Name: Quin Blanding
Position: S
Hometown: Virginia Beach
School: Bayside
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 201
24/7: 99, five stars; #1 S, VA #3, US #9
ESPN: 90, five stars; #1 S, VA #3, Atl. #4, US #11
Rivals: 6.1, five stars; #1 S, VA #2, US #4
Scout: five stars; #3 S
Other offers: Alabama, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Florida, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Auburn, Clemson, Tennessee, Penn State, UCLA, North Carolina, NC State, West Virginia, Vanderbilt, Illinois, Purdue, Maryland, Cincinnati, Connecticut
It's time to begin the recruit profile series again. Normally I've been able to save some of the best recruits for last, because normally they wait til near the end to commit, and these are always, without exception, written in order of commitment. Five-star mega-dudes with offer lists the size of Lindsey Lohan's rap sheet don't usually finish their recruitments this early.
Quin Blanding, obviously, did. This is the fruit of Mike London's labor in the state: having wrapped up previous classes fairly early, he had time to plant the seeds for years like 2014 and 2015. As a result, this recruitment was over almost before it began. Blanding's offer list actually is less extensive than it might've been had he waited even another six weeks or so, but it's impressive (to say the least) all the same, a veritable who's-who of programs.
Blanding is also an elite recruit on a dizzying level. Sometimes we get a guy we call a five-star recruit because one service said so. Good for us and all that. Blanding is a five-star recruit because every service says so, the first such player we can claim since Eugene Monroe from way back when there were only two services.
Why do they say so? For one, Blanding's size; he's tall for a safety (even an NFL safety), a little heavier than most, and still faster and quicker than any of his peers. Most of our depth chart guys are in the 6'0", 190ish range. ESPN says he possesses "ideal size" but the truth is he's actually bigger than ideal without sacrificing one mote of the necessary athleticism. He's already built like a guy playing on Sundays, except without the years of weight training.
The services then follow that up by trying to outdo each other in gushing about Blanding's actual game: instincts, ball skills, and the like. 24/7 writes: "What stands out most about his game is his ability to read a play. He is rarely out of position .... His speed, versatility and leaping ability were also all on display throughout the competition." ESPN is eerily similar: "Excels in coverage with instinctive ball-hawking skills and a real feel for route recognition and field awareness. Reads the quarterback eyes and knows where he is going with the football which allows for so many big plays. Disciplined and rarely caught out of position. The ideal roaming safety who can read, react and close on the football quickly from any alignment."
Rivals agrees too: "It comes down to a few things at the safety position: How do you see the field?
How quickly do you react? Do you avoid false steps and misreading the play and
are you willing to come up and smack someone in run support and make them pay
down the middle of the field in the passing game? ...Blanding
has all of those attributes." They then go on to trump the other two by talking up his leadership skills, which they rarely fail to mention in any one of their many Blanding Is Awesome articles.
It's really almost not worth diving too deeply into the scouting reports. Of all the ideal attributes of a top-notch free safety, Blanding isn't missing any of them. Even Scout, which comes up with the only downside in his game because they have to fill up the "Areas for Improvement" section somehow ("backpedal quickness" is what they've come up with) goes on two seconds later to say he "really doesn't have a weakness in his game." So the real question is, does Blanding go straight to the all-ACC lists or does he go bust?
We'll turn to the ranks of Rivals's previous five-star safeties for the answer. There actually aren't many. Of those evaluated as DBs, 2002 through 2004 produced mostly guys who played offense, grew into linebacker, or were cornerbacks. 2005 is the first time we see safeties who stuck at safety: Kenny Phillips became a very, very good player for Miami and an eventual first-round draft pick, and Demetrice Morley was on track to be just as good but let off-field problems derail his career. 2006 had two more safeties: Reshad Jones (Georgia) and Myron Rolle (FSU), both future NFLers. Chad Jones in 2007 had a good career at LSU, was picked in the third round of the NFL draft, but chose baseball eventually. 2009 had Craig Loston, who has slowly become an impact player for LSU. 2010, you've got Lamarcus Joyner, doing outstanding work at FSU, and Matt Elam, who did outstanding work at Florida and then left early to be a first-round pick.
What did I learn from the little sojourn through history?
-- Rivals rarely hands five stars to safeties. Cornerbacks get about three times as many five-star designations as safeties do.
-- When they do, they're not wrong. I didn't leave out any busts on purpose just to make the list look better. For the most part, the only reason a player busted out is because he was a head case. Worst-case scenario for non-head-cases was taking a couple years to reach full potential. Blanding is not a head case.
