we went along on the quarterback. I thought that was a good discussion. You know, uh, C block coming up next, little news and notes for around the country after this. The core short from Viori is one pair I keep reaching for. Morning run afternoon training, watching the game, it doesn't matter. Soft four-way stretch, built-in liner, comfortable all day. Plus, they look good enough to wear well beyond the gym. Ready to try a pair? Head to Viori.com/pod20 to get 20% off your first purchase. Exclusions apply, visit the website for full-terms and conditions. All right, welcome back into the recruiting episode of the Covery Podcast and derives director of scouting for 24/7 sports. All right, we got a couple to highlight here. William Wood, quarterback, flips from Penn State to Boston College. I'm going to say, do we care? That's strong, but like it's notable, but Penn State, like what do we read into this? I don't want to like not talk about what Boston College is getting, but you know, we don't have a whole lot of Boston College listeners. I want to say real quick, but I think this is This is like Bill O'Brien's biggest win since he arrived at Boston College on the Recruiting Front, which is interesting because they just parted ways with the General Manager last week. So, Boston College deserves a ton of credit here, but William Wood, lot of schools but were interested in this kid, you know, back when the quarterback Dominoes were falling, Ben State beat out a number of schools. To me, the story here is, what does this mean for the Knitney Lions? You've touched a bunch on Rocco Becht on cover three, but you look at the depth chart. They only got, I think, two quarterbacks, two freshmen on there. Alex Manskis, the guy that's played 75 career snaps across his time at Penn State and Iowa State. He followed the staff there from AIMS. So, to me, this was notable because what is Penn State going to do? I don't think Will Wood was going to be a starter for the Knitney Lions, but if you're looking for a school that is absolutely going to be in the transfer market for a quarterback, it's Penn State, right? Like they are one of the ones that are going to have to, you know, push the chips in for someone. So, that's why he's here and, hey, Will Wood, craft the individual, confident in the pocket. It can make some throws. Adam Massachusetts, just an interesting kind of one, because you don't see a lot of quarterbacks flipping this late in the process. So, I think Penn State is clearly in the market, right, and that is a great gift for Boston College, obviously. I do wonder, like, man, if Manski can play, you got to get him in, right? Like you lost four in a row, all of your season goals are pretty, pretty well gone at this point. Much like A&M. The Brady Hart did get in the game against Citadel, by the way. My A&M buddy was very happy. He went five of eight in the ballgame. You could see a lot of seven practice, I think most of your read is going to, like, you're going to kind of know, based on how the guy reps it on practice. But, like, I do think you want to see some game reps, if there's any chance that Manski's your starter in 27, you know, and so far, I haven't seen it, like, they're just playing Rocco Beck every week. So, that's a little, a little concerning to me, you know, that's what's going on there. But yeah, they're going to be in the market for QBs. I don't know if this is a great transfer QB class yet. Like, a lot of it's going to depend on, like, who decides to leave, like, your bottom 15 or so paying P4s. And then, I think some teams are probably going to have to figure out, like, hey, which of these young guys that haven't claimed the job yet at a P4, did we believe in, you know, maybe that he's got access to his practice film, we can watch, we think we can unlock something there, you know? I think about my raise trading for Peralta, you know, and he had a, like, a 5-ERA with the Mets, and they moved into the third base side of the rubber, changed your arm angle, a little bit, worked the stride length, and all of a sudden, the fastball's back up to 97 with some serious ride, and he wins the MVP of the ALCS, right, and has, like, a, you know, a URA of 1 over the last six weeks, which is awesome. Like, maybe, maybe that's going to be something we have to see this year, like, taking guys off P4 roster, who have not started for other P4 teams, and seeing that there's an unlock there with your staff, as opposed to a different staff, you know, like, I guess, because I've just seen, I'm not seeing, like, enough guys bawling out at the G6 level to, like, to fulfill the demand that I think we're going to have at the P4 level for transfers this year, if the transfer trends hold, you know, and again, last year, that was insane, 32 of 38 P4 schools that lost their starter took a transfer to come start. Like, that's, that's a horrendous rate of internal promotion. I wonder if we see that bounce back a little bit too. Well, you can look at Termal Jones and what he did against it. Yes, you know, like, they managed it well for a man, like, he was decisive in taking off, when they rolled him out, he got rid of it quickly. Like, I know, the numbers weren't pretty, but, like, he also, it didn't put the ball in jeopardy much, right, and the, the run game with ball was, was, was effective, and, you know, like, Danny had a great breakdown. I know you just got back in the country. I don't know if