the recruit: Mike Rocco

Name: Mike Rocco
Position: QB
Hometown: Lynchburg
School: Liberty Christian
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 200

ESPN: 74, #104 QB
Rivals: 5.3, two stars
Scout: two stars, #109 QB

Rocco was the fourth and final quarterback to commit after Mike London's QB offer cannon found all its targets. The combination of a coaching change at Louisville and an offer from the place Rocco probably wanted to hear from all along did the trick, and Rocco added himself to the class just before Signing Day.

Of the four, Rocco is one of the least likely to change positions. He did also play safety in high school, but....no, he's a quarterback. Very much a pocket-passing type, too. Getting him the class gave us both quarterbacks from the VISAA championship game, in which Rocco played fairly well but couldn't quite bring home the win.

Of course, if he was a little inaccurate, it's not entirely his fault - no doubt the broken arm he suffered in the preseason made him a little rusty, no? And he wasn't quite healed from it even by the championship game, which he played in a cast. No doubt also that the broken arm shut down Rocco's recruitment pretty much entirely - it happened a month after he'd committed to Louisville. Rocco's ratings are consistently low and his offers are nearly nonexistent (before ours, just the Louisville one and a Penn State greyshirt. OK, and the one from Liberty but duh he was gonna get that, his uncle's the coach.) But I'm willing to blame the injury. When a quarterback can't play quarterback for most of the season, teams stop bothering and so do the ratings gurus.

So Rocco comes in as a bit of an enigma. I sound like a broken record here, but like the other three QB's not named Strauss, he's not enrolled early and therefore is a few steps behind in the wide-open job competition. This means a pretty-much guaranteed redshirt. Beyond that, I have no prognostications at all. Rocco's best bet to ever get on the field probably involves Verica winning and holding onto the starting job the whole season, because he's already behind Ross Metheny and Strauss by virtue of not being in spring practice - if they also add some game experience to their resume, it'll make the curve that much tougher for everyone else.