We're not bringing in an all-world recruit who does everything in order to redshirt, obviously. Blanding will be on the field from Day 1. There are those who think he could start for college programs right this minute. Hell, there are those who think he could've started for college programs last fall as a high school junior. They might be right. In 2014, though, UVA will probably have this little luxury: two long-term starters (Ant Harris and Brandon Phelps) entering their senior year. So if Blanding does start from the get-go, either something very bad happened or we're going to have an NFL safety roaming the defensive backfield for three years. More likely is that Blanding gets into the rotation in the two-deep and then takes over the starting job as a true sophomore. Blanding will also face a little competition from Anthony Cooper and Malcolm Cook, two players who aren't as far along on the eligibility scale. Both have gotten good press. But Blanding aces the eye test and literally everyone who's seen him play raves about both his physical and mental game. How much early playing time he gets depends somewhat on his adjustment to the college game and his scheme pickup, but anyone betting against his becoming a starter sooner rather than later - and a likely full-time resident of the various all-ACC lists - is a sad and foolish man. The only downside is that if all goes as planned, he'll probably only be around three years.
Showing posts with label cooper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooper. Show all posts
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Monday, September 10, 2012
weekend review
Back in 1999, Alabama had a kicker named Ryan Pflugner. Besides the fact that my brain is calibrated to remember absurdly trivial details (and forget that I have homework due this week) there's no good reason for me to remember this, except for one: the 2000 Michigan-Alabama Orange Bowl. I don't even remember who kicked for Michigan in that game. But I remember Pflugner, because Michigan needed overtime to win that game and won it when Pflugner honked an extra point wide right. Wasn't even blocked. Just, oops.
The UVA side of me might now have its own Ryan Pflugner in the person of Sam Ficken, the poor bastard who Penn State depended on for points after its sputtering offense failed to muster any forward progress for most of Saturday afternoon. Ficken failed in a way that only a small fraternity of fellow kickers can empathize with (oh hell, I'll come right out and say it: Ficken's kicking looked like my golfing), and Penn State's kicking game left 13 points in all on the field instead of putting them on the board. Bill O'Brien will probably talk all week about how it wasn't an individual failure, the whole team could have done better, and then trot someone else out for placekicks next Saturday, because that is how coaches handle this.
So it's obviously natural to assume we only won because of that. It's true, but it's just as true that you have to put the other team in position to make those mistakes. You might call it an ugly game because the offense looked so out of sorts most of the time, but you couldn't have asked for a better performance out of the defense. Most teams aren't going to be as offensively inept as Penn State, but that doesn't take away from the yeoman work done by the defense.
As a result, we sit here, 2-0 for the second straight year, and for the second straight year after a narrow, come-from-behind win against a Big Ten team, with a game-winning drive (OK, last year it was game-tying) engineered by Mike Rocco. Fans are rightly concerned about the rest of the season what with that offensive line looking pretty offensive and affording us no running game whatsoever, but one thing people always do too much of is to assume the rest of the season will look like the most recent game. Hence the college football tradition of hilarious overreaction to losses. The possibility for improvement (or injury, or regression, or other teams getting better faster) is rarely considered. Therefore we see a lot of gloomy predictions for the season. I am unapolegetically optimistic at this point, despite all.
These next two games - Georgia Tech and TCU - are tough, but keep in mind I said I'd be OK if we won just one game in this three-game stretch, and we've accomplished that. After that....
-- After TCU, we could easily see a four-game winning streak - Louisiana Tech, Duke, Maryland, and Wake Forest await.
-- Wake, Miami (which is not a good team), Maryland, and UNC (which lost to Wake) are all at home.
-- If Wake can beat UNC - this is the same Wake that beat Liberty by three - then so can we.
-- NC State isn't too remarkably impressive so far either.
There should be no reason that a repeat of last year's 8-4 season isn't achievable. Achievable, I said, not guaranteed. I won't be all kinds of surprised if we don't make it. You shouldn't be all kinds of surprised if we do.
Short-form items:
-- That run-blocking was horrible, though. When Penn State didn't stack the box, typically we ended up with no gain. When they did, we went backwards. The coaches will need to keep the possibility of moving Morgan Moses to guard in their back pocket, just in case.
-- Steve Greer: 15 tackles, two sacks. Henry Coley: 11 tackles, one blocked kick. Laroy Reynolds: 9 tackles. And Daquan Romero looked decent when he was in. The linebackers definitely ruled the day. On both sides of the ball, mind you, but ours turned out just a little better.
-- Jake McGee looks like an absolute matchup nightmare.
-- Mike London needs to forget about this fascination with quarterback rotations. It has yet to ever result in good things happening. About the only useful thing gained from putting in Phillip Sims for two drives was to bring the hype train back to earth; Rocco wasn't having an awesome game, but Sims clearly isn't ready. It's one thing to look really damn good when the game is in hand and there's no pressure and you've been set up for success, but it's a completely different story with the game on the line.
