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Texas Roster 2021 -- Turn This Shit Around

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 48980

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TCU game depth chart

                         
                         
QB Casey Thompson 11 Hudson Card 1 Charles Wright 14
RB Bijan Robinson 5 Roschon Johnson 2 Keilan Robinson 7 Jonathon Brooks 24
WR Joshua Moore 6 Marcus Washington 15 Casey Cain 88
WR Jordan Whittington 4 Al'Vonte Woodard 9 Kai Money 83
WR Xavier Worthy 8 Kelvontay Dixon 16
TE Cade Brewer 80 Jared Wiley --or-- 18 Gunnar Helm 85
LT Christian Jones 70 Andrej Karic 69 Jaylen Garth 77
LG Denzel Okafor 78 Tyler Johnson 72
C Jake Majors 65 Logan Parr 71 Rafiti Ghirmai 74
RG Junior Angilau 75 Tope Imade 67 Max Merril 79
RT Derek Kerstetter 68 Hayden Conner 76 Isaiah Hookfin 73
Defense
BUCK END Ray Thornton 46 Ovie Oghoufo 18 DJ Harris Jr. 40
NT Keondre Coburn 99 T'Vondre Sweat 93 Byron Murphy II 90 Myron Warren 92
DT Moro Ojomo 98 Vernon Broughton 45 Sawyer Goram-Welch 91
JACK END Jacoby Jones 36 Alfred Collins 95 Jett Bush 43
SLB Ovie Oghoufo 18 Ben Davis 6 Terrence Cooks II 35
MIKE Luke Brockermeyer 47 Jaylan Ford 41 Devin Richardson 30 Jaden Hullaby 29
WILL DeMarvion Overshown 0 David Gbenda 33 Ayodele Adeoye 40 Marcus Tillman Jr. 13
CB D'Shawn Jamison 5 Jamier Johnson 31
SS BJ Foster 25 Chris Adimora 1 Tyler Owens 44
FS Jerrin Thompson --or-- 28 Brenden Schooler 14 JD Coffey II 27
CB Josh Thompson 9 Darion Dunn --or-- 4 Kitan Crawford 21
STAR Anthony Cook 11 Jerrin Thompson 28 Chris Adimora 1
Special Teams
PK Cameron Dicker 17 Bert Auburn 45
P Cameron Dicker 17 Isaach Pearson 49 Ryan Bucjevski 8
H Hudson Card 1 Isaac Pearson 49
DS Justin Mader 54 Zach Edwards 43
KR D'Shawn Jamison 5 Roschon Johnson 2 Xavier Worthy 8 Keilan Robinson 7
PR D'Shawn Jamison 5 Xavier Worthy 8 Joshua Moore 6 Brenden Schooler 14

 

  • The most only notable change since last week is sophomore Jerrin Thompson becoming the first listed co-starter at safety over super senior Brenden Schooler. Thompson has received more playing time in the last several weeks, but after Schooler’s collision with senior cornerback D’Shawn Jamison that helped produce one of the long touchdowns last week, Thompson has officially moved in front of the former wide receiver.
  • Super senior Darion Dunn is listed as the backup to senior Josh Thompson, but when he came in the game against Texas Tech, it was to replace Jamison, who gave up the two long passing plays. Dunn tackled well and hasn’t had any notable coverage busts, so it could be an important week of practice for Jamison in holding off the McNeese State transfer.

 

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LTtxfan

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Temporary patch...

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The NCAA is a mere 24 hours from providing a short-term remedy, for at least one year, to programs who lose student-athletes through the organization's Transfer Portal.

With the NCAA's Division I Council on Tuesday approving a year-year waiver of signing and initial counter limits, schools now may replace as many as seven scholarship signees to fill voids left by student-athletes departing programs in the first semester.

In layman's terms: a football program with its full complement of scholarships to sign a 25-man signing class could extend those numbers to 32, if it is working to replace seven (or more) transfer departures.

“We believe schools should have temporary flexibility to help address possible roster depletion due to transfers,” NCAA D-1 Football Oversight Committee chairperson Sandy Barbour. “This one-year waiver enables schools to properly utilize their scholarship limitations.”

