East Coast Spotlight: Six players who are tough to rate

The Rivals Rankings for the 2021 and 2022 classes will be updated over the next two weeks after an off-season that offered fewer opportunities for evaluations than any previous year. Questions we hoped to get answered about many top players were left largely unanswered. Here are six prospects from the Each Coast who were among those most difficult to rate.

RELATED: Five Midwest prospects who are tough to rate | Southeast

CLASS OF 2021 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Position | Team | State

CLASS OF 2022: Top 100

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One of the hottest recruits on the East Coast, Covil has been picking up offers from many of the nation’s top programs in the last couple weeks. His film from this past season was good and he plays with a chip on his shoulder.

Covil’s physicality jumps off the screen and it carried over to his performances at a couple recent camps. During the one-on-one portion of these camps, Covil was routinely seen jamming receivers at the line of scrimmage, making it very difficult for them to get into their routes and keep their timing with the quarterbacks on track. Covil did get into trouble at points for what would have been called pass interference in games, and when he was playing off coverage - like a safety would - he had trouble breaking on passes and not allowing receivers to create separation.

At around 5-foot-10, 190-pounds, Covil isn’t small, but he certainly doesn’t have ideal length. The camp setting may not be Covil’s strong suit, but his game film does stand out. Watching his development will definitely be a point of emphasis throughout the 2022 recruiting cycle.

Listing two defensive linemen here is cheating a bit, but both Hall and Hopper are difficult to evaluate on film and they play at schools less than six miles away from each other. Hall is an outstanding athlete on the defensive line that could play end or tackle, while Hopper is a bully on the interior of the defensive line. The level of regular season competition both face isn’t very good, so their film can be a bit deceiving. Are they getting by on their athletic gifts or refined technical skills? That’s the biggest question to focus on when determining their evaluation moving forward.

The ranking of Ingram-Dawkins has been a hot-button issue in the recruiting world for the last few months. New information on the South Carolina standout has been hard to come by. Ingram-Dawkins did not appear to be in the best physical shape last year and won at the point of attack mostly by overpowering the opposing lineman. Now he’s slimmed down and we’re eager to see how he’s expanded his game. As of now, the state of South Carolina does plan on having a high school season, so Ingram-Dawkins should have the opportunity to show off the work he put in during the off-season.

Pounds is a massive and strong prospect that has seen his stock skyrocket as the recruiting process progressed. Pounds has done a good job trimming the bad weight he carried early in his career, but there is still work to do on that front.

He makes up for what he lacks in technical skills with brute strength. That is one of the things that makes Pounds a difficult prospect to evaluate. Can Pounds iron out his technical problems at the next level? College coaches are hoping so, because he’s not going to be able to overpower every college defensive lineman.

Pass-catching tight ends are essentially a must-have for any successful football team these days, but Skinner has been viewed as a receiver up until very recently. Skinner has a huge frame and can really stretch the field. He’s always done a good job of catching contested balls, but there are some questions about his route-running techniques and his ability to separate from defenders, which leads to the question about his position. An up-close look at his physical and technical development will really help sort his position and ranking in the long run.