-- PSU's offensive line is pretty crummy for the most part, and they have one wide receiver worth a damn, and even that guy (Allen Robinson) had a really bad drop that cost them a ton. And all that said, I'm still coming out encouraged by the pass rush and the play of the secondary. We did have to dial up some blitzes in order to record any sacks, but Eli Harold and Ausar Walcott got into the backfield pretty effectively. There is some solid tackling going on in the secondary, too; I like the fundamentals that I see out of Demetrious Nicholson and Anthony Harris in that respect. Nicholson had a good day outside of getting torched on Robinson's touchdown, and kudos also to Drequan Hoskey for sticking with his assignment and ruining Penn State's flea-flicker.
-- PSU would later score on that opening drive, but I wasn't actually too perturbed about that. Penn State needed 17 plays to score. No offense in the world can replicate that often enough to win. What was perturbing was handing the ball right back, immediately. Sure, we needed Sam Ficken to kick the ball everywhere but between the uprights for us to win, but PSU needed our help in the form of friendly turnovers in lousy field position in order to even put Ficken in position to miss.
********************************************************
Prediction summary time: let's see how I did this week.
-- UVA's run game isn't any better than last week's. In retrospect, kind of a weak prediction. True, but weak. If I'd wanted to get really ballsy I'd have said the run game would've sucked giant anteater nuts and I'd still have been right.
-- On the flip side, Penn State is held to about 2.5 yards a carry. We're going to take out their fake punt, because that's special teams and not strictly the run game, and what we get is 102 yards on 41 carries for an average of 2.49 yards per attempt. Niiiiiiice.
-- Mike Rocco tops 300 yards again. Well dammit, he might have if we hadn't seen at least three flat drops. Adrian Gamble should've had that beautiful fade throw in the first quarter, although that will come with a little experience - that is, he'll learn that when the coverage is to the inside like that, the quarterback ain't throwing where the coverage is. Dominique Terrell also stonehanded another perfect strike from Rocco. As it is, I lose this one since Rocco totaled only 258 yards.
-- Darius Jennings goes for 100 yards and a touchdown. Jennings didn't reach either milestone; if I'd said Jake McGee here I'd have given myself this one since McGee ended up with 99. But one thing is coming clear regardless: Jennings is rapidly establishing himself as easily the team's most dependable wide receiver, and is on pace for a 900+ yard season.
-- McGloin completes 60% of his passes. No.
-- But doesn't top 7 yards per attempt. And yes; he scraped by at 5.6, which is another encouraging thing for our defense.
3-for-6 this week; add to my performance last week and I'm now 5-for-11. Not completely terrible, but the goal is to be over 50%. I predicted the win, yay me, but managed to predict a margin exactly the same as the spread, which makes me 2-0 straight up and 0-0-2 ATS.
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It's late and you've been waiting patiently all day, so I'm cutting this one off at the knees and moving the Senior Seasons feature to tomorrow. One last depth-chart note: no substantial changes this week, or changes of any kind really, except that the team announced that Pablo Alvarez is out for the year, which makes Anthony Cooper the backup at strong safety. I'll get around to putting up the adjusted depth chart sometime before Thursday.
The UVA side of me might now have its own Ryan Pflugner in the person of Sam Ficken, the poor bastard who Penn State depended on for points after its sputtering offense failed to muster any forward progress for most of Saturday afternoon. Ficken failed in a way that only a small fraternity of fellow kickers can empathize with (oh hell, I'll come right out and say it: Ficken's kicking looked like my golfing), and Penn State's kicking game left 13 points in all on the field instead of putting them on the board. Bill O'Brien will probably talk all week about how it wasn't an individual failure, the whole team could have done better, and then trot someone else out for placekicks next Saturday, because that is how coaches handle this.
So it's obviously natural to assume we only won because of that. It's true, but it's just as true that you have to put the other team in position to make those mistakes. You might call it an ugly game because the offense looked so out of sorts most of the time, but you couldn't have asked for a better performance out of the defense. Most teams aren't going to be as offensively inept as Penn State, but that doesn't take away from the yeoman work done by the defense.
As a result, we sit here, 2-0 for the second straight year, and for the second straight year after a narrow, come-from-behind win against a Big Ten team, with a game-winning drive (OK, last year it was game-tying) engineered by Mike Rocco. Fans are rightly concerned about the rest of the season what with that offensive line looking pretty offensive and affording us no running game whatsoever, but one thing people always do too much of is to assume the rest of the season will look like the most recent game. Hence the college football tradition of hilarious overreaction to losses. The possibility for improvement (or injury, or regression, or other teams getting better faster) is rarely considered. Therefore we see a lot of gloomy predictions for the season. I am unapolegetically optimistic at this point, despite all.
These next two games - Georgia Tech and TCU - are tough, but keep in mind I said I'd be OK if we won just one game in this three-game stretch, and we've accomplished that. After that....
-- After TCU, we could easily see a four-game winning streak - Louisiana Tech, Duke, Maryland, and Wake Forest await.
-- Wake, Miami (which is not a good team), Maryland, and UNC (which lost to Wake) are all at home.
-- If Wake can beat UNC - this is the same Wake that beat Liberty by three - then so can we.
-- NC State isn't too remarkably impressive so far either.
