Has anyone heard about the recruits from last weekend? I saw that both Bell and DT Williams were really impressed with the visit. Anyone else have any news?
Recruits from last weekend
- Thread starter Hoosiersfan2018
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I think Williams is a good potential.
Bell is 99% headed to Purdue now that Brohm is staying. That’s been known for a bit. I’d be shocked if he doesn’t land there.
Of the 15 or so that were there, I think we can expect some verbals as the week goes along. Almost every recruiting interview is the same...."loved it","it exceeded my expectations", "School X moves up after this visit", "it was better than I thought it would be".....these things are broken records. About 1 in 250 will say it was okay.
But that stated, it was a great group that was in and they seem to bond well. In my opinion we made head way with anyone that was on the fence and I think we sealed the deal with some also. Now we will see how it plays out over the next couple weeks.
I absolutely agree! I think they are starting to see that the "family" atmosphere is coming in. They all are really wanting to change the culture of IU. Really hoping to at least impressed both the Williams enough to sign on the 19th. We all know Bell is a huge toss up. A lot stating leaning toward Purdue but I honestly believe IU is right there too. I've heard rumblings that Penn State is out of the running and that he's at his top 3.
Right, I'm impressed that IU has been able to sneak into his top 2. Even though he's likely not going to pick us, just getting into his top 2 was a real longshot.
Until Dec 19th signatures are in, not wise to do too much speculation. And Bell said he's not announcing until his all-star game, so same thing there.
I believe IU can tell a great story, put on a nice visit and are aided by fun BB games to take them to as well. I believe IU is going to get another good class. Regardless of what people say, with the hindsight of one season only, I think IU got some very good FR who contributed this year and also able to RS a fair amount of them as well. With a lot of players returning next year plus another new FR class where assume the top 10 players will get some playing time, I believe the days of IU being gassed in 4Q due to not enough depth will be going away. I also think Penix is going to open up the offense w/deep ball, which will change things too.
I believe IU can tell a great story, put on a nice visit and are aided by fun BB games to take them to as well. I believe IU is going to get another good class. Regardless of what people say, with the hindsight of one season only, I think IU got some very good FR who contributed this year and also able to RS a fair amount of them as well. With a lot of players returning next year plus another new FR class where assume the top 10 players will get some playing time, I believe the days of IU being gassed in 4Q due to not enough depth will be going away. I also think Penix is going to open up the offense w/deep ball, which will change things too.
Can't deny the recruiting, & this is on track to be our 2nd consecutive best class ever(imo). Debatable about last year's class, but if this one keeps what we have so far, & adds several more solid kids, there can be no debate that this is our best class top to bottom. Evuh! Hell, the only kid ranked less than 3*'s is a freakin' long snapper! That is very strong for an IU football class.
And even the long snapper is a 5 star per Khols the kicking camp that rates specialist. https://kohlskicking.com/national-player-ratings/long-snappers/2019
Until the ink is on the dotted line take nothing for granted, but I believe we will have a nice finish to an already strong class.
Wow. Better yet. I now think he's certainly worth a schollie.
True, but it goes both ways. We could lose some good kids, but we could also flip some good kids, so we'll see, regardless though, this is going to be a strong class for us.
Which is exactly why I said “take nothing for granted”, but at this point, I’m only concerned about 1 commit. Feel good about the rest, but like I said, until the ink is dry ......
Tough to use a scholarship on a long snapper if you ask me. Don’t most schools have walkons fill that role? Is our current long snapper on scholarship? I ask because I really don’t know. I think we need more depth at other positions and if we can get a decent long snapper as a walkon then the scholarship would be better used somewhere else.
Not sure on current long snapper but he's invited to big senior bowl all star game so very possible he could be playing on Sundays.
Given shakiness of IU Special Teams this year, having a steady snapper seems worth a scholly for four years of steadiness.
Given shakiness of IU Special Teams this year, having a steady snapper seems worth a scholly for four years of steadiness.
Godsil is on scholarship and has been for the past few seasons.
Yes, but if he's one of the best in the nation, or a "5*" long snapper as Wracher is, it is worth it, imo, to potentially not have to worry about snapping the ball on ST's for 4 years. I mean he is literally ranked 4th out of hundreds of High School long snappers so...he ain't your daddy's long snapper. Not to mention, ranked that highly he is undoubtedly adequate, at the very least at kick coverage as well.
