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

TexAgs' recruiting analyst Ryan Brauninger joined TexAgs Live on Wednesday morning for another edition of Recruiting Country presented by American Momentum Bank, highlighting the latest news and notes from the recruiting and transfer portal trail surrounding Texas A&M.

Key notes from Recruiting Country

• People are going to get so upset. We're not talking about recruiting. Let me tell you something, if you're waiting for recruiting talk, there's not much going on until June 1. The coaches are on the road.
   
• Official visits start coinciding with that in early June. I think June 7 is the first official visit weekend. Jason Howell is probably listening and will text me and tell me I'm wrong. When baseball gets going like this, all my dates run together, because I'm trying to balance when are potential regionals, when are potential Super Regionals, what's going on at A&M. It all kind of runs together.
   
• Those football camps, we know they've been really important going back to the Jimbo Fisher years. Mike Elko did a phenomenal job in his first summer of getting real talent from across the country to campus, and I also believe, especially in the first week of June, we are going to see names.
   
• Jayden Warren‍ from Iowa Colony, maybe. A wide receiver who has an offer, who has put up some impressive times on the track this spring, and A&M has some receivers committed, but they don't have a guy who can take the top off. This is different from Ernest Campbell because Warren made his name as a football player and then started running track times that everybody went, "Oh, he can play football, and he runs this on the track?" He had a super productive season there at Iowa Colony.
   
• Warren is a player that I personally hope A&M makes a big push for. I think that when you look at his profile as a receiver and then look at those track numbers, and look at some of the games he had against top-tier competition in that sector of Southwest Houston, I really like what he put on tape as a junior and I think he's poised for a big senior season.
   
• I think the A&M staff is just trying to work through their big board. There are kids who could come to campus, and the coaches go, "Oh, yeah. That's a guy we really want." Similarly, there will be kids that come in that A&M coaches were maybe a little bit higher on, and they go, "Ah, I don't know if he fits what we're looking for."
   
• I'm always super interested in those weeks of camp to see who rises and falls in the eyes of the coaches. You hate to make full evaluations whenever they're running around in shorts and shirts, and not real pads, but it's just another data point. It's another big data point because it's not the coaches going on the road to these high schools, seeing the kids maybe run around during their period. This is the kids coming to them, and they get to coach them. They get to press on them and see how they respond to technique tweaks, or do they grasp in 7-on-7 or running Cover 2. They go, "We really like him. He can run. He can cover. He has all of those NFL measurables that we're looking for, but how does his brain work? Let's put him in some situations to see how his brain works. How does he comprehend football? Does he love football?"
   
• I've often said that I think one of the questions that Elko has really put to the forefront in terms of their high school prospects is, "Can he play here? Does he have all the physical attributes that we require or that are necessities to play in the SEC? And then, does he love football?" Because I think, especially in this era where there's NIL and open transfers, if you don't love football, it will be tough for you to stick anywhere and grow your roots. That's still the plan for A&M. Recruit their high school guys, get them planted here, let them grow their roots so they can develop into the best player that they can become here, and not somewhere else.
   
• There's a lot that can go into those evaluations when kids come to campus and the coaches get to work with them one-on-one. The new indoor has been insanely useful. It has provided them great utility for these summer camps since it's so stinking hot, whereas the last one, that little bubble they had, got super hot inside, and it was limited in space. This place stays cool. It's bigger. You can run entire camps if they want to inside that indoor facility. You are also getting a really clean look at players where they're not kind of succumbing to the elements around them. Obviously, that's part of the evaluation, but if you're making evaluations on a kid, you're going to put them through so many movements in a camp that whether they're indoors or outdoors, they're going to be tired.
   
• One of the things that Fisher did that I didn't like at those camps was that the first 30 minutes were their fourth quarter drills. Everybody in camp went through this really strenuous and vigorous conditioning work. They would do that first, and then obviously you'd water them, and then you'd send them to their position-specific groups where they would work with the coaches, and a lot of that was done outside. Then, at the end of the day, you would have them run 40s. I'm like, "Man, you're asking a lot out of a kid."
   
• Some of them were coming from their strength and conditioning camps at their schools, so they would be up at 5:00 a.m., they'd be going to their workouts, and then they'd be driving up to College Station for camp. You've really taxed these kids, so how clean of a look and how clean of an evaluation are you really going to get if they're completely sat? That was one thing that I wish Fisher had done differently. Elko has structured his camps different, where they're going to get them warm, and then they start going into real football stuff, and then later they do some drill work to see how they respond.
   
• We can go through some of these position groups. We started talking about receivers a little bit. I mentioned Warren, and obviously, they have Madden Williams‍, Mike Brown‍ and Aaron Gregory‍ committed.
   
• We're moving Gregory to a five-star. He's incredibly good. He might be the best receiver in the country. This is a walk-in, play day one kind of player. He was slight and skinny about a year ago, but he was showing the athletic gifts, and now, he's starting to hold some weight. I'm telling you what, his offseason tape when he goes to these 7-on-7 events, and when he goes to these showcase events, he is just off the charts good. That's a player that A&M is going to have to fight tooth and nail to hang onto, but he is a game-changer at receiver.
   