There should be no reason that a repeat of last year's 8-4 season isn't achievable. Achievable, I said, not guaranteed. I won't be all kinds of surprised if we don't make it. You shouldn't be all kinds of surprised if we do.
Short-form items:
-- That run-blocking was horrible, though. When Penn State didn't stack the box, typically we ended up with no gain. When they did, we went backwards. The coaches will need to keep the possibility of moving Morgan Moses to guard in their back pocket, just in case.
-- Steve Greer: 15 tackles, two sacks. Henry Coley: 11 tackles, one blocked kick. Laroy Reynolds: 9 tackles. And Daquan Romero looked decent when he was in. The linebackers definitely ruled the day. On both sides of the ball, mind you, but ours turned out just a little better.
-- Jake McGee looks like an absolute matchup nightmare.
-- Mike London needs to forget about this fascination with quarterback rotations. It has yet to ever result in good things happening. About the only useful thing gained from putting in Phillip Sims for two drives was to bring the hype train back to earth; Rocco wasn't having an awesome game, but Sims clearly isn't ready. It's one thing to look really damn good when the game is in hand and there's no pressure and you've been set up for success, but it's a completely different story with the game on the line.
-- PSU's offensive line is pretty crummy for the most part, and they have one wide receiver worth a damn, and even that guy (Allen Robinson) had a really bad drop that cost them a ton. And all that said, I'm still coming out encouraged by the pass rush and the play of the secondary. We did have to dial up some blitzes in order to record any sacks, but Eli Harold and Ausar Walcott got into the backfield pretty effectively. There is some solid tackling going on in the secondary, too; I like the fundamentals that I see out of Demetrious Nicholson and Anthony Harris in that respect. Nicholson had a good day outside of getting torched on Robinson's touchdown, and kudos also to Drequan Hoskey for sticking with his assignment and ruining Penn State's flea-flicker.
-- PSU would later score on that opening drive, but I wasn't actually too perturbed about that. Penn State needed 17 plays to score. No offense in the world can replicate that often enough to win. What was perturbing was handing the ball right back, immediately. Sure, we needed Sam Ficken to kick the ball everywhere but between the uprights for us to win, but PSU needed our help in the form of friendly turnovers in lousy field position in order to even put Ficken in position to miss.
********************************************************
Prediction summary time: let's see how I did this week.
-- UVA's run game isn't any better than last week's. In retrospect, kind of a weak prediction. True, but weak. If I'd wanted to get really ballsy I'd have said the run game would've sucked giant anteater nuts and I'd still have been right.
-- On the flip side, Penn State is held to about 2.5 yards a carry. We're going to take out their fake punt, because that's special teams and not strictly the run game, and what we get is 102 yards on 41 carries for an average of 2.49 yards per attempt. Niiiiiiice.
-- Mike Rocco tops 300 yards again. Well dammit, he might have if we hadn't seen at least three flat drops. Adrian Gamble should've had that beautiful fade throw in the first quarter, although that will come with a little experience - that is, he'll learn that when the coverage is to the inside like that, the quarterback ain't throwing where the coverage is. Dominique Terrell also stonehanded another perfect strike from Rocco. As it is, I lose this one since Rocco totaled only 258 yards.
-- Darius Jennings goes for 100 yards and a touchdown. Jennings didn't reach either milestone; if I'd said Jake McGee here I'd have given myself this one since McGee ended up with 99. But one thing is coming clear regardless: Jennings is rapidly establishing himself as easily the team's most dependable wide receiver, and is on pace for a 900+ yard season.
-- McGloin completes 60% of his passes. No.
-- But doesn't top 7 yards per attempt. And yes; he scraped by at 5.6, which is another encouraging thing for our defense.
3-for-6 this week; add to my performance last week and I'm now 5-for-11. Not completely terrible, but the goal is to be over 50%. I predicted the win, yay me, but managed to predict a margin exactly the same as the spread, which makes me 2-0 straight up and 0-0-2 ATS.
********************************************************
It's late and you've been waiting patiently all day, so I'm cutting this one off at the knees and moving the Senior Seasons feature to tomorrow. One last depth-chart note: no substantial changes this week, or changes of any kind really, except that the team announced that Pablo Alvarez is out for the year, which makes Anthony Cooper the backup at strong safety. I'll get around to putting up the adjusted depth chart sometime before Thursday.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
the recruit: Corwin Cutler
Name: Corwin "Turtle" Cutler
Position: QB
Hometown: Virginia Beach
School: Ocean Lakes
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 180
24/7: 87; three stars; #25 pro-style QB; VA #19
ESPN: 82; four stars; #19 pro-style QB; VA #14; Atlantic #40
Rivals: 5.7; three stars; #25 pro-style QB; VA #22
Scout: three stars; #54 QB
Other offers: Connecticut, East Carolina, Marshall
I officially give up when it comes to guessing how many quarterbacks Mike London wants in any given class. Just when it looks absolutely ripe to take one and only one, and Brendan Marshall is in the fold, another one comes down the pipe. Fortunately, there's a plethora of quality nicknames coming out of the Tidewater area lately (Turtle, Big Cat, Smoke) and we seem to be in on that action pretty strongly.
