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Texas A&M Football

Recruiting Country: The latest recruiting news surrounding the Maroon & White

February 1, 2023
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TexAgs' recruiting analyst Ryan Brauninger joined TexAgs Radio on Wednesday morning for another edition of Recruiting Country, highlighting the latest news and notes from the recruiting trail following Texas A&M's Junior Day weekends.



Key notes from Recruiting Country

  • It’s National Signing Day, and there is nothing happening. We are not expecting any new news.
     
  • A&M was not real aggressive in this previous transfer portal window. It was a mixture of being not aggressive and not successful. I don't think it's coaching malpractice not to have 85 guys to start spring, but you need to get there. You need another corner. You’d like a linebacker. Also, some depth at tackle. What happens with the portal will be interesting to follow. I will be interested to see how they go about it.
     
  • You look at the roster on campus, and it’s good. It’s lacking in terms of depth. The starting 22, you feel good about. The more time together will result in better production. You feel good about running back. Receiver, I would like another guy there depending what happens with Ainias Smith. You need one more depth piece at corner. You feel good about linebacker starters. I think you need one more.
     
  • The recruiting messaging has changed. There is a clear differentiation in what the message was a year ago and now. They are making sure they are looking at culture. They are being very specific about who they bring in. If you are trying to get a kid out of the portal, but they want X amount of money, that’s a huge red flag. I think it’s more of “What can you do for Texas A&M?”
     
  • I talked to Ashton Funk‍ and his dad, and I asked about Bobby Petrino. The dad shook his head and said he is really impressive. He is upbeat, positive, wants to score a bunch of points and wants to cater his offense to the guys they have. He was at Marcel Reed‍’s basketball game. He has been in Arkansas. He’s really in Ryan Wingo‍’s recruitment because he coached his older brother at Arkansas. He is off to as good of a start as you can have in.
     
  • Funk visited back-to-back weekends. He told me he was pumped to take over the 2024 class with Dealyn Evans‍ and Debron Gatling‍. I would expect to see Funk on campus a whole lot.
     
  • Drelon Miller‍ and Micah Hudson stayed the night. Miller hung out with Bryce Anderson. Miller backed out of going to Florida to come to A&M. I feel comfortable saying A&M is in the top five for both. Jason Howell and I will be getting out soon to do our spring.
     
  • Davi Belfort‍ reclassified into 2024. I don't know that it's going to be the Aggies, but he has great respect for the university. I think he will stay close to home in Florida.
Discussion from...

Recruiting Country: The latest recruiting news surrounding the Maroon & White

10,964 Views | 14 Replies | Last: 1 yr ago by Ag in ATL
Caesar4
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Magpie 2.0
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Recruiting is like the weather right now. Frozen. But Petrino will be a difference maker. Mark it.
Matsui
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Bogey1996
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I feel like I'm the only one worried about our LB quality and depth. After our misses in HS recruiting the last couple years, I think we should have gone hard after SEC caliber LB's in the portal. I know we ridiculously go with a 3-2 or 4-2 front, but we only have basically one LB that would maybe make the 2 deep in the top teams of the SEC. Since we didn't get Hill or Perkins, did we just give up? Heck tu had at least 3 LB's rated higher than our highest rated LB in this cycle. We can only hope we found some sleepers.

Our rushing defense could be as bad as it was last year.
fieldtrailer
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AG
Some good potential players, but not nearly enough.

When will Texags do a deep dive and find the root cause to the ridiculous 2023 recruiting throughout 2022? Both the process and results. Beginning with Saban claiming Fisher bought entire 2022 class, losing the best coach on the team, replacing him with a coach with a completely different scheme which this team is not built for, Losing a good oline coach and hiring an oline coach that has no wow factor with recruits and is awful at his job, thru a summer where he did nothing while watching everyone land early commits, schedule official visits when it was not allowed, thru a season that included ridiculous offensive performances, the post season where he fired only one of what should have been all of the offensive coaches, hired an OC which did nothing to excite the recruits, up until today (National Signing Day) where Fisher has not signed anyone.

The DC uses a scheme that includes a 3 man defensive line and can't recruit or obtain thru the portal, You have to recruit yearly 18-22 top 300 players to remain competitive. Fisher had one last year and is back to the historical 9 to 11 we get every year. It's not even close to being enough to compete. Especially with Fisher's record of developing players (or lack of) since he's been here.




Aggie1188
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Linebacker is a huge weakness outside Cooper. We really need 2-3 great LBs, and we have only 1.
Aggie1188
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OL was the biggest difference in our 9-1 season and our 5-7 season. We have got to recruit OL better if we want to win a title.
Meximan
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Bogey1996 said:

I feel like I'm the only one worried about our LB quality and depth. After our misses in HS recruiting the last couple years, I think we should have gone hard after SEC caliber LB's in the portal. I know we ridiculously go with a 3-2 or 4-2 front, but we only have basically one LB that would maybe make the 2 deep in the top teams of the SEC. Since we didn't get Hill or Perkins, did we just give up? Heck tu had at least 3 LB's rated higher than our highest rated LB in this cycle. We can only hope we found some sleepers.