Though the move is approved, it does not formally become an adopted measure by the NCAA until the conclusion of Wednesday's D-1 Council meeting.

https://footballscoop.com/news/ncaa-moves-to-expand-football-scholarship-limits

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LTtxfan

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One possibly leaving...  Thx for info goes to @BurntOrange&White

Junior defensive back Tyler Owens intends to enter the NCAA transfer portal, Inside Texas has learned.  Owens, a third-year defensive back from Plano East High School, made 13 total tackles and started one game in his Texas career. Owens played in five games this season, notching single tackles versus Rice and Texas Tech. Owens made 27 career appearances as a Longhorn.

He possessed elite speed for his size coming out of high school, with a personal record of 10.29 in the 100-meter dash. He was second in the 2019 UIL 6A state finals for the 100 meters, finishing behind the 10.13 recorded by Strake Jesuit's Matthew Boling.

Owens had double-digit offers in high school, including scholarships from Baylor, Brown, Houston, Kansas State, UCLA, and Vanderbilt.

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LTtxfan

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SARK has a ton of work ahead improving this shitty roster -- sure hope he's the right guy to do it.  

Kinda crazy watching Bailor play so well today -- pretty amazing turnaround by Aranda after last season.  Matt Rhule sure did a helluva job of player evaluation in recruiting.

The personnel on the field for Bailor today sure seems a lot more talented than a lot of the guys currently playing for TEXAS.

 

Can't believe okie lite had a bye before game vs TEXAS.  Both Bailor and the HORNS have Bye Weeks next week.

 

 

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nycHorn

nycHorn 2967

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SARK has a ton of work ahead improving this shitty roster -- sure hope he's the right guy to do it.  
Kinda crazy watching Bailor play so well today -- pretty amazing turnaround by Aranda after last season.  Matt Rhule sure did a helluva job of player evaluation in recruiting.
The personnel on the field for Bailor today sure seems a lot more talented than a lot of the guys currently playing for TEXAS.
 
Can't believe okie lite had a bye before game vs TEXAS.  Both Bailor and the HORNS have Bye Weeks next week.
 
 

Nm.
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LTtxfan

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6 minutes ago, nycHorn said:

Ok, I’ll bite. Why do you spell Bailor that way?

New to Surly ??    Hope this helps...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baylor_University_sexual_assault_scandal

Brief excerpt:  "The Bailor University sexual assault scandal was the result of numerous allegations of and convictions for sexual and non-sexual assaults committed by Bailor University students, mostly players in the Bailor Bears football team. During a period from about 2012 to 2016, school officials suppressed reports of rapes and sexual misconduct.[1] In 2016, Bailor's football team came under fire when it was revealed university officials had failed to take action regarding the alleged rapes and assaults. The scandal led to the ousting of head football coach Art Briles, the demotion and eventual resignation of Bailor president Ken Starr, the resignation of athletic director Ian McCaw, and the firing of two others connected with the football program.[2] It also led to the resignation of Bailor's Title IX Coordinator, Patty Crawford. Plaintiff's attorney Jim Dunnam accused Bailor of implementing a ″concerted strategy to get the public to believe this is entirely and only a football-related problem"[3]  

 

 

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Ignatius

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43 minutes ago, LTtxfan said:

SARK has a ton of work ahead improving this shitty roster -- sure hope he's the right guy to do it.  

Kinda crazy watching Bailor play so well today -- pretty amazing turnaround by Aranda after last season.  Matt Rhule sure did a helluva job of player evaluation in recruiting.

The personnel on the field for Bailor today sure seems a lot more talented than a lot of the guys currently playing for TEXAS.

 

Can't believe okie lite had a bye before game vs TEXAS.  Both Bailor and the HORNS have Bye Weeks next week.

 

 

Dude…stop capitalizing Texas. So HornFans…

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Ignatius

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1 minute ago, hookem48 said:

If you told me before the season we'd be 4-3 right now I would have said yea sounds about right but losing the way we have sure stings.

That’s what I’m trying to reconcile in the whiskey hours after the game. If in both cases we’d gotten way behind early, made a furious comeback only to fall just short (ie flip the halves of the last two games), would I be more optimistic? Should I?

Coming into this season, I would have pegged 8-4 as the O/U for how well the season went. I still feel that way….

