So despite the year weāve had, playing in the ACC championship with a shot at the playoffs, and the number of programs who have fired their coaches, we arenāt looking like weāll flip a single guy or add anything to this extremely poorly ranked class?
Of course weāll go to the portal well again and hopefully it yields the same results, but yeesh.
Franklin was the right hire at the right time to basically wall us off from flipping both VT and PSU commits. Is what it is, get mad at the PSU AD for firing him in October.
Disappointed we couldnāt capitalize on shitshows at Cuse and UNC though.
Donāt be worried about HS recruiting. Just doesnāt matter remotely close to as much anymore. Half of them will never pan out and transfer, then some of the other half will still end up transferring anyway. Just the way it is. Very few will stick around long enough to develop into quality players and stay the full 4-5 years.
Iām not trying to āwinā HS recruiting like a Blue Blood or get a 40-man class like UNC. But I still think itās part of building a sustainable talent foundation. We struck gold this year with so many transfers coming together fast enough to win. But the defense struggled early working in so many new faces (in Kamās absence, admittedly) and the offense benefitted from incumbents at four of five spots on the OL (Boley, Josey, Metcalf, and Witmer/York). I still want to get the a point that the 2-deep in any given year is 2/3 returners who already know the playbook and have chemistry with teammates, transfers filling in holes.
In other words, transfers are great, but we also had a healthy percentage of of key contributors this year we recruited out of HS.
Yeah its about depth and not having to pull a rabbit out of your hat every year. Itās such a tightrope to walk and its expensive to rely on a raft of transfers every year. Eventually youāll strike out at a high enough rate that you fall and you wonāt have any guys in the building already that you can lean back on.
With kids out of high school in your program you have more information on them by the time the portal opens each season and can make better portal decisions around your needs, and hopefully need to make less of them so you can stretch your scouting and monetary resources further. You get a cheap look at these guys for a season and an edge on retention and that still very valuable.
Weāll probably see it in 2027 (weāve got a good start to that class and have a big commit incoming), though I donāt ever expect us to have highly ranked HS classes for a variety of reasons.
The 2026 class was already pretty deep into their recruitment process by the time we started winning. And 14 of the transfers we signed last year could possibly come back next season.
The focus from the staff seems to be to sign players who can contribute in 1-2 years, not 3-4. The HS players that can play right away arenāt going to sign up to sit behind transfers. I think weāll ultimately settle on a balance of 10-15 HS signees, 10-15 transfers. We do a better job of retaining players so our churn is less extreme and we donāt need monster classes every season.
We have a talented squad this year. Sure the money helped but I donāt think our model is necessarily as unsustainable as some seem to think, especially given the success of this year. The two players who were probably the hardest to sign and money was really the only reason we had a chance didnāt even play this season (Mills and Thomas). Morris was obviously unique due to our relationship with him but again, itāll be easier to get the next QB given his success.
Signing Day used to be like a national holiday for CFB junkies. I didnāt realize it was today until 2 days ago.
Same note too bro. Same note too
Chandler Morris is trying to get on the never leave college timeline.
https://twitter.com/prestonwillett/status/1996258470392193194?s=46&t=vkjgQUekzGC7z44tIfnIRQ
Played only four games in each of the 2021 and 2022 seasons, question is whether one of those was an injury-related limitation on games played.
I like Chandlerās thinking here. Stick around college get paid earn a PhD.
Iām all for team never graduate. The greater Charlotte Financial district will always be there next year.
I bet weād have a job for him on staff whenever heās done too, though I donāt think itās impossible for him to get a shot in the league (though obviously heād make way more money in college). I think itās highly likely he ends up coaching some day and on Elliottās staff is an ideal place to start.
I think this is a fascinating article.
Hopefully we use everything at our disposal within the rules to compete. Back in the day Chris Weinke was like 28 at FSU.
But he looked 48.
I just looked it up. He won the Heisman at 28.
If he can make another million bucks to play 1 more season of college football, more power to him! Heās got little to no NFL future and he can make more in a season than I made in my entire 20s. Also would be great for our chances of winning lots of games next season too.
It is disappointing we didnāt have a better class with so much turmoil in the region and weāre 1 win away from an ACC championship and CFB Playoffs appearance. Tech was transitioning, Maryland stealing a recruit with a lame duck coach, UNC pure chaos. Hopefully the money is there for the portal and we get more interest due to our success.
If I understand HS recruiting we shouldnāt expect this to pay dividends in 2026, as the actual recruiting doesnāt overlap with that class. We should see dividends in 2027 and 2028 classes though