Our rushing defense could be as bad as it was last year.
I believe in Taurean York. I have not seen a linebacker that naturally instinctive since Ray Lewis. Baltimore Ravens Ray Lewis, that is, not college Lewis.

I've seen a few 5 star guys be physically impressive, but York is on another level entirely, beyond the physical freaks.
Meximan
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fieldtrailer said:

Some good potential players, but not nearly enough.

When will Texags do a deep dive and find the root cause to the ridiculous 2023 recruiting throughout 2022? Both the process and results. Beginning with Saban claiming Fisher bought entire 2022 class, losing the best coach on the team, replacing him with a coach with a completely different scheme which this team is not built for, Losing a good oline coach and hiring an oline coach that has no wow factor with recruits and is awful at his job, thru a summer where he did nothing while watching everyone land early commits, schedule official visits when it was not allowed, thru a season that included ridiculous offensive performances, the post season where he fired only one of what should have been all of the offensive coaches, hired an OC which did nothing to excite the recruits, up until today (National Signing Day) where Fisher has not signed anyone.

The DC uses a scheme that includes a 3 man defensive line and can't recruit or obtain thru the portal, You have to recruit yearly 18-22 top 300 players to remain competitive. Fisher had one last year and is back to the historical 9 to 11 we get every year. It's not even close to being enough to compete. Especially with Fisher's record of developing players (or lack of) since he's been here.





There is no one root cause, but several causes. The 2021 season was subpar, and subpar seasons' recruiting impact the following recruiting cycle. 2022 was the result of the excellent 2020 Covid year.

Anthony Hill did decommit specifically because of the defensive shortcomings this last season, but that doesn't happen often, and he was still a lean even after the decommit. Durkin's scheme turned off a few recruits, but this season didn't factor in as heavily as people think it did.

Inconsistency in the assistant coach ranks doesn't help. Re: Petrino's hire, just about every parent and kid who's had contact has had nothing but positive things to say. Surprisingly he seems to be hitting recruiting with gusto, and apparently he had never been keen on recruiting which is... odd. Maybe he just didn't like being the head coach as well as the lead recruiter.

Fisher has never worked the portal hard as he believes in recruiting high schoolers over taking transfers. He also apparently is (maybe smartly) staying away from tampering as much as he can, which is keen when you have t.u. looking over your shoulder for every possible rules violation. Remember that they tried to pop Fisher on a very, very minor thing just a couple years ago and they basically threw the book as hard as they could at him for a very insignificant infraction. Other schools are watching.

If you adjust the class for transfers, last I heard it was actually ranked 8. That hasn't been a thing until this year, but the class is actually stronger than people think it is. It doesn't have a lot of flash, but it's solid. They got like, 10 or 12 starters out of the freshman class last year which is just ridiculous, and most were the very, very highly rated players. Realistically, if you were being recruited and you knew that maybe 16 to 18 out of 22 possible starting positions were locked down for the next two or three years and you were likely going to be a career backup, where would you go? You'd go elsewhere.

TL;DR, It's too early to jump off bridges. A lot of things combined at once, but the class isn't near as bad as people think it is. They've got some really impressive players coming in. Taurean York and Reuben Owens are going to be studs.
Z Team
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AG
No one seems to recognize we lost our recruiting coordinator to Oregon and it's not been the same since. Another factor along with the many others that were not positive factors. I'm not actually sure if we ever replaced him yet.
DTuba
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I guess that's one way to look at that.

I still don't see the problem with our recruiting class. The plan was always to take fewer and be more selective. I guess its just more magnified because a misstep with a smaller class is more noticeable.
AWP 97
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AG
If the plan was to take a smaller class and be more selective, then that was a poor plan. Anyone with a brain knew we were going to have a high turnover and needed to bring in a large class. I'm fine with being selective but talking yourself into reaches is comical.
Ag in ATL
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AG
"Taurean York and Reuben Owens are going to be studs."

I would add David Hicks to that list.
Ag in ATL
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AG
Aggie1188 said:

OL was the biggest difference in our 9-1 season and our 5-7 season. We have got to recruit OL better if we want to win a title.
IMHO the key that difference was the lack of numbers and class balance, IIRC we lost 4 OL starters from the 9-1 squad to the league and injuries. We also had injuries last year which forced multiple fish into service when they would have been better served with a RS. Getting them SEC experience will pay off in the long run but in the short run it was painful.
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