I picked a C as well. I think the O-Line has some potentially and I like Demry as well as Femi-Cole. However compared to the rest of the Big Ten and we assume that hits or misses on recruits being equal across all teams we really didn't prove a lot. The question is will a rivals 50 class equate to a Big Ten west division title in a few years
What grade would you give the Gophers 2015 recruiting class?
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nsmike
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If you watched the video of him with Coach Claeys commentary he referred to him as a linebacker with Waters he referred to him as a Mike LB. I don't see the coaches bringing in two Mike LBs in the same recruiting class.
GophersInIowa
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Rodgers, Oseland, and Femi-Cole are absolutely guys who could come in and play right away if needed in my opinion (Rodgers will play right away for sure). A couple of the other DB's probably could contribute as well. Same with the WR's.
Any grade below a solid B is silly. There are a lot of really good football players ion the group. I love guys like Beebe and Witham both can really play. The OL and DBs are awesome, all the RBs are better than any Brewster brought on board his entire tenure and have a chance to be special and our QB has a huge upside. I really like the class. Good job Jerry and crew.
MNGoldenGophers1
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Ask me in a few years. In the mean time, I trust Kill & Co. more than any rankings by so called experts.
I went with a "C", kind of hard to know what a fair grading system is for this staff as they just still are struggling to get many guys with other B1G offers. First the positives: love the DB group and the OL group. I have a good feeling about Craighton in particular at DB, even though he's one of the lower rated guys. In the OL group, Oseland has one of the more impressive offer lists of any of our recruits and Connelly seems like he might be a good enough athlete to play LT.
Things I didn't like:
Finishing below Northwestern, Indiana and Illinois in average stars. Only Purdue and Rutgers had a lower average star ranking than the Gophers and a tie for 12th out of 14 teams in the league is not where we want to be. Since stars certainly are not everything, I was also disappointed by some things this class was missing:
A long defensive end: I was hoping we'd add a Cockran type DE to this class as we could use some more length and pass rush potential at DE
Linebacker: The staff seemed to hit on a couple of unheralded recruits last year at this position, but this is the second year in a row where we are not bringing in a freshman linebacker who we had much competition for.
Explosiveness at WR: I feel like we badly needed to add a WR that can win a route in his first couple steps and get separation early. Register and Still both seem like more deep route/red zone guys and not guys that are going to give a QB an easy throw on 3rd and 7 or guys who are going to make people miss in the open field. That's not to say I don't think they can be good players, just that I think their route trees will probably be limited and don't look like guys who will get in and out of breaks quickly.
Running Back: This could very well look silly in a couple of years (if not in the opening game), but I just wasn't wowed by any of the RB's in this class. I like Brooks the best of the 3 and his Georgia Tech offer is the only offer of significance in the group. It feels like a team that ran the ball ~70% of the time could add a back with more options.
Things I didn't like:
Finishing below Northwestern, Indiana and Illinois in average stars. Only Purdue and Rutgers had a lower average star ranking than the Gophers and a tie for 12th out of 14 teams in the league is not where we want to be. Since stars certainly are not everything, I was also disappointed by some things this class was missing:
A long defensive end: I was hoping we'd add a Cockran type DE to this class as we could use some more length and pass rush potential at DE
Linebacker: The staff seemed to hit on a couple of unheralded recruits last year at this position, but this is the second year in a row where we are not bringing in a freshman linebacker who we had much competition for.
Explosiveness at WR: I feel like we badly needed to add a WR that can win a route in his first couple steps and get separation early. Register and Still both seem like more deep route/red zone guys and not guys that are going to give a QB an easy throw on 3rd and 7 or guys who are going to make people miss in the open field. That's not to say I don't think they can be good players, just that I think their route trees will probably be limited and don't look like guys who will get in and out of breaks quickly.
Running Back: This could very well look silly in a couple of years (if not in the opening game), but I just wasn't wowed by any of the RB's in this class. I like Brooks the best of the 3 and his Georgia Tech offer is the only offer of significance in the group. It feels like a team that ran the ball ~70% of the time could add a back with more options.
So his comment is untrue? Have you bothered to look at the offers most of these kids had? Hey, welcome to the U and I hope Jerry coaches them up....but seriously, don't be so intellectually lazy.
Ski U Master
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Don't worry, people here don't believe in the rankings (unless the Gophs are ranked highly of course!)