Still - too many quarterbacks? Actually, London just might know what he's doing in this case. Corwin Cutler got offers from not a whole lot of places, and it didn't take him long to follow through with a commitment to the UVA one. Shortly after his commitment, though, ESPN gave a knowing nod in London's direction and said: well played, indeed. Their scouting report begins thusly: "This is a prospect that for whatever reason has flown under the radar throughout the process, but we believe Cutler is going to start seeing a lot more attention after the spring evaluation period. ... This guy should have a lot more offers."
ESPN is known for being more than occasionally divergent from the consensus opinion on a recruit, but that's an unusually blunt assessment. They were confident enough in Cutler's abilities to rate him our best commitment until this Tuesday, when Taquan Mizzell jumped on board - above bonafide players like Tim Harris, Kirk Garner, and Micah Kiser. And they might be onto something: Rivals' latest re-rank bumped Cutler upwards to high-three-star level, and 24/7's assessment of Cutler's performance at the New Level Athletics 7-on-7 tournament in New York, two months ago, was consistently higher than that of Mizzell. High praise, given Smoke's own ratings.
This makes the upcoming high school season an interesting one. Cutler definitely hit up the camp scene - his dad is involved in that in his own way, more on that in a bit. He plays in the high-visibility 757, and Ocean Lakes was among the top teams in the district last year. Even a middling three-star quarterback ought to have had offers, and now that the services have got a load of Turtle over the summer, they certainly like him better than "middling three star." (Except Scout, which is so damn lazy and useless that they're listing Tech commit Parker Osterloh under our section. Their lack of enthusiasm can be easily dismissed.) Possibly all the quarterback attention in Virginia was being given to the "big three" of Hackenberg, Hodges, and Burns. Regardless, now that Cutler's a UVA commit, folks will be watching this season, myself included. And I'm very interested to see if Cutler will live up to the rankings.
Cutler could prove to be one of UVA's most important recruits in a while, though, and not just for what happens on the field. All that rubbish from Hokies fans about a shadowy "Godfather" that steers players to UVA, and the supposed shadiness of the 757 Sports Academy (where Hampton Roads players train in the summer) really got the goat of a certain Carson Cutler - Corwin's father and a coach at the academy. How can I put this delicately.... Carson was really, really pissed about that shit. The PG version of his feelings was: "The rumors going around about being an AAU team and coaches being street agents are ridiculous and very unfortunate." The not-so-PG version, as posted on the Wahoos247 board:
It goes on in that vein. I did a little cleaning up for readability but that's basically the direct quote from the elder Cutler. UVA's recruitment of the younger Cutler is the kind of thing that's giving Mike London powerful allies in the best recruiting grounds in the state, and the way Hokie fans react to it doesn't help the cause in Blacksburg. Pissing off a group of people who see it as their mission to help football players find exposure for themselves, and ultimately, find homes in college somewhere, is How Not To Recruit 101, and the best part is, it's not like the VT coaches have much control over it.
Anyway. The part where we discuss the future. Turtle, obviously, finds a crowded depth chart. London has all but declared Greyson Lambert and Matt Johns will redshirt, which means that the QB pipeline is being established and Cutler and Marshall will certainly get the same treatment. Cutler won't play in 2014 either; Phillip Sims and David Watford will be seniors. That sets up a battle in 2015, when Cutler is a redshirt sophomore and Lambert and Johns are redshirt juniors. If the services are right about Cutler, he'll fend off Marshall, but it'll still be a major fight. There's sure to be some twists between now and then, but it's still very likely to be several years before Turtle is truly on the radar for the starting job. I don't pretend to know just what'll happen in a QB competition three months from now, let alone three years, but if Cutler is going to be the starting QB at UVA eventually, the window for that is 2015 to 2017 - the depth chart ahead of him may work out such that it's his fifth year before the job is truly his.
******************************************************
-- You know we finally got Smoke Mizzell, right? You heard about that already. I don't need to repeat incessantly that Mizzell committed to UVA this week. Mizzell's commitment to UVA, in which he committed to UVA, was the first five-star commitment for the Hoos since Eugene Monroe. Mizzell's commitment to UVA is bound to be a recruiting chip for the future as well, so I'm really glad Taquan Mizzell committed to UVA.
-- London and the coaches were surprisingly open about the depth chart this week - it was like bizzarro week in that respect, and certainly nice to hear something beyond the usual denials of ever even having heard of a "depth chart." London promised the official real preseason depth chart would be out Monday, which got a lot of people assuming we'll know who the starting quarterback is. Well, I'm pretty sure it'll be Rocco, but I still also think the Monday depth chart is gonna have a lot of "OR" in the QB section.