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Tylerocks

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I think including Merrill, as a true freshman, is a bit premature.

Sure, he's on the lighter side and may never be anything other than depth and GPA booster...but he could turn into a Dallas Griffin?

Not that I have faith in the staff developing talent...I'm just rooting for him as an SJ alum

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Atticus

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11 minutes ago, Tylerocks said:

I think including Merrill, as a true freshman, is a bit premature.

Sure, he's on the lighter side and may never be anything other than depth and GPA booster...but he could turn into a Dallas Griffin?

Not that I have faith in the staff developing talent...I'm just rooting for him as an SJ alum

You can root for him at HBU too

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Hermanator

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On 10/5/2021 at 4:47 PM, LTtxfan said:

 

 

How does the Penn State AD become chair of an oversight committee? What kind of shit show are they running here?

Next they put Baylor AD in charge of a committee looking into sexual assault allegations against student athletes?

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LTtxfan

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On 10/17/2021 at 9:18 AM, LTtxfan said:

Probably gonna be a lot of Roster restructuring for 2022.  

Here's a decent cut list from @BurntOrange&White

AE17019D-949F-4C8D-A2DE-68AC5C959488.jpeg

 

Thanks for this @Big Woodrows

Some comments from Nahlin here about the portal

While things are going mostly well, we are in the era of the Portal. You may have even felt the Portal begin to rumble to life in recent days.  To reiterate what we’ve said in the past, Texas should always win the trade war between imPorts and exPorts and IT believes that will be especially true in the coming 8 months. However, Texas will also lose a few good players, mostly due to culture change. A couple players, while talented, just don’t bring it often enough and a slight fracture is showing between player and coach at a couple of positions.

Names aren’t important now and things can always change. Two strong examples of that were wide receiver Devin Duvernay and defensive tackle Chris Nelson. Maybe a couple wins would help things.  One transfer IT has reached out to is Syracuse wide receiver Taj Harris. He says he hasn’t heard from UT but would like to. They must feel pretty good about wide receiver next year.

Here’s your takeaway for now: The coaches are going to be very active in the Portal and Texas will have a stronger program for it. 

 

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LTtxfan

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How many current players can Texas count on to help the team improve in 2022 ???

  1. Bijan
  2. Worthy
  3. Roschon
  4. Alfred Collins
  5. Jahdae Barron
  6. Byron Murphy II
  7. Hayden Conner
  8. Kitan Crawford
  9. Ojomo ???
  10. Sweat ???
  11. Karic  ???
  12. Majors  ???

 

No LB's, Safeties, DE's, TE's QB's

 

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LTtxfan

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Thx @HtownHorn  Interesting post from Portal Kombat so adding to this thread:  

Guys that should probably stay

QB - Wright, Lourd (WO) = 1

RB - Robinson, Johnson (might leave to the NFL), Robinson, Brooks = 4

WR - Worthy, Whittington, Washington, Moore, Alexis = 5

TE - Helm, Sanders, Davis = 3

OL - Angilau, Jones, Johnson, Garth, Hookfin, Karic, Majors, Conner (this is fucking sad) = 8

DL - Ojomo, Sweat, Collins, Murphy, Broughton, Sorrell, Harris, Abiara, Thomas = 9

LB - Oghoufo, Gbenda, Ford, Richardson, Blackwell = 5

CB - Crawford, Barron, Ibraheem, Johnson = 4

S - Adimora, Coffey = 2

ST - Pearson = 1

That's 42 scholarships. Fuck we are in deep shit.

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Snake Diggity

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There can basically be zero assumptions about next season at this point.  It would not be a surprise at all for any given current player to portal out or any recruit to decommit.  But if we assume Sark would be able to keep the players he wants, we will basically return an excellent RB unit, a shallow but talented WR corps, and a deep/experienced DL that hasn’t played well. We will have ZERO QB, OL, LB, or DB worth a shit.  To field a roster that could compete in the Big 12 we would need to portal in like 5 OL, a QB, 3 LB, and 3 DB in addition to keeping all the recruits we have committed.  Fat chance.  We fucked.

