Rivals Reaction: Ceaser and Nunnery commit to Houston

Amid the frenzy of teams holding recruiting events and landing big commitments last weekend, Houston got in the mix with a couple of big gets of its own in Rivals250 defensive end Nelson Ceaser and three-star Shadow Creek defensive back Ronald Nunnery. The Cougars are now up to 11 total commitments this summer and move to sixth in the American Athletic Conference Rivals Team Recruiting Rankings.

Landing a Rivals250 talent in Ceaser speaks for itself. Despite collecting a fair amount of top offers, Ceaser never really seemed overly active in the recruiting process and hasn’t really been motivated to take a lot of visits to this place or that. He hit the scene as a pure pass-rush end and but has grown into a more complete player at the position heading into his senior season at Ridge Point, both figuratively and physically. As he’s taken on a more prominent role on his high school team, he’s played with more confidence and assertiveness and when he locks onto his target, he closes and hits like a heat-seeking missile. Conversation has varied on how he'll project as a college player from differing defensive end roles to being an outright linebacker, but that speaks to his athleticism and versatility as a defender and he'll always be a dangerous edge-rushing option.

Nunnery has quietly put together a fairly large offer list of his own this spring and summer and that’s also coincided with his growth and improvement as a player. He’s a more unique talent in that several of the teams involved with him have discussed the possibility of him growing into a linebacker, but he’s shown better instincts as a defender in pass coverage this offseason. He’s still a ways off from the sort of reactions and timing of a guy like Terrell Williams to separate receivers from the ball, but he brings a big frame to the secondary and can be a space-eater defensively.

Depending on how you look at it, you could take your pick when it comes to Ceaser. He was likely a guy a lot of teams had been trying to maintain some sort of connection with as a ‘back pocket’ type of option aa things never really moved far enough with anyone else. If there is one team that he seemed to show some kind of favor to relative to anyone else, it might have been LSU, but the Tigers never ended up offering him. In the past, he made some noise about other out of state programs factoring into his decision, but it’s clear that staying close to home was important, and Houston had an obvious advantage there.

Although Nunnery could be considered more of a lower-profile player from a recruiting perspective, there were a couple of teams that would have loved to have scooped him up. Tulsa had been one of his earliest suitors, Colorado State has been looking to build a footprint in Texas and Memphis has been working on several prospects specifically at Shadow Creek. Two of those teams are in the AAC, so for Houston to keep a prospect from its own backyard out of two conference opponents’ respective classes is a win as well.

Overall, the Cougars have done a nice job this summer with the names they've added to their class, and in general, picking out talented players in Houston that they haven't had to go head-to-head with bigger programs over. Ridge Point is rebooting a little bit after losing some star players to graduation in 2018, but is still a good well of talent to pull from. Ceaser is a somewhat quiet personality publicly, but is a player that would provide a good face for Houston within his high school program.

The arrow is pointing up with Nunnery as a prospect and he’ll be one of the players watched closely to step forward as a leader on a loaded Shadow Creek defense this fall. He has some physical tools that could make him a punishing defender when all is said-and-done, but how quickly he hits that next gear is up to him.