1. It’s commitment season in football recruiting.
NC State has gone after a nucleus recruits for close to seven months or more.
Call it the dream recruiting class or just the recruiting board but usually you get three waves in football recruiting. Most of the players I’ve interviewed three times or more, mostly based on those three waves.
1. NC State offers a recruit and an introduction story occurs.
2. Recruit comes to a big Junior Day event.
3. General update in the recruiting process or a second Junior Day event.
At some point, the recruits get asked a simple question: Is there anything more you need to learn about NC State? That point has arrived for so many of the recruits.
Here is a quick look at the proverbial board:
Quarterback: Lex Thomas (commit)
Running backs: Daylan Smothers, Kendrick Raphael
Wide receivers: Noah Rogers, Kevin Concepcion, Nathan Leacock, Chris Lawson and maybe Chris Culliver, maybe
Tight ends/H-back: Javonte Vereen (commit), CJ Jacobsen, Ben Marshall
Offensive line: Darion Rivers (commit), Sam Pendleton, Sullivan Absher, Nolan McConnell, Charlie Symonds, Trovon Baugh, Robert Grigsby, Johnathan Cline, Nathan Efobi
Defensive line: Monteque Rhames, Kayden McDonald, Isaiah Neal, Isaiah Shirley
Linebacker: Stanquan Clark
Cornerback/nickel: Chris Peal, Zack Myers.
Safeties: Daemon Fagan, Kerry Brown
Athlete: Tamarcus Cooley
Special cases: Nose tackle Jamaal Jarrett (also a offensive lineman), defensive lineman Keith Sampson Jr. (FSU commit).
Some are way more advanced on that 1-2-3 “waves” list than others, but a lot have reached that point where they know nearly all they want to know about NC State. All have been offered by NC State, with Brown just happening. The Wolfpack need to know where they stand going into camp season in June. I also think it’s a good sign that few new offers have gone out in recent weeks. Cooley and Brown would be the newest, and both got offers after unofficially visiting the Wolfpack.
Jarrett and Sampson are examples where NC State will have to ponder how hard they want to go after them after being eliminated. Jarrett has probably come out with three or four “top X” lists since early November, but this is the first time NC State wasn’t included. He’s a happy-go-lucky guy and Georgia is clearly the leader with North Carolina likely second. Clemson just offered, and not sure LSU or Auburn really belong on that list, so truth be told, NC State is probably a distant fourth. It just has the feel of going several more months with more twists and turns.
It’s also important to note if some dominoes start to fall. I didn’t think Ohio State was the leader for Smothers, but the Buckeyes landed 6-foot-1, 225-pound running back Mark Fletcher on April 12, who is physically the opposite of Smothers. Fellow Floridian Bryson Rodgers committed to Ohio State at wide receiver April 17, which was the same weekend Rolesville (N.C.) High junior wide receiver Noah Rogers was taking his three-day unofficial visit.
That is another by-product of “commitment time.”
2. I’ve written a lot of words on Sam Pendleton since meeting him last fall.
NC State had offensive line coach John Garrison and offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Tim Beck both go to Pfafftown (N.C.) Reagan High on Tuesday, a sign the Wolfpack aren’t giving up.
If it feels like “Wow, where did Notre Dame come from?” going into his decision day April 25 — it should. The Fighting Irish offered March 16 and he just visited them. That is epitome of speed dating in the recruiting world. The dominoes on how Notre Dame has surged into the lead starts with 63-year-old Harry Hiestand, who was hired Jan. 24.
Hiestand has coached at Penn, USC, Toledo, Cincinnati, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee and now in his second stint with Notre Dame. He also had two stints with the Chicago Bears. The first stint at Notre Dame was from 2012-17 and that is where he went from coaching some OK NFL prospects to churning out pro-after-pro with the Fighting Irish.
The combination of Hiestand and Notre Dame’s academics swung this pretty fast. The trip to see Ohio State at Michigan swung it hard toward the Wolverines in late November. The repeat visits to NC State’s spring practices gave the Wolfpack a turn in the rumor mill as the leader.