 

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LTtxfan

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20 hours ago, LTtxfan said:

 

 

Below is an interesting 2022 Roster starting point from previous post of @HtownHorn  (* I removed and adjusted for J.Moore departure.*)

-----------------------------------------------

Guys that should probably stay:

QB - Wright, Lourd (WO) = 1

RB - Robinson, Johnson (might leave to the NFL), Robinson, Brooks = 4

WR - Worthy, Whittington, Washington, Alexis = *4

TE - Helm, Sanders, Davis = 3

OL - Angilau, Jones, Johnson, Garth, Hookfin, Karic, Majors, Conner (this is fucking sad) = 8

DL - Ojomo, Sweat, Collins, Murphy, Broughton, Sorrell, Harris, Abiara, Thomas = 9

LB - Oghoufo, Gbenda, Ford, Richardson, Blackwell = 5

CB - Crawford, Barron, Ibraheem, Johnson = 4

S - Adimora, Coffey = 2

ST - Pearson = 1

41* scholarships.  Fuck we are in deep shit.

----------------------------------------------

Additional Thoughts:  Any way Dicker can return??  I guess Htown is betting on a Wiley departure.  I hope Tyler Johnson graduates or medically retires so he can move on with his music career.  Also Coburn may return for 2022.  

Still feels like a few more of those OL and DL guys in Htown's list will be gone from 2022 Roster... 

 

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Slacks

Slacks 6791

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1 hour ago, LTtxfan said:

OL - Angilau, Jones, Johnson, Garth, Hookfin, Karic, Majors, Conner (this is fucking sad) = 8

I've been trying to tell y'all...  You could bring inTom Landry, Bill Belicheck, Don Shula, Nick Saban, Woody Hayes, Bear Bryant, Tom Osborne, DKR, Switzer, Ricky, Earl and Vince F'n Young...

And we would be wondering why we can't run the ball and why the QB isn't playing WR...

I don't care what fucking scheme we have...  we will have 8 scholarship OL and two or three of them may NEVER play a down, meaning we really have 5.  

Football starts with the dudes who put their hands in the dirt.

 

Next year could be *WORSE* in terms of on the field output...

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closetohumping

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20 hours ago, LTtxfan said:

 

Below is an interesting 2022 Roster starting point from previous post of @HtownHorn  (* I removed and adjusted for J.Moore departure.*)

-----------------------------------------------

Guys that should probably stay:

QB - Wright, Lourd (WO) = 1

RB - Robinson, Johnson (might leave to the NFL), Robinson, Brooks = 4

WR - Worthy, Whittington, Washington, Alexis = *4

TE - Helm, Sanders, Davis = 3

OL - Angilau, Jones, Johnson, Garth, Hookfin, Karic, Majors, Conner (this is fucking sad) = 8

DL - Ojomo, Sweat, Collins, Murphy, Broughton, Sorrell, Harris, Abiara, Thomas = 9

LB - Oghoufo, Gbenda, Ford, Richardson, Blackwell = 5

CB - Crawford, Barron, Ibraheem, Johnson = 4

S - Adimora, Coffey = 2

ST - Pearson = 1

41* scholarships.  Fuck we are in deep shit.

----------------------------------------------

Additional Thoughts:  Any way Dicker can return??  I guess Htown is betting on a Wiley departure.  I hope Tyler Johnson graduates or medically retires so he can move on with his music career.  Also Coburn may return for 2022.  

Still feels like a few more of those OL and DL guys in Htown's list will be gone from 2022 Roster... 

 

I’d imagine Casey thompson is returning

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LTtxfan

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REALLY A GREAT ARTICLE:  

Regarding "Rhule recruiting and roster building... he values speed"

"Rhule stocked his roster with raw, high-upside athletes. They required development but many of the players shared traits the NFL desired: Speed, length, size, explosiveness."

"Behold the analytics revolution: If you’re gonna miss, miss fast"

ByCHRIS HUMMER Jun 25, 2019

Quote

From 2006 to 2012, Temple played Penn State every season. Each result proved the same: A Nittany Lions victory. Matt Rhule, then a Temple assistant, endured six of those losses. He spent the 2012 season in the NFL with the New York Giants before Temple called him back in 2013 to be its head coach.

