the recruit: Tyler Brosius

Name: Tyler Brosius
Position: QB
Hometown: Waynesville, NC
High school: Tuscola Senior
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 232

ESPN: 77, #43 QB
Rivals: three stars, 5.7, #24 pro-style QB
Scout: three stars, #64 QB

Surprise! Next weekend was supposed to be the one we're being patient for, as it's going to be "Future Wahoo Day", at which Al Groh puts advertising execs through their paces in order to find the best one to replace the name "Future Wahoo Day." And hosts a bunch of football recruits, too. But the coaches had a few guys around this weekend too, and one of them was Tyler Brosius.

Brosius has been on the very edge of our radar screen, far enough off that I didn't have him on the recruiting board; his recruitment didn't pick up nationally until late, and by the end of April he still had only one I-A offer, from Central Florida. Dude doesn't even have a thread on Recruiting Planet. Waynesville is kind of in the sticks though (actually, scratch that, Waynesville is the sticks) so sometimes it takes a while for the secret to get out. But things got hot in May and were probably going to get hotter very soon. He's now got offers from Pitt and Maryland and looks as though he was just about to get one from NC State; his commitment here will put a stopper in the flow but it's a safe bet there were more on the way if he'd held out through the summer. This weekend, though, Brosius got his look at the Grounds, went WHOA!, went home offer in hand, and decided he didn't need to see anything else. That's pretty similar to my process, actually, except the admission letter was like eighteen months later and it wasn't to play football. Or any sport. Or give me any money.

The recruiting services are all in pretty close agreement as to his rankings, and they have lots of video. A solid three stars all around - 5.7 is a medium-high three star as Rivals has it, and ESPN's 77 equates to about that too. They have a full sophomore and junior year to go off of so unless Brosius totally explodes this coming season, it'll stay that way.

Regardless of whether Brosius turns into Matt Schaub or not, though, this commitment tells us one thing loud and clear. Any notion that the arrival of Gregg Brandon meant we'd be leaning much more heavily toward mobile running types under center took a little bit of a hit when we started recruiting Andrew Hendrix heavily and is now totally shattered with the Brosius commitment. The guy's 230 pounds, alright, and quite possibly still growing. Mobility is not his strong suit. However, Brandon is not the head coach, Al Groh is, and Groh has never been shy about playing whatever quarterback he thinks is the best and working the scheme around that instead of the other way round.

I'm sure we're not done taking quarterbacks. One more is probably on the way sometime this year. The depth chart now says five scholarship guys will be on the roster in 2010, but two of them (Smalls and Hunter) are fair candidates to get moved somewhere and it's probably a safe bet that at least one of them will. I'm still a big Kevin Parks fan, and ESPN has this to say about Brosius: "Good prospect that has somewhat of an 'it' factor." "It" is the #1 trait that a quarterback needs; it is also #2, #3, #4, and part of #5. Height and arm strength and speed and all that shit come way later. It's also a judgment you can't make til you watch, so I will call myself cautiously excited here and hope very much ESPN has it right. Put these two together and I very much like how the class shapes up so far, even if it's small.

Speaking of Parks, I've updated his "recruit" post to reflect the ratings that came out in May; you can check that out here.