Maxx was a 2 star recruit who played QB in high school. And Kill turned him into a top three round NFL talent. C? Kill knows how to recruit the people that fit his system and knows how to develop kids into great players. Of course we aren't getting the 4-5* recruits like Ohio state, but Kill recruits the players that fit his system and can become the caliber-players that can play great their rs. junior/senior years. Give it a B just in the fact that whoever is running the ball will have some maulers in front of him to get huge chunks of yards.
btowngopher
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How many times do we have to hear the rankings don't matter cause Maxx? Also what site had him rated as a 2 star? Rivals and 247 had him as a 3. If you want to give the class a B or an A than what grade are you giving the other big10 teams?
Yeah, that's what i was thinking. We're bottom, way bottom tier on the rankings and you have people giving it an A? Ohio State must be a AAAAAAA+ class.
Tip Da Bartender
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It's easy to feel confident when your class is littered with 4* recruits or guys that have a handful of offers from other Big 5 schools. But our staff knows what they are looking for and Kill and co identified a lot of guys pretty early in the process and they locked them up and kept them. Much earlier than in years past IIRC.
I gave the grade a C due to what I think is our biggest need and that is QB. It seems like we selected a project without a lot of experience. This would be fine if Streveler had shown more promise as a passer, McKinzy hadn't transferred and our QB coach had actually show in the past 4 seasons that he is capable of developing a passer. Now Croft may be the next Ricky Foggie, but I'd like to have seen us hedge our bet and take another QB just in case he's not.
I gave the grade a C due to what I think is our biggest need and that is QB. It seems like we selected a project without a lot of experience. This would be fine if Streveler had shown more promise as a passer, McKinzy hadn't transferred and our QB coach had actually show in the past 4 seasons that he is capable of developing a passer. Now Croft may be the next Ricky Foggie, but I'd like to have seen us hedge our bet and take another QB just in case he's not.
gophmeister
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I gave it an A for effort. Finding guys like Winston D and R. Still and having the courage to offer them scholarships deserves some kudos. As an aside, I think Jerry Kill & Co. have won enough trust to where they can do things like offer guys who only have one offer from an obscure FCS or zero offers. That said, I don't think we reached on anyone and the zero de-commits is pretty impressive all things considered (Almonzo Brown's decommit was not his choice). They are taking risks on some kids and trusting themselves but in the end I think they got enough guys to keep things rolling.
Bayfieldgopher
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C
At this point, they are all a bunch of "Paper Lions".
At this point, they are all a bunch of "Paper Lions".
TheBulldog
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I need to preface this by saying that I really like this class, and love the way Jerry Kill has turned this program around. This is a strictly black/white, generalizd, "recrutiing ranking" opinion.
Exactly. You are totally right. It seems that everyone on here lately is "anti-star/ranking" becuase of examples that can be counted on two hands, and one game (the 2015 Super Bowl) in the NFL without a 5-star recruit in it. Did anyone go look at past all past superbowls since the rankings systems were implemented? Or, the ratio of 4-star recruits to be All-American/All-Conference in realtion to their entire population, compared to 2-star recruits over the past, say, 10 years? Frankly, the statistical data would blow these "anti-rankers" out of the water. Deep down, they know it, and they're in denial because their favorite team has been at a recruiting disadvantage for a number of years.
Is it always 100% accurate? Of course not, but neither are your doctors....does that refute modern medicine? There is human judgement involved. Although they are not always 100% accurate, they're probably 90% accurate, which is pretty darn good. Give me a stock broker or sports betting advisor that is 90% and I'll shut my mouth and take my money to the bank.
If getting these highly touted recruits doesn't matter, then why is there hundereds of millions of dollars spent to recruit these "4 and 5 star" players every year? Do you think it could be because the powers-at-be at the school think that it will increase their odds of success, and in-turn more revenue?
For all you blackjack players out there, would you prefer a 15 to a 20, simply because on the previous shoe you hit a 6 on a 15, and the dealer back doored a 21 on your 20? Sounds ridiculous doesn't it?
And, funny, the team used as an example for getting 4 and 5 star recruits (aOSU) in another post above, just basically did a complete rebuild to a national championship in less time than it took Kill to get above .500 in the B1G. You know what the difference between the programs is? Recruits.....nearly all of whom were ranked higher than the players the Gophers recruited.
Saying recruiting rankings don't matter, and are totally inaccurate, because of a few outliers is just ridiculous, and its spreading like wildfire around here. Can Kill win without big time recruits? Sure, he's shown he can win, to an extent. But, this program would obviously be better, faster, and sustain for a longer period of time, if he brought in a bunch of 4 star recruits.