Dating back to his time as the Owls’ recruiting coordinator, Rhule asked himself a question that would determine Temple’s ceiling: “How are we ever going to beat (Penn State) if they automatically get the first pick over us?” Rhule meant in recruiting where, even mired in scandal, the Nittany Lions recruited at a level well above Temple’s capability. Penn State’s 2014 class ranked 24th nationally. The Owls signed the nation’s No. 69 overall class in Rhule’s first full cycle as a head coach.

Rhule needed a way to scale the gap. Rhule’s long-time defensive coordinator, Phil Snow, taught Rhule in the early 2000s at UCLA the importance of track times in recruiting. He wanted a verification of a player’s speed.

Over a decade later, Rhule took that philosophy a step further. Knowing could never land the type of polished standout Penn State did annually, Rhule stocked his roster with raw, high-upside athletes. They required development but many of the players shared traits the NFL desired: Speed, length, size, explosiveness.

Rhule went 2-10 in his first season. The next year Temple went 6-6 and suffered a 17-point loss to Penn State. One year later, in 2015, the Owls won a program-record 10 games. The first may have been the biggest. Temple opened with a 17-point win over the Nittany Lions, the program’s first victory over its cross-state rival since 1941.

Eleven Temple players have been drafted since 2016, the large majority of which were recruited by Rhule. For context, the Texas Longhorns had just eight players drafted during that period.

“If they take a top 50 recruit, I need to take someone who isn’t as highly recruited,” Rhule, now the head coach at Baylor, told 247Sports. “So, I better take somebody with these skills and develop them. When player after player left Temple for the NFL, they could all run. They were all big. It made sense taking that approach to survive at Temple.

“Then we came to Baylor, where you can get top recruits. But we said, ‘Hey, let’s keep the same approach. It’s working well for us.’ It’s starting to pay dividends here as well.”

There’s a reasonably common question in recruiting that largely defines a program’s overall philosophy: Is it better to take a great high school player with a lower ceiling or a high-ceiling athlete who lacks polish?

Most programs fall somewhere in the middle of this scale. Some, like an Alabama, can easily get obtain ready-to-play freaks. Others, like Baylor, are at the extreme end and target athleticism above all. It’s what helped transform Temple, and it’s a big reason the Bears are projected to take another big jump in Year 3 of the Rhule era.

It’s a numbers-based philosophy that’s slowly seeping into the pores of college football at large.

“I feel like we might value numbers just as much as tape, and maybe even more in some cases,” Baylor recruiting coordinator and cornerbacks coach Evan Cooper told 247Sports. “We’re a big, big believer in development. Sometimes you get kids who are maxed out whose ceiling might not be as high. We take the approach of what they’ll look like in five years. If he has the requisite size, speed and strength we feel like we can turn them into good football players.

“In recruiting you miss. You’re going to miss. So, we figure: If you’re going to miss, miss fast.”

***

The NFL has long targeted athletic exceptions within certain positional parameters. Hall of Fame NFL executive Gil Brandt Tweeted out a scouting chart prior to the NFL combine that showed his targets for per-position drill work.

Most colleges subscribe to a similar method. But some are more rigorous in their doctrine than others. Nick Saban’s tenure at Alabama has seen the Tide land eight No. 1 overall classes in nine years. Part of that success is attributable to the surgical way he goes about attacking his board. Saban doesn’t just recruit great players or athletes. He targets players who fit his system’s requisite attributes.

For example, Saban looks for length on the outside at corner along with the ability to run. None of the 29 corners the Tide have signed since 2008 have checked in at below 5-foot-11, and all but three of them were 6-foot or taller. Linebacker is similarly specific. Saban’s never signed a linebacker under 6-foot and all but two players (Shaun Dion Hamilton, Shane Lee) measured taller than 6-foot-1.

“Alabama was kind of ahead of the curve on it,” 247Sports National Analyst Charles Power said. “But they’re probably not as dogmatic about it as most schools because every recruit is good. It’s kind of what came first, the chicken or the egg?”

If results are any indication, the athletes came first in most scenarios.

How, exactly, does one judge how athletic a player is? That’s where college football’s analytics push comes in. Baylor scours the internet for track times and Nike testing results to get a statistical indication of a prospect’s pure athleticism.

There’s a mini-industry also popping up around that process as well.

