As he does every year around this time of year, Matt Hinton at his Dr. Saturday blog takes a comprehensive look at the “recruiting-industrial complex,” his way of supporting the “premium information” recruiting machine that drives a multi-million dollar industry and makes celebrities of teenage football players while turning grown up football fans like us into raving lunatics every December through February.
In the fifth installment of the series, Doc tackled the nation’s most underachieving teams, where a certain team wearing blue and gold not surprisingly topped the list.
Here’s Hinton’s rationale:Individually, some of Charlie Weis’ most hyped signees turned out to be all they were cracked up to be, especially in the passing game. Golden boy quarterback Jimmy Clausen and his top target, Golden Tate, finished their careers as one of the most prolific pass-catch combos in the nation in 2009. Former five-star Kyle Rudolph will likely be the first tight end off the board in April’s NFL Draft. Another five-star coup, Michael Floyd, will be back next fall to break all of Tate’s school receiving records before going on to high draft status himself in 2012. There’s still time for the rest of the Weis holdovers to make their move in Year Two under Brian Kelly.
So far, though, the string of top-10 classes Weis inked from 2006-08 has amounted to an ongoing series of debacles, beginning with the 3-9 catastrophe of 2007. Since that season, the Irish have lost three of four to their longtime whipping boy, Navy; dropped multiple games in ongoing series with the likes of Boston College, Michigan State, Pittsburgh and Stanford; and suffered embarrassing November defeats at the hands of recruiting non-factors Air Force, Syracuse, UConn and Tulsa in consecutive seasons. They still haven’t beaten a team that finished in the final polls since early 2006.
To its credit, the 2010 edition managed to close Kelly’s first season with back-to-back wins over a pair of fellow underachievers, USC and Miami, which is no small triumph after years of going out with a whimper. But it will take a genuine breakthrough in 2011 to avoid being back on this list next year.
Way back last November, we took a look at the vaunted 2006 recruiting class and where it all went wrong. Of the 28 man recruiting class, headliners like Demetrius Jones, Zach Frazer, Konrad Rueland, Matt Carufel Richard Jackson, Munir Prince, Jashaad Gaines and Will Yeatman transferred. Guys like Luke Schmidt and Bartley Webb had their careers cut short by injury. (Add Dan Wenger to this group if he doesn’t win his appeal for a sixth year.) Morrice Richardson, George West and Kallen Wade never fulfilled the promise recruitniks had for them. But even with all the misses and bad luck, the great recruiting class of 2006 failed because there wasn’t a single starting-caliber front seven player in the group. (John Ryan was the best of the class.)
The class Weis assembled in 2007 is down to six remaining Irish football players, with Taylor Dever, Gary Gray, Andrew Nuss, Mike Ragone and Harrison Smith all officially applying for a fifth year of eligibility. While Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate shipped off after three seasons, it’s interesting that the best member of this recruiting class is also one of its lowest rated, Senior Bowl stalwart Ian Williams, who may be playing his way into a 2nd round pick.
If the Irish are going to be a BCS caliber team, they’ll do it behind the recruiting class of 2008, slated to be seniors next season. While Hinton seemed willing to deem the ’08 class underachievers, you could argue that the verdict should be rendered after next season.
Headlined by quarterback Dayne Crist, wide receiver Michael Floyd and tight end Kyle Rudolph, the 2008 recruiting class is pretty incredible in its depth and star-power. With Rudolph moving on to the NFL, the only other defection from this class is tight end Joseph Fauria, now playing for UCLA. That’s 21 roster spots filled by seniors on next season’s roster, with 13 of them still having a final season of eligibility available if they’re brought back for a fifth season.
Michael Floyd’s return is obviously the big news for this class, but if you’re looking for one member of the class that’ll likely determine the fate of this group it’s Dayne Crist. We might forget it now, but Crist was rated the second best pro-style quarterback in the nation that year, behind only Blain Gabbert and ahead of guys like Andrew Luck and Landry Jones. Crist’s apprenticeship behind Jimmy Clausen cost him snaps (and saved him a year of eligibility), but his first year as a starter was marred by a system change and two knee injuries.
Crist isn’t the only highly rated player in the class of ’08 waiting to make the leap from serviceable to great. Ethan Johnson was rated the 32nd best player in the country, Trevor Robinson the 37th. Jonas Gray, stuck behind guys like Armando Allen and Robert Hughes clocked in at No. 72, Darius Fleming right behind him at No. 89. Everyone of those guys, minus Gray, has cracked the starting lineup at Notre Dame, but for the Irish to be a BCS team, they’ll need to start making impacts, something we saw from Johnson and Fleming as last season progressed.
Before we spend tomorrow focusing on the next group of recruits that’ll build a base for Notre Dame’s future, it makes sense to look back at the classes that were responsible for the past few years of Irish mediocrity. Fortunately for next year’s group of seniors, they still have an opportunity to determine their fate.