Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Andrew Bridges commits to Vanderbilt

The Commodores just landed their 23rd verbal commitment of the current recruiting class. Well, actually the 26th if you want to count the "commitments" from Davis Dudchock, Myron Ross and Bradley Roby.

But we're looking to the future. Andrew Bridges — a 6-foot-6, 245-pound lineman from Atlanta — got an offer from Vandy and jumped on it. He's listed on scout.com as an offensive tackle, which means he'd need to spend a year eating and lifting before he hits the field. But he's listed on rivals and espn as a defensive end, which means with the glut of veterans, redshirts and blue chippers we've got at end he'd be redshirting there too.

Sounds like a nice prospect. Three stars from ESPN and Rivals. Two stars from Scout, the same brain trust that gave Warren Norman and Zac Stacy two stars last year. Bridges runs a 4.8 40, which is movin' for a big man. Maybe he'll follow the Reilly Lauer/Ryan Seymour/Jabo Burrow plan of starting his career as a defensive end and then switching over to tackle.

I'm hoping he's replacing the scholarship reserved for offensive tackle James Stone and not the one we might be saving for defensive end Tim Jackson, a three-star Floridian who's supposed to be visiting campus this weekend.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Andrew Bridges had a offer from Vanderbilt since like October or November. There was never a spot "reserved" for James Stone. They would've taken him if he wanted to come, but they never "reserved" a spot for him, they've been after offensive tackles for months because they were never getting their hopes up about getting Stone. Bridges got the offer in a few months ago and apparently committed in November. He took his official visit to the school this past weekend and that's when his commitment started to come out. He's been recruited as an offensive tackle and there appears to be no plans for him to play defensive end at Vandy. Vandy may also take another offensive lineman in the next couple of weeks. Again, no spot was being reserved for Stone. Reilly Lauer was not going to ever play DE at Vandy, the only reason why they stuck him over there one year was to prove a point to him that he needed to add the size if he really wanted to play.

DIMON KENDRICK-HOLMES said...

Thanks for the input. I'm glad Bridges took the offer. I guess my point is that Vandy often takes project linemen while the bigger programs get the so-called game-ready players who already weigh 300 pounds or whatever.