If NC State lose out on its top three in-state offensive lineman targets — Pendleton, Jarrett and Belmont (N.C.) South Point’s Sullivan Absher — two junior offensive linemen to pay attention to could be Connor Drake of Charlotte Providence High (not to be confused with Providence Day) and Knightdale (N.C.) High’s Micah Sumpter.
Drake is 6-6 and 315 pounds and his best offer is Georgia Tech thus far. Some believe he’s on a short list of lineman that North Carolina will offer when they likely miss on targets.
Sumpter is a little more unique because the 6-6, 275-pounder verbally committed to Charlotte on Feb. 15, and he kind of, sort of, didn’t play on the offensive line at Knightdale. We mentioned Rolesville junior defensive tackle Carsten Casady as a great conversion project for an offensive line coach. Try this one out.
Sumpter played tight end, H-back and even did some Wildcat quarterback and defensive end at 6-6 and 275 pounds. Sumpter wore No. 14, how great is that? He legitimately caught 19 passes for 295 yards and four touchdowns, plus had 40 tackles on defense for Knightdale.
It was like watching a modified version of when Alim McNeill played middle linebacker and fullback at 260-plus pounds at Raleigh Sanderson High.
Camp season — if he wants to see if he can improve upon his Charlotte commitment — was built for guys like Sumpter.
3. We’ll call this the “art of the blowup.”
Knightdale High is also in the news for a different reason.
Ever since athlete Tamarcus Cooley left Knightdale for Rolesville High, the offers have been flowing in. Some wonder if it’s to curry favor with Noah Rogers? I don’t know that to be true because Rogers can only pick one college. It is fascinating though and time will tell if the offers are “real.”
I ventured over to Knightdale High in mid-January and Cooley got his first offer by Purdue on Dec. 7, and then offers from Coastal Carolina and North Carolina Central. So when the first story came out Jan. 19 on him in the Rivals.com network, he was a relative recruiting unknown. However, he had three key components that jumped out, at least to me.
1. He was a football player and I appreciate that. He could play wide receiver, multiple spots in the secondary, returned kicks and he even handled punting and kicked kickoffs.
2. He had good production and HUDL film, which came out Dec. 10. At the time, he wondered if because his film showed him doing so many positive things on offense and defense, that colleges weren’t sure what position to offer him.
3. He had name recognition as the younger brother of Louisville freshman running back Trevion Cooley. Back in January, the guess was the brothers wanted somewhere they could play together.
Does Rolesville have a better way to promote their players than Knightdale? I don’t know, but this much I do know, was Louisville didn’t offer Cooley at either school for a while and that might have slowed his
recruitment. Maybe colleges wondered at some point if he wasn’t good enough for Louisville, is he good enough for us?
Again, HUDL film came out Dec. 10 and just very little movement. No track times that got college coaches attention. Transferring high schools is the only thing that has changed since his film came out.
East Carolina offered Jan. 27, then James Madison on Jan. 29 and Eastern Michigan on Feb. 9. So, still a blip on the screen.
A few more weeks go by, and it became a trickle:
Feb. 23, West Virginia
Feb. 28, Minnesota and Vanderbilt
March 4, Old Dominion
March 8, Marshall
March 9, Elon
March 10, Liberty
Then NC State offers March 25 after the practice/cookout and everything changed from that point on. Purdue, WVU, Minnesota and Vanderbilt were the first P5 wave and then NC State led the next wave.
April 8, North Carolina and Louisville
April 9, Appalachian State
April 10, Charlotte
April 12, Florida
April 13, Oklahoma
April 14, Mississippi State and Penn State
April 15, South Carolina
April 17, Virginia Tech
April 21, Ole Miss
There is no player in the state of North Carolina that has blown up more since the end of the high school football season.
If asked on the “Hands In The Dirt” message board on March 27 after talking to Cooley where I thought he’d be going to college, I’d have projected NC State. Eleven new offers later, including the coveted one from Louisville, it is simply unpredictable.