you had a chance to watch Danny's break archester, but I thought it was, was, was really good, you know, like, he had, he had some stuff he missed in the red zone, where it's like, shoot, this guy's been open for nine yards, and it's still open, and you just aren't hitting him. Um, you know, like, that certainly helped Florida get that bed done, but, yeah, like, I shoot Termal Jones in, like, is, is, final getting the job back when he's healthy? I don't know. I guess we'll see. All right. Let's, let's go from Boston College to, to Georgia, right? And, uh, news, news here. Christian May's number three junior college recruit. He flips from NSC to the dogs and, and Budweiser, this one notable, uh, UGA now holds commitments from the number one and number three rank junior college prospects. That remember, they flipped cornerback alias Mayo from, uh, Cal a few weeks ago, um, nice week for Georgia on the recruiting trail. I know they didn't get the result they wanted on the field. Also, flip Nash Johnson, a corner from Auburn, Braille and Miller, a safety from Liberty, who was like, everything at Kirby Smart, uh, Kirby smarts going to want in a defensive back. May's six five three hundred fifty pounds, big 10-inch pause, heavy Chevy. That's what he is. Knows extremely hard to move off the ball, but impressive. Get off and, and balance, uh, at Northeast Mississippi. Again, I said originally from Colorado, uh, just find it notable situation. I'm monitoring Georgia going in on these junior college guys. We always talk about these roster builds and, and Georgia's going out and getting a rare body type. And a guy that's probably going to be able to play in 2027. So why didn't you have Christian May's rank as a five-star in a high school office? I mean, like, look, look at this guy's size. Like, he had, what, no offers out of high school. But I'm put on the, put on the cut up this morning. I'm like, all right, gotta slim this guy down a little bit. Yeah. See, like guys do develop some as freshmen and sophomores in college. Not everybody's a finished product at, at a high school. And, you know, part of the job, of course, is to project an album, but you have to, if you put a crazy development, uh, you're going to lose your job. So, like, for every maze that, like, cuts the weight and unlocks some athleticism and some explosive, you know, nists, then there's probably 10 more guys who are, built like that, who are going to stay slow-footed. So, you know, he's also, he's also like in what we call the nine-lives club. And those, yeah, those are the big boys. So they get nine lives. I like that. Christian Maze used one of them to get to a junior college at a high school. And now, now he's, he's transferring up, right? So, um, I guess it goes in both directions. The nine lives. You can go up and down the football ladder, but someone's going to give you an opportunity when, again, you are 65, 350 pounds. I mean, a guy having just five tackles for loss, with that size, playing Colorado, uh, does not exactly scream, like, big-time player. Like, you know, competition in Colorado is not, not across the board, not great. There's a couple decent teams out there, obviously. All right. Finally, uh, 2020-28, QB, Josiah Boyd, crystal ball to UCLA. That's, that's a big one there, man, for Bob Chesney's team, Derek Gray. All right. And, certainly quarterback recruiting for 2028. It's all taking place right now. We got visits going on. Josiah Boyd is quarterback nine for us in the top 24/7 in the class of, of 2028. We actually just kind of moved him up, bud. This is a rare one. Tell me if you've heard this before. Oregon, Kentucky, UCLA battle heading into his November commitment. And Blair and Gulo has been put in a crystal ball pick for UCLA. And why I wanted to talk about this one two weeks ago when, when UCLA, uh, upset Oregon, I, I hadn't written in the talent tracker. Like, this is a huge opportunity for the Bruins. And it came a week after, uh, Oregon went down to, to USC and one, and Dan Laning made sure to get as many shots in as possible, uh, at USC in hopes of kind of luring more of these LA recruits up to Eugene. Well, guess what? UCLA, they, they want to get in on, on the action. They want to get in on the local talent, like a Josiah Boyd. And I think he's the plus athlete for the position. I think he's one of the best runners in the class. And we look at the quarterbacks, you know, streaky at times as a passer, but good motion, you can distribute on the move from a variety of different platforms, can rip tight spirals over coverage. Um, I think consistency is the big thing. But again, this is a guy that can get out of sacks and, you know, UCLA to me, it's been one of the more fascinating stories of the season, right? It kind of feels a lot like Indiana and UCLA, you know, track and assign maybe their first top top top 25 recruiting class in a long time. And they're already getting it going potentially in 2028. No doubt, man, uh, I'm really excited to see what you feel I can do with him and like, like, just, just, you know, how good that class can get. All right, I know we're running a little bit long. Last break, like we always do each week on the flip side. We'll tell you who to watch for this weekend and why. Well, it's going back, y'all, but I'll end here of the covering podcast. It's our recruiting episode. That's why Andrew Ivens joins us each and every Wednesday. We're fighting to do a