-- Besides that, some position changes were discussed: DE to TE for Rob Burns, WR to DB for Anthony Cooper, FB to DE for Trent Corney. When that happens, if a true freshman is involved, it's code for "this guy's redshirting" although Corney could be a special teams guy. Corney's getting something of an annoying legend built up around him, which Jeff White fed yesterday - annoying because this is the same kind of thing that happened with Keith Payne, who UVA fans were, in hindsight, wildly overrating and heaping just stupid expectations on. That, and you just know that some of the folks who want to see him "blowing people up" this year are gonna be some of the same moaning about redshirting in a few years. Truth is, he's just raw as all hell and probably needs that redshirt year.
Position: QB
Hometown: Virginia Beach
School: Ocean Lakes
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 180
24/7: 87; three stars; #25 pro-style QB; VA #19
ESPN: 82; four stars; #19 pro-style QB; VA #14; Atlantic #40
Rivals: 5.7; three stars; #25 pro-style QB; VA #22
Scout: three stars; #54 QB
Other offers: Connecticut, East Carolina, Marshall
I officially give up when it comes to guessing how many quarterbacks Mike London wants in any given class. Just when it looks absolutely ripe to take one and only one, and Brendan Marshall is in the fold, another one comes down the pipe. Fortunately, there's a plethora of quality nicknames coming out of the Tidewater area lately (Turtle, Big Cat, Smoke) and we seem to be in on that action pretty strongly.
Still - too many quarterbacks? Actually, London just might know what he's doing in this case. Corwin Cutler got offers from not a whole lot of places, and it didn't take him long to follow through with a commitment to the UVA one. Shortly after his commitment, though, ESPN gave a knowing nod in London's direction and said: well played, indeed. Their scouting report begins thusly: "This is a prospect that for whatever reason has flown under the radar throughout the process, but we believe Cutler is going to start seeing a lot more attention after the spring evaluation period. ... This guy should have a lot more offers."
ESPN is known for being more than occasionally divergent from the consensus opinion on a recruit, but that's an unusually blunt assessment. They were confident enough in Cutler's abilities to rate him our best commitment until this Tuesday, when Taquan Mizzell jumped on board - above bonafide players like Tim Harris, Kirk Garner, and Micah Kiser. And they might be onto something: Rivals' latest re-rank bumped Cutler upwards to high-three-star level, and 24/7's assessment of Cutler's performance at the New Level Athletics 7-on-7 tournament in New York, two months ago, was consistently higher than that of Mizzell. High praise, given Smoke's own ratings.
This makes the upcoming high school season an interesting one. Cutler definitely hit up the camp scene - his dad is involved in that in his own way, more on that in a bit. He plays in the high-visibility 757, and Ocean Lakes was among the top teams in the district last year. Even a middling three-star quarterback ought to have had offers, and now that the services have got a load of Turtle over the summer, they certainly like him better than "middling three star." (Except Scout, which is so damn lazy and useless that they're listing Tech commit Parker Osterloh under our section. Their lack of enthusiasm can be easily dismissed.) Possibly all the quarterback attention in Virginia was being given to the "big three" of Hackenberg, Hodges, and Burns. Regardless, now that Cutler's a UVA commit, folks will be watching this season, myself included. And I'm very interested to see if Cutler will live up to the rankings.
Cutler could prove to be one of UVA's most important recruits in a while, though, and not just for what happens on the field. All that rubbish from Hokies fans about a shadowy "Godfather" that steers players to UVA, and the supposed shadiness of the 757 Sports Academy (where Hampton Roads players train in the summer) really got the goat of a certain Carson Cutler - Corwin's father and a coach at the academy. How can I put this delicately.... Carson was really, really pissed about that shit. The PG version of his feelings was: "The rumors going around about being an AAU team and coaches being street agents are ridiculous and very unfortunate." The not-so-PG version, as posted on the Wahoos247 board:
I feel its absolutely disgusting how people are taking shots at men they don't even know. ... I followed VT football because of past relationship[s] I had with past and present players. I used to have a lot of respect for what they have done with talent have gotten over the years but now I have lost all of respect for them and their fans .... Now you can take my words and twist it all you want to, I can and will be a HUGE supporter of Coach Mike London and his staff because of the man that he is and the word that he keeps with the parents and players, the only thing he promised me is that my son will get his degree. So all [you] ignorant ASS S.O.B that have been calling him "BLACK SANTA" (giving gifts to us funding our trips etc) is fucking crazzzy but you showed your true colors!!!!! And its not BLACK OR WHITE thing, it's just your arrogance in thinking that every kid should go to VT....
It goes on in that vein. I did a little cleaning up for readability but that's basically the direct quote from the elder Cutler. UVA's recruitment of the younger Cutler is the kind of thing that's giving Mike London powerful allies in the best recruiting grounds in the state, and the way Hokie fans react to it doesn't help the cause in Blacksburg. Pissing off a group of people who see it as their mission to help football players find exposure for themselves, and ultimately, find homes in college somewhere, is How Not To Recruit 101, and the best part is, it's not like the VT coaches have much control over it.