I love CTA's attitude about Special Teams. Now, most frustratingly, it hasn't translated to the field, for some reason, but i love the philosophy nonetheless. ST's are SO undervalued by many coaches, & I've always felt that place kicker is one of the most important positions in the game, & BY FAR the most underappreciated/undervalued position in the game. People like Bill Parcells insult & make jokes about kickers, saying they're not football players, etc etc, & that's just foolish & ignorant. Call him(or her, or it)whatever the hell you want, I don't care if your kickers a friggin; cabbage patch doll, but you BETTER have someone who can put it through the bleeping uprights when the game is on the line. Period. Hell, even when the game's not on the line, you had better be able to make kicks. Underestimate their value at your own peril. I mean that's just a no brainer if you know anything about football.
KO returns cost us two games. Penn st and Michigan. Kick it out of the end zone I think we we win both
Games. One for sure. The soccer coaches must be aware of someone who can boom it out of the
End zone consistently. A lot easier than finding ten guys who are fast and don’t miss tackles.
Games. One for sure. The soccer coaches must be aware of someone who can boom it out of the
End zone consistently. A lot easier than finding ten guys who are fast and don’t miss tackles.
That's not reality though, you need both good coverage & a strong leg. Wind happens, bad weather happens, there will be times when it's not possible to kick it out of the EZ. & you know how life is, some of those times will be the 4thQ of close, critical games.
I respect your opinion but I just disagree. A long snapper typically does nothing else. He also doesn't need to be a physical specimen so they're a dime a dozen. In my opinion, you can find a really good high school long snapper who won't get a scholarship offer from anybody, pair him with a good special teams coach, and he can do a very good job for you. Good enough that you don't need to use a scholarship. I watched or attended every IU game this year and I don't remember a case where a long snapper's mistake changed a game. I don't know this for sure but I would guess that we played against quite a few non-scholarship long snappers. Maybe I'm wrong.
In an average game you may score 3 TDs and kick a FG. That's 4 snaps. Then you may punt 5-6 times on top of that. There will be games when you have more and games when you have less but on average I'd guess a typically long snapper plays about 10 plays a game. It just doesn't seem worth a scholarship to me assuming you can find a capable body and coach them up.
I wondered about our KOs and KO strategy all year.
Smolar was a kid who walked on at Rutgers, eventually won the job, then lost it and transferred. Red flag. He did have some HS creds, including being all-state and rated the #7 HS kicker by one expert.
It was said to be neck-and-neck, razor-thin all spring with Campbell, who was a 2x ASer out of TENN and rated #5 PK by Rivals, and a scholarship guy.
OK so far, the coaches chose Smolar....lets see how he does.
From the eye test, not very well. It seemed like we were routinely losing the kicking game. The KOs were neither long nor particularly high. Given that the two kickers were said to be neck-and-neck anyway going into the season, shouldn't we give the other kid a try? Guess not.
So how did it work out? The Football Database lists the '100 leading kickoff specialists' for 2018. Guess who is #100? Our guy. Of the 100, 10 were from the BT. Of these 10, Smolar had the shortest average kickoffs, the fewest touch backs, the most returned, for the most yards.
So you do have to wonder.
I'm with Pigalow. You don't notice a LS until he costs you a game.
Wilson would drive me crazy with his NS punters and kickers. Remember the starting punter from Columbus? Yikes. I'd have a sch. LS, a sch. kicker, and a sch. punter. And when the first sch. kicker was going into his sr yr, I'd get a 2nd sch. kicker so you don't have a freshmen having to kick FGs.
That doesn't mean you can't have WO kickers/punters/snappers around. The more the better.
So it sounds like you have some contacts.......any feeling about getting some of Saturday's visitors? All the crickets around don't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
You sound very uninformed on snapping. It's not easy. It's hard. Once you've made your snap you need to be enough of an athlete to block and then possibly make a tackle. The long snapper should be one of your leading tacklers on your punt team as well. Finally, your Kicker is only as good as your holder and snapper. I would always find a scholly for the 3 main ST Specialists: Kicker, Punter & Snapper
Kicking was almost always good under Wilson. Ewald was a Lynch recruit (offered a scholarship out of high school) and was always solid for Wilson's first 3 years. 2014 was a little shaky until Oakes won the job from Del Grosso. Oakes had a bit of down year in 2016, but some of that had to do with him being forced to take a lot of long FG attempts, but he did bounce back in 2017.
Punting... yeah that was a trainwreck.
Also, I believe that the walkon specialists that performed at a high level (Dooley, Godsil, Oakes) all received a scholarship the season after they won the job. So for the most part specialists were still generally taking some of the 85 scholarship spots. So any potential benefit of going the walkon route in terms of depth at other positions is ultimately negligible.
Now, if there isn't a clear HS candidate in a given year that you would like to get a certain specialist, then I think you go for walk-ons. Then its not worth it to take a flyer on a marginal but "best available" talent.