• Then you've got Williams and Brown. How many do they go to? Do they go to five receivers? It will kind of depend on what you think about your young guys on campus. You have Mario Craver for probably at least one more year. KC Concepcion is going to leave. Ashton Bethel-Roman, you're super high on. Izaiah Williams started to turn a corner. There is some young talent. You have Jerome Myles‍, Kelshaun Johnson and TK Norman, and you're going, "Man, the young talent in the room is promising, but how can you ever bet on it in today's age?"
   
• I think this receiving group can get to five. When you have three committed, you look at Boobie Feaster‍ out of DeSoto, obviously he's not going anywhere in terms of a target. I think Kaydon Finley‍ at Aledo is still very much in the mix for A&M and Warren in the state. Out of state, they're working on Tristen Keys‍, a five-star out of Mississippi. He's committed to LSU, but they've done a good job getting him on campus. There are some targets coast to coast that I think they are still in on, but here in the state, those would be the three names that I think, not all three, but two of three or even one of the three, could find their way into the A&M class in Feaster, Finley and Warren.
   
• Running back is interesting, again, because when you look at what will be leaving the roster and what will be retained on the roster. EJ Smith will be out of eligibility next year. Amari Daniels will be out of eligibility. Le'Veon Moss, I think, has one more year, but he isn't staying for that one more year. If he has another good year, he's going to the NFL. So those are three names that have a lot of carries that are going to be off the roster. 
   
• Now, I feel really good about Jamarion Morrow, and I feel really good about Deondrae Riden, but you have to go out in this high school class. You nabbed your No. 1 guy, who, again, when you're talking about best running backs in the country, I think you'd have to put Jonathan Hatton Jr‍ in that conversation. No doubt. Also, not far off of that conversation would be KJ Edwards‍ out of Carthage. If you can get both of those in a class, Trooper Taylor would have a huge feather in his hat. I think it's going to be tough.
   
• I believe A&M is in a great position for Edwards. I know he has some predictions for Texas, but I still think A&M is in a great spot for Edwards. They're also in a great spot for his teammate, DaQuives Beck‍, and they're very, very tight. I think A&M surging with Beck is going to help them with Edwards. I've always been under the impression that it was going to be hard to sign both of them because they're both so stinking good, but the way Taylor has gone about the business of recruiting both of them throughout this cycle, I'm starting to warm up to the idea.
   
• Tight end, so you've got Caleb Tafua‍ committed, and you also had Xavier Tiller‍ committed at one point, so I do think they are keen on taking two in this class. Again, you look at the current roster, and it makes sense to me that you're going to take two in this class. Where that comes from is still very much up in the air, but I would lean out of state.
   
• When you look at Luke Sorensen‍ in California, Evan Jacobson‍ in Iowa and Matt Ludwig‍ out of Montana, those are three names that really stand out from all over the country. I think A&M will press there. They were looking at James Scott‍ out of Oak Ridge as kind of that Amari Niblack role, but based off everything I've heard out of that area of extreme North Houston, it doesn't sound like that's what the kid envisions himself as, so I think those two sides have moved away from each other. In state, I thought that was A&M's route at tight end for right now, was Scott. So, they're going to look out of state, and those three names really come to the forefront for me.
   
• Corner, Dorian Barney‍ is a kid that A&M has been really close with. They've walked right up to the line multiple times to get that kid committed, and it just hasn't happened yet. The kid wanted to take some more official visits, and A&M went home and saw him, I believe, last night. I like where A&M is at for him. Outside of that, that corner pool is pretty big, and I think that is a position, I should have said this when we were talking about summer camps, but that is a position where those kids that come in for camp, some of those kids could really, really help themselves in the eyes of the coaching staff. I think Jordan Peterson will be looking to get in a lot of in-state and out-of-state names to come in and evaluate.
   
• Corner, again, we could be close to having some turnover there, and this coaching and recruiting staff seems like they're very high on all of those positions they just brought in the 2025 class. I think they believe they hit at a lot of spots, and corner is one of them. With Adonyss Currie, Jamar Beal-Goines and Deyjhon Pettaway, they feel like they did a really good job there, but they're going to have to keep stacking that to be successful in this league because of the kind of receivers you go against and the kind of quarterbacks you go against.
   
• Corner is probably the most muddy picture to me right now. Brandon Arrington‍ out of California, obviously a five-star kid that could play wide receiver or corner. You're looking at Paris Melvin Jr‍, he's more of a nickel out of Cy Springs. Melvin could be a guy who comes to camp and A&M goes, "Oh, yeah, we're all in." Whereas Arrington could come to camp and have every ball go over his head for touchdowns, and I think A&M would still go, "OK, but those are elite measurables right there."

• I forgot to mention a name at corner Jordan Thomas‍. He is from Bergen Catholic in New Jersey, and he is teammates with Jermaine Kinsler‍. I interviewed him after the Maroon & White Game, and he had a ton of good stuff to say about A&M. If you are trying to run out your cornerback board, I would make sure you have Thomas on there.