NC State has gone after a nucleus recruits for close to seven months or more.
Call it the dream recruiting class or just the recruiting board but usually you get three waves in football recruiting. Most of the players I’ve interviewed three times or more, mostly based on those three waves.
1. NC State offers a recruit and an introduction story occurs.
2. Recruit comes to a big Junior Day event.
3. General update in the recruiting process or a second Junior Day event.
At some point, the recruits get asked a simple question: Is there anything more you need to learn about NC State? That point has arrived for so many of the recruits.
Here is a quick look at the proverbial board:
Quarterback: Lex Thomas (commit)
Running backs: Daylan Smothers, Kendrick Raphael
Wide receivers: Noah Rogers, Kevin Concepcion, Nathan Leacock, Chris Lawson and maybe Chris Culliver, maybe
Tight ends/H-back: Javonte Vereen (commit), CJ Jacobsen, Ben Marshall
Offensive line: Darion Rivers (commit), Sam Pendleton, Sullivan Absher, Nolan McConnell, Charlie Symonds, Trovon Baugh, Robert Grigsby, Johnathan Cline, Nathan Efobi
Defensive line: Monteque Rhames, Kayden McDonald, Isaiah Neal, Isaiah Shirley
Linebacker: Stanquan Clark
Cornerback/nickel: Chris Peal, Zack Myers.
Safeties: Daemon Fagan, Kerry Brown
Athlete: Tamarcus Cooley
Special cases: Nose tackle Jamaal Jarrett (also a offensive lineman), defensive lineman Keith Sampson Jr. (FSU commit).
Some are way more advanced on that 1-2-3 “waves” list than others, but a lot have reached that point where they know nearly all they want to know about NC State. All have been offered by NC State, with Brown just happening. The Wolfpack need to know where they stand going into camp season in June. I also think it’s a good sign that few new offers have gone out in recent weeks. Cooley and Brown would be the newest, and both got offers after unofficially visiting the Wolfpack.
Jarrett and Sampson are examples where NC State will have to ponder how hard they want to go after them after being eliminated. Jarrett has probably come out with three or four “top X” lists since early November, but this is the first time NC State wasn’t included. He’s a happy-go-lucky guy and Georgia is clearly the leader with North Carolina likely second. Clemson just offered, and not sure LSU or Auburn really belong on that list, so truth be told, NC State is probably a distant fourth. It just has the feel of going several more months with more twists and turns.
It’s also important to note if some dominoes start to fall. I didn’t think Ohio State was the leader for Smothers, but the Buckeyes landed 6-foot-1, 225-pound running back Mark Fletcher on April 12, who is physically the opposite of Smothers. Fellow Floridian Bryson Rodgers committed to Ohio State at wide receiver April 17, which was the same weekend Rolesville (N.C.) High junior wide receiver Noah Rogers was taking his three-day unofficial visit.
That is another by-product of “commitment time.”
2. I’ve written a lot of words on Sam Pendleton since meeting him last fall.
NC State had offensive line coach John Garrison and offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Tim Beck both go to Pfafftown (N.C.) Reagan High on Tuesday, a sign the Wolfpack aren’t giving up.
If it feels like “Wow, where did Notre Dame come from?” going into his decision day April 25 — it should. The Fighting Irish offered March 16 and he just visited them. That is epitome of speed dating in the recruiting world. The dominoes on how Notre Dame has surged into the lead starts with 63-year-old Harry Hiestand, who was hired Jan. 24.
Hiestand has coached at Penn, USC, Toledo, Cincinnati, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee and now in his second stint with Notre Dame. He also had two stints with the Chicago Bears. The first stint at Notre Dame was from 2012-17 and that is where he went from coaching some OK NFL prospects to churning out pro-after-pro with the Fighting Irish.
The combination of Hiestand and Notre Dame’s academics swung this pretty fast. The trip to see Ohio State at Michigan swung it hard toward the Wolverines in late November. The repeat visits to NC State’s spring practices gave the Wolfpack a turn in the rumor mill as the leader.