Likewise, I respect yours, but disagree, & you do realize that there are "experts", per say, that also disagree with you? At the ELITE level, & only the elite level would I support awarding a schollie to a long snapper, but elite appears to be what Wracher is. I think you're underestimating the value of & skill required to be a CONSISTENT long snapper, & that's the key. Consistency. You kinda' sorta' made my point for me: you don't remember a case where a long snapper's mistake changed a game. That's the entire objective, we have had an excellent LS in Dan Godsil, & that doesn't just happen with lots of practice. I'm not trying to get all silly about the nuance of long snapping, but it's just a fact that a good one is valuable, valuable enough for a schollie too, imo, & if you look at the list of the top long snappers coming out of H.S., you'll see that some top college programs also agree, as they have offered schollie's to several of the top kids. Anyway, nothing wrong with disagreeing, but there's plenty wrong with snapping the ball over the punter's head!
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I agree with you concerning special team specialist. Special teams is roughly 20% of the game.
Devoting 3 scholarships out of 80 plus seems like a small price to pay for a high level of play. Bill Mallory understood that just like CTA. If you are a middle of the pack team trying to get over the top this is an area of the game you need to excel in. Wilson never understood that and lost a number of close games because of that philosophy. Maybe the years at an elite program like Oklahoma developed that. Good specialist will come and play as a walk on because of the program. We need to offer something more.
Well, there are a lot of guys that get ships that never see 10 snaps a game. And certainly those 10 snaps that are played the LS has a major role in. If he makes a bad snap the consequences can be very big. Just ask Michigan about their game against MSU a couple of years ago.
Maybe I'm missing something, but didn't CKW have Mitch Ewald and Griffen Oakes, both first team All-B1G kickers? I can't remember our punter off the top of my head, though, because we didn't really seem to need to punt very often.
You are correct FG team was decent, I'm thinking more of the punt team. It was a liability during the CKW years.
We punted plenty. In fact Eric Toth, who was the punter for much of Wilson's tenure, finished third on IU's all-time list with 240 punts.
This board only lets me post once or twice per day for some reason so I better make this count, huh? I did a little homework on this topic. My research bears out a couple of things:
- The most highly rated (top 10) long snappers typically do get scholarship offers.
- Many schools have walk-on long snappers and award them scholarships in their last season or two.
- Ohio State: LS is on scholarship. Per the article: He was only the second LS in OSU history to earn a scholarship out of high school.
- Michigan: Awards scholarship to walk-on LS after transferring players free up space.
- Penn State: Awards scholarship to walk-on LS in final season.
- Michigan State: Awards scholarship to walk-on LS in third season.
- Wisconsin: Has a scholarship LS.
- Iowa: Has a walk-on LS.
- Nebraska: Has a scholarship LS.
- Purdue: Has walk-on long snappers but awards scholarship to the one who wins the starting job.
No, that's correct. Just the top kids usually get schollies out of H.S., & I have no problem with us having one of them.
When was the last time you remember a bad snap on an IU field goal attempt or a punt? I cannot remember one. IU is the cradle of kick and punt snappers.
The Rutgers game when we blew a 28 point lead. A bad snap on a punt led to a quick RU score during the comeback. Probably the pivotal play of the game.
I would also suggest that at least a few of our blocked FGs and punts the last few years were the result of bad snaps. I don't recall specifics, and certainly some were caused by other factors, but I would bet that we can trace a few to the snap.
I don't know if those were the fault of scholarship snappers or walk-on's but I'm squarely in the camp of giving scholarships to specialists. Of course, had there been a schollie to give to a PK under Wilson, it would have gone to DelGrosso who was a priority over Oakes. We all know how that turned out. However, Wilson was not a fan of scholarships for kickers and punters at first. Oakes got one when his father made it clear that Grif would leave IU and go elsewhere when one opened up if he was passed over. Wilson wisely reconsidered.
I thought our punting was pretty bad last year and we had a scholarship punter and snapper. Field goal kicking was very, very good and the kicker was a walk-on. Another walk-on kicked off and it was a mess. All of this happened while the scholarship kicker sat and watched.
Not sure we can look at any of this and say whether it's good or bad to have specialists on scholarship.
It will be interesting to see if Justis gets one and we have 4 specialists on Scholarship.
Not sure we can look at any of this and say whether it's good or bad to have specialists on scholarship.
It will be interesting to see if Justis gets one and we have 4 specialists on Scholarship.
Freshman Dan Godsil snapped that ball high against Rutgers. Pointing out one snap from 4 seasons ago tells me that he had a pretty good run after that.
IU has had very good snapping. Matt Dooley really good and was a Freshman on Wilson's first team in 2011. Godsil took over and had a nice career.
I wouldn't use either of those 2 guys to justify recruiting a scholarship long snapper.