Anyway. The part where we discuss the future. Turtle, obviously, finds a crowded depth chart. London has all but declared Greyson Lambert and Matt Johns will redshirt, which means that the QB pipeline is being established and Cutler and Marshall will certainly get the same treatment. Cutler won't play in 2014 either; Phillip Sims and David Watford will be seniors. That sets up a battle in 2015, when Cutler is a redshirt sophomore and Lambert and Johns are redshirt juniors. If the services are right about Cutler, he'll fend off Marshall, but it'll still be a major fight. There's sure to be some twists between now and then, but it's still very likely to be several years before Turtle is truly on the radar for the starting job. I don't pretend to know just what'll happen in a QB competition three months from now, let alone three years, but if Cutler is going to be the starting QB at UVA eventually, the window for that is 2015 to 2017 - the depth chart ahead of him may work out such that it's his fifth year before the job is truly his.
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-- You know we finally got Smoke Mizzell, right? You heard about that already. I don't need to repeat incessantly that Mizzell committed to UVA this week. Mizzell's commitment to UVA, in which he committed to UVA, was the first five-star commitment for the Hoos since Eugene Monroe. Mizzell's commitment to UVA is bound to be a recruiting chip for the future as well, so I'm really glad Taquan Mizzell committed to UVA.
-- London and the coaches were surprisingly open about the depth chart this week - it was like bizzarro week in that respect, and certainly nice to hear something beyond the usual denials of ever even having heard of a "depth chart." London promised the official real preseason depth chart would be out Monday, which got a lot of people assuming we'll know who the starting quarterback is. Well, I'm pretty sure it'll be Rocco, but I still also think the Monday depth chart is gonna have a lot of "OR" in the QB section.
-- Besides that, some position changes were discussed: DE to TE for Rob Burns, WR to DB for Anthony Cooper, FB to DE for Trent Corney. When that happens, if a true freshman is involved, it's code for "this guy's redshirting" although Corney could be a special teams guy. Corney's getting something of an annoying legend built up around him, which Jeff White fed yesterday - annoying because this is the same kind of thing that happened with Keith Payne, who UVA fans were, in hindsight, wildly overrating and heaping just stupid expectations on. That, and you just know that some of the folks who want to see him "blowing people up" this year are gonna be some of the same moaning about redshirting in a few years. Truth is, he's just raw as all hell and probably needs that redshirt year.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
the recruit: Anthony Cooper
Name: Anthony Cooper
Position: WR
Hometown: Virginia Beach
School: Bayside
Height: 6'0"
Weight: 177
24/7: 92; four stars; #24 WR; VA #8; US #221
ESPN: 78; three stars; #64 WR; VA #11; Atlantic #62
Rivals: 5.7; three stars; #55 WR; VA #12
Scout: two stars; #209 WR
Other offers: Tennessee, Boston College, Vanderbilt, East Carolina, Western Michigan
July was a good month for cleaning up in Hampton Roads and getting a few in the fold that we'd been waiting for during a good while. Courtnye Wynn and Anthony Cooper were "Virginia leans" for like basically ever, and four of the five July commits were from that one special area code.
And Anthony Cooper is almost certainly the most talented of that July group. You see the scouting service ratings up there; 9 times out of 10 you can ignore the outlier in the group if the other three are in agreement, and that goes up to 10 out of 10 when the outlier is Scout, which is notorious for not doing their homework and hasn't done it here.
"Speed and hands are his biggest asset," says Recruit 757, and ESPN agrees, liking his hands and straight-line speed and ability to get yards after the catch. He's very productive at a top program in the Beach District; he's a do-everything receiver, an excellent defensive player, and a regular threat to take a kickoff back to the house. In fact, he just did that again tonight. There's little doubt in my mind that Cooper has the tools to succeed in college; perhaps right away, if given the chance.
Therein lies the slight catch. Cooper is a very talented receiver joining a class of very talented receivers (Canaan Severin, Adrian Gamble, etc.) and coming in behind another class of very talented receivers. What Cooper offers that the others don't is flexibility. You won't see Severin, Gamble, or the wondertwins on defense. Cooper is part of a group that includes Mario Nixon and Maurice Canady that play (or have played) both receiver and defensive back and could go either way in college. He's also almost certainly the most talented of that group.
Parse ESPN's scouting report and you find phrases like "has moments where he looks like he has a hitch in his giddyup and isn't overly smooth." The possibility exists that Cooper ends up on defense; if he does, safety is the place. Definitely not cornerback. I think he's probably a more natural wide receiver than safety, but if wide receiver is his career path, we'll have to be a little more patient, as there's a logjam coming at us in a year or two. Putting Cooper at safety might well be a good way to get him on the field faster; the position will need a huge shot of athleticism. The free safety depth chart next year is Rijo Walker starting and a dogpile of a competition for backup. At strong safety the competition dogpile is for starter, with Anthony Harris maybe having a leg up. I will always hate the idea of having to play a true freshman at safety, but inserting Cooper into that mix probably can't hurt. It's not a position of otherworldly talent.