Also, we helped build a great stadium, with spendy practice facilities on the way, and just had our ticket prices jacked up because because "that's what it takes to compete at that level." I'll be the first to say, I completely agree to all of that, and am willing to pay for greatness. Well, you know what else you need to compete (and I mean win B1G championships, not one for two cute little runs at the B1G West once in a while) at "that level?" Recruits.
MNVCGUY
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Well stated. Kill and his staff deserve some leeway because they have shown then can be successful with lower ranked recruiting classes (still have not established where the ceiling is but competitive and respectable for sure). Where I think some posters in here get lost a little is in believing that Kill and his staff don't even want those high rated guys and are going out and handpicking guys that fit their system.
I guarantee most of those high ranked guys would fit our systems just fine, the reality is that for one reason or another this staff is not able to get those guys to commit. So they do the best with what they can get and again to this point they have done pretty well with that.
die hard gopher
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Well I would consider this class to possibly be Kill's best yet while OSU's class is slightly below average for their standards especially considering they are coming off a national championship. It's all relative to your previous classes IMO.
WAGopher
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The original question is open ended in the sense it doesn't qualify itself with something like 'as compared to Ohio State,' or 'the rest of the B1G,' or for you NoDaks, 'NDSU.'
Answering each of those questions would most likely result in a different answer from each of us. Personally, my B+ was the result of weighing my answer against what Kill was trying to accomplish and how well he met those goals, and not from a comparison with any other school.
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nsmike
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People are expecting quantum leaps in the quality of recruiting, that's not going to happen, this class has little less star power but a lot more potential than last years class. If you look at the tapes of this year recruits they are all very athletic but a lot of them are unpolished in their football skills. They have good measuables especially the OL and DBs. I really think that in terms of overall ability we compare favorably to all the other B1G West schools. I really think that it's next years class that may be a breakthrough class in terms of ratings especially if Carter Coughlin commits. If we get 10 to 12 highly rated commits and the normal 4/5 under the radar steal it could be an epic class.
justthefacts
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To that point:
Cecil Hurt @CecilHurt
For the "no 5-stars in the Super Bowl" guys: there were 15 in the College Football Playoff. So maybe it sort of matters.
Johnny Olson
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The Gopher Staff did submit offers to twelve Blue Chip Players. There were Ten 4 star Players and two with 5 stars.
WR Trent Irwin (5*)
TE Jalen Wilkerson
RB Eric Swinney
RB Bradrick Shaw
OL Brandon Kennedy
OL Grant Schmidt
DE Jashon Cornell
LB Asmar Bilal
CB Michael Jackson
CB Kevin Toliverll (5*)
S Arrington Farrar
S Mykelti Williams
WR Trent Irwin (5*)
TE Jalen Wilkerson
RB Eric Swinney
RB Bradrick Shaw
OL Brandon Kennedy
OL Grant Schmidt
DE Jashon Cornell
LB Asmar Bilal
CB Michael Jackson
CB Kevin Toliverll (5*)
S Arrington Farrar
S Mykelti Williams
gandharva
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Listening to Coach Kill at the press conference he stated that we have won the jug and the pig and beat Nebraska twice running because we had better players. He didn't say more talented or more highly rated players but better players. Since we have consistently ranked in the bottom fourth of BIG recruiting somehow those players got better. Our strength and conditioning is superior. Our players fit into our system and most important our coaches make them better men and better football players. I mention the term football players because the goal is to produce a team of football players who are winners. To do this the staff finds smart kids who know how to play football and makes them bigger, stronger and quicker. They also find kids who are smart and good citizens who are very athletic and teach them how to play football. They recruit good people from good families. What they wind up with is a group of fine young men who understand their system inside and out, who respect and enjoy their coaches and teammates. Who have taken on the personality of their coach who is proud yet humble and a fighter who never gives up. Coach Kill has been at this a long time and he knows what kind of players and culture win football games and he knows how to create that situation. He does it right. Peterson won at Boise St. with 3 stars, Patterson has won at TCU with 3 stars, D'Antonio won at MSU with 3 stars. After a number of years of success they started getting higher rated players. Kill is a winner and will start getting the higher ranked players as well but we need several years of consistent success. Kill said seven years and we are in year five and I'm happy with where we are and where we are going. That's all I need. The speculation and analysis is fun but we have who we have and we'll live with who they become. When was the last time we were proud of our program? I'm sorry but for me it was under Murray Warmath. But I am proud once more, even if it only took 50 years.
We all can't be as enlightened as you about the wonders of your Golden God.