Recruiting: A wave or a trickle?
Hurricanes have just one 2022 commitment
The calendar has shifted from March to April, and the Miami Hurricanes have a grand total of — drumroll — one commitment in the 2022 recruiting class.
UM added its second commitment with Valdosta Lowndes quarterback Jacurri Brown last Friday, but it lost the one other commitment they had in Tampa Carrollwood Day defensive tackle Brandon Cleveland on Tuesday. Earlier in March, Chaminade-Madonna defensive end Jamaal Johnson decommitted from Miami.
Is it a cause for concern? In what’s expected to be a small recruiting class for the Hurricanes anyway, they’ll need a wave of commitments to come at some point in the next few months, and it would be best to pick up the momentum sooner rather than later with this group of prospects eligible to sign in eight months.
Sure, last recruiting cycle, much of what turned out to be a stellar class was built late in the spring and through the summer months, but even then, UM already had a commitment list in the high single digits at this same point as the foundation of the class.
It also seems to be a reversal of how Miami benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic with its 2021 class. When the novel coronavirus’ surge through the country began in earnest in March of 2020, it created a recruiting “dead period” in which prospects couldn’t have in-person contact with college coaches or visit campuses. This enticed a slew of top South Florida talent — Miami Palmetto defensive tackle Leonard Taylor and American Heritage safety James Williams chief among them — to opt to stay home with the Hurricanes.
That dead period, extended several times since, is now set to expire on May 31. If that does happen, it will reopen college recruiting visits. After last year’s local recruits prioritized staying home, could the 2022 class now be eager to get out of town as travel opens back up? Either way, many prospects are waiting to take those visits before making any decisions, delaying potential commitments.
Even with high school players slower to pledge, other top programs are still on schedule with commitments. Ohio State, Georgia, LSU and Notre Dame currently make up the top four in 247 Sports composite team class rankings — all with double-digit players committed. Rival Florida State has seven — two of them five-star recruits and two others out of Dillard in Fort Lauderdale, defensive end Nyjalik Kelly and wide receiver Devaughn Mortimer. Even Rutgers has 10 commitments.
The Hurricanes, under coach Manny Diaz, have also changed their standards for accepting commitments. In the past, they may have been the leaders in recruiting during these months, but slowly, leading up to the Early Signing Period and National Signing Day, other teams would fill in their classes and Miami would lose those early pledges, dropping significantly in those rankings.
Diaz has worked to reverse that trend. When UM finished the 2019 season with demoralizing losses to FIU, Duke and Louisiana Tech, the 2020 class surprisingly remained intact. Now, Diaz wants Miami to be the team that wins in the end, as opposed to the one that leads early and then falls behind when prospects put pen to paper.
“We know that Signing Day is what matters,” Diaz said last week on the topic of gaining recruiting momentum. “There’s some people that sometimes do some things to create fake momentum in recruiting. It’s what happens when the faxes come in, and that’s really what matters. The most important thing that matters is how you develop them when they show up.”
Diaz has also been able to land big-time transfers in his tenure as head coach, and there’s the theory that he will leave spots open for that purpose exactly. He did it again this offseason, landing cornerback Tyrique Stevenson from Georgia, wide receiver Charleston Rambo from Oklahoma and defensive end Deandre Johnson from Tennessee. Stevenson, a Miami Southridge grad, even opted to come back home after originally choosing the Bulldogs over the Hurricanes in his recruitment two years prior.
Diaz has previously said he believes the transfer success comes from college upperclassmen having a greater maturity level and understanding of what they want than when they’re making a life-altering decision out of high school, where a flashy recruiting visit could more easily impress and manipulate a 17-year-old.
While the expected reopening of official campus visits could sway local prospects away from home, one of Miami’s new top recruiters, defensive backs coach Travaris Robinson, feels getting them to see UM’s Coral Gables campus will be a boon.
“I think that getting them on campus is going to separate us from a lot of other people,” said Robinson, who spent the past five seasons as South Carolina defensive coordinator and had previous stops at Florida and Auburn. “Oftentimes, in recruiting, you never know what the other people have on campus, and me being here, being other places I’ve been in the past, I didn’t know Miami, the university, was as gorgeous as it is. I think that’s one of the things that, when they open this thing up, finally, when it happens, we’ll be able to get guys on campus and let them see that we’re in Coral Gables, which is a beautiful place, and they’ve done a great job as far as facilities and the campus.”
In addition to Brown, UM has another four-star quarterback prospect committed — but primarily for baseball. Two-sport star Kaden Martin out of Knoxville, Tennessee is a high-end pitcher/outfielder and may even go straight into professional baseball.
If a team has just one true football commitment, it’s a plus for it to be Brown, a top-five dual-threat quarterback nationally, to get Miami’s recruiting momentum going.
“Great players want to play with great players,” Diaz said, “and certainly everybody knows that when Miami has a great quarterback, Miami competes for championships. That’s just been true historically.”
Before Brown made his pledge to UM, he visited Miami independently with wide receiver Isaiah Bond, a 7-on-7 teammate, and their coach. Bond told the Sun Sentinel he wants to make a decision soon, so the Hurricanes could be on commitment watch for him.