If NC State lose out on its top three in-state offensive lineman targets — Pendleton, Jarrett and Belmont (N.C.) South Point’s Sullivan Absher — two junior offensive linemen to pay attention to could be Connor Drake of Charlotte Providence High (not to be confused with Providence Day) and Knightdale (N.C.) High’s Micah Sumpter.
Drake is 6-6 and 315 pounds and his best offer is Georgia Tech thus far. Some believe he’s on a short list of lineman that North Carolina will offer when they likely miss on targets.
Sumpter is a little more unique because the 6-6, 275-pounder verbally committed to Charlotte on Feb. 15, and he kind of, sort of, didn’t play on the offensive line at Knightdale. We mentioned Rolesville junior defensive tackle Carsten Casady as a great conversion project for an offensive line coach. Try this one out.
Sumpter played tight end, H-back and even did some Wildcat quarterback and defensive end at 6-6 and 275 pounds. Sumpter wore No. 14, how great is that? He legitimately caught 19 passes for 295 yards and four touchdowns, plus had 40 tackles on defense for Knightdale.
It was like watching a modified version of when Alim McNeill played middle linebacker and fullback at 260-plus pounds at Raleigh Sanderson High.
Camp season — if he wants to see if he can improve upon his Charlotte commitment — was built for guys like Sumpter.
3. We’ll call this the “art of the blowup.”
Knightdale High is also in the news for a different reason.
Ever since athlete Tamarcus Cooley left Knightdale for Rolesville High, the offers have been flowing in. Some wonder if it’s to curry favor with Noah Rogers? I don’t know that to be true because Rogers can only pick one college. It is fascinating though and time will tell if the offers are “real.”
I ventured over to Knightdale High in mid-January and Cooley got his first offer by Purdue on Dec. 7, and then offers from Coastal Carolina and North Carolina Central. So when the first story came out Jan. 19 on him in the Rivals.com network, he was a relative recruiting unknown. However, he had three key components that jumped out, at least to me.
1. He was a football player and I appreciate that. He could play wide receiver, multiple spots in the secondary, returned kicks and he even handled punting and kicked kickoffs.
2. He had good production and HUDL film, which came out Dec. 10. At the time, he wondered if because his film showed him doing so many positive things on offense and defense, that colleges weren’t sure what position to offer him.
3. He had name recognition as the younger brother of Louisville freshman running back Trevion Cooley. Back in January, the guess was the brothers wanted somewhere they could play together.
Does Rolesville have a better way to promote their players than Knightdale? I don’t know, but this much I do know, was Louisville didn’t offer Cooley at either school for a while and that might have slowed his
recruitment. Maybe colleges wondered at some point if he wasn’t good enough for Louisville, is he good enough for us?
Again, HUDL film came out Dec. 10 and just very little movement. No track times that got college coaches attention. Transferring high schools is the only thing that has changed since his film came out.
East Carolina offered Jan. 27, then James Madison on Jan. 29 and Eastern Michigan on Feb. 9. So, still a blip on the screen.
A few more weeks go by, and it became a trickle:
Feb. 23, West Virginia
Feb. 28, Minnesota and Vanderbilt
March 4, Old Dominion
March 8, Marshall
March 9, Elon
March 10, Liberty
Then NC State offers March 25 after the practice/cookout and everything changed from that point on. Purdue, WVU, Minnesota and Vanderbilt were the first P5 wave and then NC State led the next wave.
April 8, North Carolina and Louisville
April 9, Appalachian State
April 10, Charlotte
April 12, Florida
April 13, Oklahoma
April 14, Mississippi State and Penn State
April 15, South Carolina
April 17, Virginia Tech
April 21, Ole Miss
There is no player in the state of North Carolina that has blown up more since the end of the high school football season.
If asked on the “Hands In The Dirt” message board on March 27 after talking to Cooley where I thought he’d be going to college, I’d have projected NC State. Eleven new offers later, including the coveted one from Louisville, it is simply unpredictable.