little, little flu bug today, but, uh, hey, we, we are flu game. Hopefully it's been a good show. All right, a couple, a couple of stuff to watch this weekend. Ivens, we got, we got two young QBs, Tommy Carr, who I think we, we're not reporting that he started for Michigan because of course Kyle Wittingham said, you know, uh, not going to reveal that, but, you know, certainly a signety of Indiana thinks he's going to start based on his press conference and things we might see to QB's information so that would be kind of interesting. They did that a lot at Utah as well last year. And then KJ Lacey, who I know it's been reported, is going to get some first team reps now for the Texas long horns after arched mannings continued struggles here. What do we know about these guys? Well, bud, you know, I think this is like the lane I can swim in because I remember these guys a lot coming out. And we've seen, you know, bits and pieces of them. I think with Tommy Carr, people forget that he was committed to Miami of Ohio. And he finished as QB 15 for us last cycle. Hudson's Danish on our scouting team absolutely loved this kid. We had as a four star prospect when he was committed to a group of six program. You know, Georgia actually made a late run at Tommy Carr. I think a lot of people don't know that. Obviously he's the younger brother of C.J. Carr. Putting him, I think noted the athletic markers on Tommy Carr. I went back and looked. He ran a 4-0-0 shuttle at the 11. Just like with his brother, these two guys, the confidence, the timing, the internal clock in the pocket. I felt that always showed up with them. And they're not like true dual threat talent individuals that are looking to leave the pocket. The sack of Asian, the ability to keep the eyes downfield. That always stood out to me. So we'll see if he plays, but just before, you know, the broadcast starts saying, "Hey, was this three star recruitin' all this?" No, he was a blue chipper. He's a guy that certainly had some talent. But the other thing, let's say Tommy Carr does start. I had to look this up. Last time, two brothers started at quarterback the same week in college football. Do you know what it was? Oh, it's the mannings. Did they overlap? They did not. Well, my research should not turn that up. Not as starters, I don't think, right? Like, because. Starters, all we're saying, starters on the same week. Man, I don't. Who we got? 2002. Basic Lawson at Tennessee. Rick Lawson at Tennessee. Oh, that's a, yeah. That's a good one, man. Look at that. And there's been, there's been a few other times where there's been some overlap. Hank in Barebok, Meyer. Hank, when he was at Wake, Bare, when he was a freshman at BYU. And then Jack and Will Plummer. I think Jack would have been not Louisville yet. Will Plummer was at Arizona. I don't know where Jack was at the time. So Stanford. Maybe, maybe. Or maybe Purdue. Purdue, I think. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, so could be some college football history for you there. And then finally on Hank, KJ Lacey. QB 19 for us in the class of 2025. Again, I've said, I'm not selling my archmaning stock yet. I know everyone else is selling it. So I'm going to buy low on him. But KJ Lacey. What always stood out to me, this kid played so much football. He was 42 and 6 as a starter in high school. He threw for over 10,000 yards, 130 touchdowns. He was Mr. Football and Alabama as a senior MVP of the annual Alabama Mississippi game. I went back and I found my notes on that chaotic backyard brand of football is what I had written down. Not afraid to take chances in the big knock on on KJ Lacey. I mean, he was one of the better pure pastors in the class. Just not the biggest individual. I mean, 5'11, 180 pounds. You get around him. Not the biggest dude. Kind of reminded me of Noah Fafita, but they're at Arizona. And I also totally forgot. He was throwing passes to Ryan Coleman Williams as a sophomore. So I don't know if he's the answer for Texas. But I can certainly see him kind of being a change of pace to what they have if they do go to the bullpen. That would make sense. If he can just play point guard a little bit for them. In some ways, the offense, you know, they're getting like the two or three wild plays from Archie game. They're just not like Florida kind of went hack a shack on him. If you remember the old NBA defense, because he's just not making his free throws. They're just like blitzed him and sent him the line basically. You know, he's not cash and in on some of those hots. We'll see. Manning was pretty fiery into press conference. I don't know if you got a chance to watch that or not. But he, I think he's kind of looking to silence the doubters. Obviously, press conference won't do that. Only his plan field will and we'll be watching this weekend as they take on Ole Miss. I haven't enjoyed this man. This was fun. Appreciate it. But hopefully we both improve our voices here coming seriously. All right. I'll see you next time. Appreciate you. In this life, you can't win when the world gets you down. No escape to Pluto TV. This is objectively fantastic. Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love all for free. Shwing! Even our news is uplifting. You stay classy, San Diego. Watch School of Rock, Crazy X Girlfriend, Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more. We're not worthy! The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, they never.