West Spotlight: Five prospects who are tough to rate
The Rivals Rankings for the 2021 and 2022 classes will be updated over the next two weeks after an offseason 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 five prospects from the West who were among those most difficult to rate.
RELATED: Five Midwest prospects who are tough to rate | Southeast | East Coast
CLASS OF 2021 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Position | Team | State
CLASS OF 2022: Top 100
MORE: Rivals Transfer Tracker
Clemons is going to have an interesting junior year because he’s transferred to Pleasant Grove, Utah, since that state is playing games in the fall. Then he’s hoping to return to Portland (Ore.) Westview since that state has moved its season to the spring. The 2022 four-star who’s being recruited at receiver said he wants to compete and get more on film although his recruitment is already going well with 22 offers including new ones from Notre Dame and Stanford.
On film, Clemons shows off excellent hands, he wins 50-50 balls and he can stretch a defense for the deep ball. But he’s also playing against Portland, Ore., competition and it would have been nice to get a better gauge of him versus elite, national competition. Even as a four-star, he might be too low in the rankings based off his sophomore season but we should see more of him in the coming months - hopefully.
There are not many better-looking receivers in the 2021 class than Dixon, who is big and strong, physical and surprisingly fast for his size. But last season at Santa Ana (Calif.) Mater Dei he was probably the third option in that offense as receivers Kody Epps (BYU) and Oregon commit Kyron Ware-Hudson were Bryce Young’s more-favored targets. But in camp settings this offseason, Dixon was really impressive, created separation, muscled up faster defensive backs and made a lot of plays.
The question with Dixon is can he be that dominant and that successful in game settings and with California pushing the season to the spring, that might not be possible to figure out.
In his sophomore season, Sawchuk carried the ball 197 times for 1,786 rushing yards and 24 total touchdowns. He also goes to the same high school as Christian McCaffrey (although Sawchuk isn’t crazy about the comparison because he’s trying to do his own thing, which is understandable).
Rivals under-ranked McCaffrey and it still irks us. So if Sawchuk has a similar playing style and all the markings of a really impressive running back, shouldn’t we inherently move him up in the rankings and take our shot? It’s still a tough call since he’s just entering his junior season and Colorado is expected to move its season back as well. This will get figured out over the long haul, but it’s a frustrating one to figure out.
It sounds borderline ridiculous that the No. 4 prospect in the 2021 class is difficult to rank, but here’s why: Tuimoloau does not participate in many national events, so gauging his ability against others - say, Korey Foreman for example - is almost impossible.
Tuimoloau works out a whole ton and is getting a bunch of work in through the coronavirus shutdown, but he doesn’t attend many camps even when they’re happening and he plays 7-on-7 but as a tight end.
And that’s where we land with the Sammamish (Wash.) Eastside Catholic standout. He has tremendous size, outstanding athletic ability (he’s also received offers to play Div. I basketball) and he has all the tools to be really special. But it’s difficult to know if he’s maybe the No. 1 prospect in the class or somewhere further down the line because he hasn’t competed against all the other five-stars at events. It’s not a criticism necessarily, just a fact of the evaluation world.
There are numerous events during the offseason when the top Fresno players show up - whether it’s a camp or plenty of 7-on-7 events - but with the shutdown in place, many of those events were canceled, robbing us of valuable offseason evaluation opportunities. More than anybody in the West region, Worthy was highest on the list of prospects we wanted to see because he had a phenomenal junior season and he looks super fast on tape but we wanted to see him against elite competition to see how he’d handle it.
Alabama was highly interested in him. Many others were as well. Michigan got a really talented receiver who can stretch the field, but seeing him in person would have been really valuable to make sure he was accurately ranked along the way.