The NCAA-compliant scouting service Tracking Football uses a mathematical formula and track results to develop a “Player Athletic Index” (PAI). The model, which works on a scale of 0 to 5 with 2 labeled as average and 4 or above rated as excellent, utilizes a player’s track numbers and physical profile (height, weight) to create a score. That score is largely based on how historically athletic a players’ results are compared to over 67,000 profiles Tracking Football has in its backlog.

The PAI system only works if a prospect has an official track time. But given 57 percent of FBS recruits since 2014 participated in track and field, Tracking Football covers a large swath of the potential landscape. The company has quickly added clients. Tracking Football partnered with its first FBS institution in March of 2016. Today, Tracking Football counts 30 FBS teams among its subscribers.

One Power Five Director of Player Personnel told 247Sports they consider Tracking Football’s PAI score a “very valuable” tool when sorting among potential prospects.

And while Tracking Football vice president Brian Spilbeler said their testing results don’t translate as a “binary, one-to-one deal,” generally the teams that recruit the best athletes have better teams. Per Tracking Football data, Alabama’s average PAI score over the last six recruiting classes is 3.6. Clemson (3.2) and Georgia (3.6), rank similarly high.

Those are schools that you expect to have great athletes. Chicken or the egg, you know? But programs who target athletes above all also stand out among those who recruit with slightly different parameters. Purdue, a Tracking Football client, has shifted its recruiting under Jeff Brohm, checking in with a 3.7 PAI score last year. Baylor, for its part, had a 3.6 score, matching TCU for the Big 12 high last cycle. Chip Kelly, a proponent of bigger frame athletes who can run, had a class with a 3.5 PAI score. Meanwhile, the SEC saw athletes across the board: LSU (3.8), Texas A&M (3.7), Kentucky (3.7), Mississippi State (3.6), Missouri (3.5), Florida (3.5). Other programs like Ohio State (4), Penn State (3.4) Texas (3.4) are also at the forefront of analytics-based recruiting.

Tracking Football doesn’t hit on every prospect in a class, but it does help schools narrow their recruiting outlook. Just as importantly, it prevents players from under-recruited areas from easily slipping through the cracks.

***

Penn State Director of Player Personnel Andy Frank looks at recruiting like the stock market. Some players are a safe long-term bet. Others are high-risk, high-reward options. It’s Frank’s job to properly allocate the Nittany Lions’ resources. Given that Frank holds an engineering degree from Princeton and a Master’s in Education from Vanderbilt, he goes about this process analytically. It’s a philosophy in lock step with head coach James Franklin, who was a panelist at the Sloan Analytics conference in 2015 and employs a full-time analytics coordinator on his staff.

Ultimately, testing results help streamline Penn State’s recruiting field of vision.

Says Frank: “One thing I think about with testing numbers is: ‘Is a kid athletic enough to be on our practice field?’ If you’re not, you can’t recruit the kid.”

There are a few different ways to gather testing results in the modern era. You could subscribe to a service like Tracking Football, which provides historical context along with easy access to track times. You could scour the internet for every available data point. Or you could get players on campus for camp and gain verified testing numbers.

The Nittany Lions and Bears lean on the latter two methods.

Cooper estimates 70 percent of Baylor’s signees camp in Waco at one point in their recruitment. Frank remembers Christian Campbell, a sixth-round pick from Penn State in 2018, as a camp testing star. The 6-foot-1, 180-pound corner camped at Vanderbilt with only a smattering of offers in the spring of 2013. Campbell tested off the charts that day, measuring with 33-inch arms and a nearly 40-inch vertical. Frank said Campbell rated in the 95th percentile or better in every drill. Vanderbilt recruited Campbell hard following the event, and Franklin liked him enough to bring Campbell with him to Penn State.

Not every prospect needs to camp at Baylor to earn an offer. The Bears offered 2019 running back Qualan Jones (5-foot-11, 219 pounds) in April of 2018 off his 130.35 SPARQ score – the best in the country at his position. Baylor did the same thing with 2018 cornerback signee Mark Milton (6-foot-1, 175 pounds) when the staff saw Milton’s 21.35-second 200-meter time.

