Thursday, February 4, 2010

For Vanderbilt's recruiting class, the gain far outweighs the losses


So Vandy lost some verbal commitments at the end. If you're one of those doom and gloomers on the message boards, stop it now. You wanted to land a couple of big recruits right before signing day, and that's exciting for sure. Instead, we lost a few guys and now you're blaming our miserable season and muttering stuff like "Same old Vandy."

Remember Stanford? Had a great season and became the trendy school for good football players who are smart... and lost 17 verbal commitments this year.

If we'd have landed, say, Chris Boyd and Kyle Woestmann and Thomas Ryan on Tuesday night, we'd all be on cloud 9. Instead, those guys committed in the summer and we took them for granted.

Look at Alabama. Tide fans are distraught because Auburn has landed some top recruits in recent months. But they forget that Bama has had a Top 5 class compiled since last spring.

In all, Vandy signed 11 guys who were consensus three-star recruits. That's more than Bobby Johnson's signed in all his previous seasons combined.

And let's not forget Rajaan Bennett. In the last week before signing day, we lost (1) a weak-armed quarterback with a meddling father, (2) a 160-pound safety whose strength is blitzing and (3) a 5-9 speedster who wasn't going to qualify for Vanderbilt anyway. Oh, and we gained a four-star running back who's being compared to Knowshon Moreno and Ricky Williams.

How can you not see Rajaan as the icing on the cake of what's been a terrific signing class for Vanderbilt?

3 comments:

1050 lb. said...

Well put, sir. Hope springs eternal in the heart of every Vanderbilt fan.

Scott Reed said...

I just wonder how we get all those running backs on the field?

DIMON KENDRICK-HOLMES said...

Lots of ways. Stacy can line up at quarterback and run the wildcat. Stacy, Norman and maybe Tate could line up in the slot, and Bennett has excellent hands and could be used as a receiver too.

In the Army game, Stacy lined up at QB a lot and made some nice reads and pitches, and Norman lined up at wide receiver, went in motion and took the pitch from Stacy. So we could do some of that stuff, but with hopefully better results than the ones we got in West Point.