Twitter Tuesday: Trejan Bridges, overseas recruiting, Tennessee
MORE: Breaking down Alabama's offseason QB battle
Twitter Tuesday is back again this week, as Southeast recruiting analyst Woody Wommack is answering your questions.
Trejan Bridges has had a pretty good summer, including leading his team (drafted by yours truly) to the 7-on-7 championship at the Rivals100 Five-Star Challenge presented by adidas. He has been a fixture in the Rivals100 since last August and even saw a bump up the charts when we last updated the rankings in June. There’s no question he’s due for another move up, especially after his MVP performance in Atlanta. Will he rise all the way to five-star status? That’s tough to say, but I’m sure he will be in the discussion when we weigh the options at wide receiver.
This has been a popular topic over the past week or so and we had an in-depth discussion on the topic on the last episode of the Commitment Issues podcast. Obviously, Josh is asking this question tongue-in-cheek, because not only was I in the eighth grade when Reed was in high school (fresh off an undefeated season with Lincoln Middle School Tigers), but also, Rivals.com didn’t exist. In fact, it’s debatable whether or not the star system was even in place.
Since Reed’s declaration, which Rob Cassidy and I heard in person at an event in June, we have been researching to see what type of recruiting rankings existed at that time, but so far our findings have been inconclusive. But a quick search shows that Reed had offers from LSU, Tennessee and Miami and considering the Hurricanes went out-of-state to land his commitment at a time when they were signing some of best players in the country, obviously they thought he was a talented player.
In today’s ranking environment, a multi-sport star like Reed with multiple Power Five offers would easily be a three-star or higher.
Great question, Coach. Over the past few years we have found ourselves facing the situation of trying to evaluate and rank overseas prospects that have little or no film and limited experience playing American football. This camp season a group of European players, headlined by Finland-based offensive lineman Martin Veinberg, turned heads around the country and collected offers along the way.
Every case we face is different but we have to do the diligence needed to evaluate talent. College coaches continue to leave no stone unturned when it comes to international talent as well, as each is hoping to find the next diamond in the rough.
While the size and athletic ability of raw, overseas talent can be tantalizing, if I’m a major college program I would prefer to recruit more established players with a proven track record combined with nice future potential, even if their ceiling might not be as high as an inexperienced international player.
We get a question like this every week and I always have to lead with the precursor that there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to team rankings and it’s hard to truly forecast how things are going to shake out. But Tennessee just added another four-star commitment on Monday via IMG Academy prospect Chris Akporoghene, which helped the Vols move up to No. 19 in Rivals.com Team Rankings.
The Vols still have several major targets in their sites, most notably five-stars Darnell Wright and Quavarius Crouch. While it’s going to be tough to crack the top 10, assuming the Vols keep recruiting on the same clip and fill out their class with a good ratio of four-stars and add one of the two big fish, they should be able to finish inside the top 15.
This is a question that comes up a lot because we aren’t credentialed to cover The Opening and neither were our team sites this year. But just because we aren’t at an event in person doesn’t mean that we that we don’t watch as much of the footage from the event as possible.
Several of our analysts watched the live stream as well as the available one-on-one footage. We take as much of it into account as we can and we also spend the summer going to several other events, including college camps, 7-on-7, team workouts and more.
Obviously, there is a lot of focus on the big camps in the summer, but it’s just a part of the total rankings picture that evolves over a period of time.