Baylor targets big-framed athletes who can run with quick-twitch explosion. Rhule took future NFL defensive end Jullian Taylor as a 6-foot-5, 220-pound athlete in high school based almost completely off his projectable frame. The Bears got in early on four-star athlete Kalon Barnes in high school, and it helped the Bears land a prospect who ran a then record 10.22 100-yard dash in the Texas state meet. Cooper and Rhule saw Barnes as a future standout corner, and they expect him to be “unreal” moving forwaRhule often argues with his receiver coach about positional preference. Some coaches prefer change of direction and fluidity at receiver; Rhule is straight speed. rd.

“We’ll take guys based off their numbers because we think they can do something if they’re tall enough,” Rhule said.

Elite testing numbers with a larger frame gives a program wiggle room. Nate Hairston (6-foot, 196 pounds) and Derrek Thomas (6-foot-3, 189 pounds) came to Temple as receivers only for the Owls to transition them to corner. Hairston, who runs a 4.52 40, went on to be drafted in the fifth round. Thomas, who runs a 4.4 40 along with a 40-inch vertical, signed with the Seahawks this offseason despite an injury-filled career at Temple and Baylor.

Rhule often argues with his receiver coach about positional preference. Some coaches prefer change of direction and fluidity at receiver; Rhule is straight speed. “We never sit there on defense and go: “’Oh no, how are we going to cover this guy? He’s got such good change of direction.’ We say, ‘This guy scares us because he might run past us.’”

Penn State, which evaluates in a similar fashion, places a high priority on leaping numbers. The broad jump helps the Nittany Lions’ staff parse explosiveness at positions that don’t deal much with straight-line speed. Think linemen or linebackers. “Those numbers tell you how twitched up a kid is,” Frank said.

Offensive and defensive line recruiting is an area Baylor and Penn State operate outside the perceived norm. Cooper said the Bears have done extensive research and found that many linemen – outside the elite recruits – who were drafted tend to be undersized athletes from small schools that grow into tackles and guards.

In that regard, Penn State’s average high school offensive tackle signee checked in at just 6-foot-6, 281 pounds. Only two of the 13 the Nittany Lions signed weigh more than 300 pounds. Baylor, in Rhule’s three-year tenure, has signed eight high school tackles at an average of 6-foot-5, 281 pounds.

No player better represents this than four-star tackle Connor Galvin. The Bears were one of the first Power Five schools to offer Galvin, who, at 260 pounds, drew questions about his positional strength from some recruiters. Baylor saw an ultra-athletic tackle with plenty of room to add bulk to his frame. A year-and-a-half later, Galvin is up to 295 pounds and is entrenched as the Bears’ starting left tackle.

Elite testing numbers, regardless of position, are a beacon for Baylor. Outside of linebacker, running back and quarterback, positions Rhule said require in-person evaluation, the Bears are willing to pursue prospects off testing numbers alone – or at least testing numbers and OK tape – at every other spot.

“I don’t ever sit there and say, ‘We only have room for two of these or none of these,” Rhule said. “To me it’s about getting the best football players. If you can find guys in the 6-foot-2 to 6-foot-4 range who can run, they can play defensive end, tight end, maybe grow into a 3-tech or a tackle. For a program that prides itself on trying to be good in the trenches, to find those type of athletes is very important.”

***

Rhule built Temple with an eye toward Penn State.

Yet during that same period, Penn State was forced to get creative with its tactics. Franklin won quickly at Vanderbilt, earning two of the four nine-win seasons in program history. But he inherited a scandal-ravaged program in 2014 when he took over for Bill O'Brien in Happy Valley. The circumstances around the situation differ, but Rhule inherited a similar situation when Baylor tabbed him to take the Bears out of the maligned Art Briles era.

Both Baylor and Penn State have signed five-star prospects this decade, yet neither program was in a position post-scandal to recruit at a level they’d previously achieved. Thus, the same long-term approach Rhule took at Temple made sense at Baylor. Franklin built Penn State in the same way. Given a long runway from a contract perspective (6 years), he set out to rebuild the Nittany Lions over time.

Penn State won a combined 14 games in Franklin’s first two seasons; the next two the Nittany Lions combined for 22.

