Sting Factor: Three-star CB CJ Blocker
When a major program loses a key recruit, Rivals.com takes a look at how big of a blow it is to the respective school, analyzing it from a local and national level. To quantify the “sting” of each decommitment, we assign a score from one to 10, with one being no big deal and 10 being a catastrophic hit.
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THE STORYLINE
CJ Blocker has tremendous respect for Utah position coach Sharrieff Shah and defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley and everything the Utes have done over the years, especially on defense.
Those are some of the reasons why the high three-star defensive back from New Caney, Texas, committed to the Utes over the summer.
But after a rash of new offers since the season began, Blocker has decided to back off his pledge to Utah.
Kentucky, Florida State, USC, Missouri, TCU and others have offered in the last month, and Blocker now has more than 20 offers.
The Utes despite their success again this season are down to 14 commits with Blocker, Randon Fontenette and Jo’Laison Landry all decommitting since the beginning of November.
LOCAL REACTION
The loss of CJ Blocker stings from a few different angles for Utah. The Utes have now lost their three most highly-regarded 2023 commits: Caleb Bryant, Randon Fontenette and now Blocker. Each of these three were nice finds by Utah, and then began to blow up in the recruiting process. Utah does a fantastic job with its recruiting evaluations and then player development for the NFL. However, the new world of NIL could be changing the way they’ve always successfully recruited.
As for Blocker, he’s a borderline four-star recruit and Utah will soon be losing Clark Phillips III early to the NFL Draft. He was expected to challenge for playing time right away. Under Sharrieff Shah, Utah will always develop players into elite cornerbacks, but Shah has had a knack recently for getting some of the best cornerbacks in the country to Utah.
The biggest sting on this isn’t fully Blocker, himself. It’s a multitude of things, as Utah is realizing they’re running behind the eight ball in this new NIL era. – Alex Markham, UteNation.com
Sting Factor: 7
NATIONAL REACTION
NIL could certainly be playing a factor here but I also think Blocker and some of the other decommits have just been landing an inordinate amount of offers and now they want to investigate all their options so that’s why Utah is dealing with a wave of decommitments here. Oftentimes, players find that Utah is actually the best option for development for the pros but other schools are going to pick off kids at certain times. Blocker is a very talented player who probably ends up somewhere not in the Pac-12 which is good for the Utes. But losing another talented defensive prospect does have an impact on this recruiting class. – Adam Gorney, Rivals national recruiting director
Sting Factor: 6