In a vacuum, or a less stacked WR depth chart, I'd be very happy about Cooper as a receiver. But I don't think he'd be a game-changer, and if he were we'd still have to wait for him to polish his route-running and "refinement on the little things," as ESPN puts it. On the team as it's built now, Cooper's best chance at being a contributor is to play defense and get involved in the return game. I think he'll see the field earlier that way; possibly as a true or redshirt freshman. As the most talented of the two-way athletes coming in next year, he has a leg up on his compeition in that regard and could be a long-term contributor like our current starters at safety.
*************************************************
This has been a bonus post, on account of bye week. No game preview means let's dig for a little extra, and you get a Friday post. (It's technically Saturday, but be quiet.) I just have one more item of business on this week's agenda before I send you off for a weekend of pressure-free football watching:
GO TIGERS!!
(seriously, if you're a baseball fan and you aren't watching Justin Verlander pitch - a Commonwealth product so there's your local tie-in - you need to have your credentials renewed.)
Position: WR
Hometown: Virginia Beach
School: Bayside
Height: 6'0"
Weight: 177
24/7: 92; four stars; #24 WR; VA #8; US #221
ESPN: 78; three stars; #64 WR; VA #11; Atlantic #62
Rivals: 5.7; three stars; #55 WR; VA #12
Scout: two stars; #209 WR
Other offers: Tennessee, Boston College, Vanderbilt, East Carolina, Western Michigan
July was a good month for cleaning up in Hampton Roads and getting a few in the fold that we'd been waiting for during a good while. Courtnye Wynn and Anthony Cooper were "Virginia leans" for like basically ever, and four of the five July commits were from that one special area code.
And Anthony Cooper is almost certainly the most talented of that July group. You see the scouting service ratings up there; 9 times out of 10 you can ignore the outlier in the group if the other three are in agreement, and that goes up to 10 out of 10 when the outlier is Scout, which is notorious for not doing their homework and hasn't done it here.
"Speed and hands are his biggest asset," says Recruit 757, and ESPN agrees, liking his hands and straight-line speed and ability to get yards after the catch. He's very productive at a top program in the Beach District; he's a do-everything receiver, an excellent defensive player, and a regular threat to take a kickoff back to the house. In fact, he just did that again tonight. There's little doubt in my mind that Cooper has the tools to succeed in college; perhaps right away, if given the chance.
Therein lies the slight catch. Cooper is a very talented receiver joining a class of very talented receivers (Canaan Severin, Adrian Gamble, etc.) and coming in behind another class of very talented receivers. What Cooper offers that the others don't is flexibility. You won't see Severin, Gamble, or the wondertwins on defense. Cooper is part of a group that includes Mario Nixon and Maurice Canady that play (or have played) both receiver and defensive back and could go either way in college. He's also almost certainly the most talented of that group.
Parse ESPN's scouting report and you find phrases like "has moments where he looks like he has a hitch in his giddyup and isn't overly smooth." The possibility exists that Cooper ends up on defense; if he does, safety is the place. Definitely not cornerback. I think he's probably a more natural wide receiver than safety, but if wide receiver is his career path, we'll have to be a little more patient, as there's a logjam coming at us in a year or two. Putting Cooper at safety might well be a good way to get him on the field faster; the position will need a huge shot of athleticism. The free safety depth chart next year is Rijo Walker starting and a dogpile of a competition for backup. At strong safety the competition dogpile is for starter, with Anthony Harris maybe having a leg up. I will always hate the idea of having to play a true freshman at safety, but inserting Cooper into that mix probably can't hurt. It's not a position of otherworldly talent.
In a vacuum, or a less stacked WR depth chart, I'd be very happy about Cooper as a receiver. But I don't think he'd be a game-changer, and if he were we'd still have to wait for him to polish his route-running and "refinement on the little things," as ESPN puts it. On the team as it's built now, Cooper's best chance at being a contributor is to play defense and get involved in the return game. I think he'll see the field earlier that way; possibly as a true or redshirt freshman. As the most talented of the two-way athletes coming in next year, he has a leg up on his compeition in that regard and could be a long-term contributor like our current starters at safety.
*************************************************
This has been a bonus post, on account of bye week. No game preview means let's dig for a little extra, and you get a Friday post. (It's technically Saturday, but be quiet.) I just have one more item of business on this week's agenda before I send you off for a weekend of pressure-free football watching:
GO TIGERS!!
(seriously, if you're a baseball fan and you aren't watching Justin Verlander pitch - a Commonwealth product so there's your local tie-in - you need to have your credentials renewed.)
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