“Our goal wasn’t to be a one-hit wonder,” Frank said. “Now that we’re toward the upper end of the recruiting hierarchy, I still think we have a staff that’s been at a variety of different cases that in most cases weren’t recruiting at top 10 levels. We’re going to get some kids that are readymade. But we still have it in our hearts we ultimately want to take a guy with a higher ceiling. We’re only going to take the readymade kid if he’s a really good athlete.

“We’ll take the elite athlete that might take a few years to develop because we feel to be an elite program you have to have elite athletes across the board. If you don’t, you’re not going to be at the highest level.”

This is ultimately a trust-based recruiting approach.

The NFL has attempted to interview Rhule each of the last two seasons for head coaching jobs. That’s in large part because he’s managed to consistently develop NFL athletes. The Bears have a system – everything from practice structure to strength and conditioning – they believe in, which allows them to take chances other programs might not.

“I kind of feel bad for some of those other schools with the pressure they have to take some of the kids they have to take sometimes because of their ranking, etcetera,” Cooper said. “This is just kind of who we are. This is a Matt Rhule deal.”

***

Walk into Cooper’s office and he’ll quickly explain, well, this isn’t really his office. Sure, there are pictures of his family on his desk. But he’s in a end-of-hallway space without much of an identifying marker. To underscore this point, another Baylor assistant walks in during the interview and says: “I thought this was (Mike) Wallace’s office.”

Outside of the pictures there is one dead giveaway Cooper belongs in this space. On a whiteboard to the right of his desk sits a prospect board with magnets representing Cooper’s corner targets across a few cycles. From a few feet away the markers look like bold-print names surrounded by little marks of black ink. It’s in that border space the Bears list every imaginable statistic, from hand size to high school GPA, an information hub for a program that prizes info above all others.

“If you buy a car, you want the Carfax,” Cooper said.

This is an information-based approach with shades of the Moneyball craze, of Oakland A’s and Brad Pitt fame, that transformed every aspect of baseball this century. Power, 247Sports’ national analyst, sees an approach like Baylor’s as a natural evolution in evaluation for non-traditional recruiting powers.

“If you’re not a true blueblood from a recruiting standpoint, it’s a smart, Moneyball way to go about recruiting,” Power said. “Big picture it’s smart to recruit like this.”

Baylor and Penn State hardly originated this idea. TCU, another Texas school that’s long punched above its recruiting weight, has found high-upside athletes from small towns and allowed them to marinate into contributors. Iowa, another NFL darling, is lauded for its ability to take big-framed Midwestern athletes and turn them into draft picks. Iowa’s averaged 3.7 NFL Draft picks a year since 2010 despite posting an average recruiting class of 44th nationally during that period.

Yet schools like Penn State and Baylor are starting to push this analytics-based philosophy to a new extreme. Camps like The Opening regionals and easily found internet track results have created a bevy of information sources. Enterprising programs are collecting that data and applying it appropriately.

Not that we’re on the cusp of an analytics scouting revolution in college football. Baseball is a sport defined by numbers. A player’s on-base percentage is a black and white statistic as is the rate at which a prospect connects on an up-and-in fastball. Football is an anecdotal sport at its core.

Tracking Football CEO Mark Branstad said the best way to approach coaches with his data is to base the information off players they’ve coached in the past. Frank said schools must take testing data and apply anecdotal evidence to make a full evaluation. A player might have tested under poor conditions or maybe his parents’ height suggests an imminent growth spurt. There’s also the question of which athlete to prioritize when statistics indicate prospects are nearly identical.

“We don’t have a formula that in the end says take this kid over that kid,” Frank said. “It’s more, ‘OK this is all we know based on numbers.’ … I still think there’s a human element that’s more in football than in baseball. Regardless of the result of the equation people have to make a decision. I don’t think too many programs will get to the point where they purely trust the number at the end.”

Cooper, as he gets ready to look at many Carfax reports heading into big recruiting weekend in Waco, said there are two branching philosophies when it comes to scouting. Some teams want great football players. Some teams want to recruit great athletes.

Baylor is obviously targeting the great athletes, yet that comes with a caveat: “It’s what you do with them,” Cooper said. “The beauty of recruiting for us is we rely so much on our development of a player. That’s what I think the secret ingredient is.”

 

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