Patriot League Recruiting - Fordham

[carney2]

FORDHAM = 71

No more calls, we have a winner. A few weeks ago someone on the AGS board decried the fact that Fordham has yet to show any positive results for their venture into play-for-pay land. He might want to look at this recruiting class and consider if he is seeing the first payoff. As you will see, the Committee sees more than a few holes in this class, but also recognizes that there is much for Ram supporters to be excited about. IF the Patriot League ultimately approves football scholarships, and IF the Rams continue as Patriot League associate members, the other six football programs are going to have to run long and hard to overcome the head start that this group gives the boys from The Bronx.

NOTE – The Committee threw up its hands in despair last year when Coach Masella loaded up on transfers. The Patsy Ratings do not consider transfers and it was further opined that perhaps they do not do well with scholarship programs in general. This recruiting class falls back to the Patriot League norm by including mostly high school/prep school kids from the class of 2011. The Committee was able to identify only one transfer in this group. It is therefore considered that this year's Patsy Ratings are comparable to those of the other Patriot League schools.

THE GOOD
Almost 2/3 (15 of 23) of this class are Rated. There are four 2-stars, with two of them confirmed, and another a 1-star.
A 2-star QB, confirmed, that the Houston Chronicle ranked the top passing QB in south Texas. A worthy successor to Skelton, also from Texas?
The Rams did very well meeting all of their “Needs” (see below).

THE BAD
Of the 23 recruits, 8 are WRs. That leaves only 15 to fill out the pipelines for the rest of the team. When you add in the other two “Needs” areas – DB (5) and LB (4) – that leaves only 6 for the rest of the team. The Rams received a goodly number of Distribution points (see below), but the Committee does not consider this a good distribution.
Only 3 recruits are down linemen – 2 OL and 1 DL. Neither of the OL are jumbos (270+), but one is rated. The rated OL however, comes in at 240. You have to ask if all the cheeseburgers in The Bronx could make this kid viable in the tackle to tackle arrays that we are seeing in college football today.
A number of the Rated recruits, particularly those receiving star ratings, were rated at positions other than their stated recruit position.

QUALITY = 31: You know the numbers already: 15 Rated players, four 2-stars (two confirmed), and a 1-star. Most of these kids had some recruiting buzz.

CLASS SIZE = 4: 23 recruits.

DISTRIBUTION = 7: At least one recruit for every area but kicker. As mentioned above, and revisited in the Committee Adjustments section below, the Committee is not impressed with the true distribution here and feels that Masella and staff did not do a good job of keeping the pipelines filled.

SPEED = 16: As has been stated repeatedly, the Committee has inadequate information here. In this case the large number of Rated recruits provides the Committee with a greater than normal data base for speed. This could mean that these recruits are faster because they are Rated. It could also mean that because we have a larger number of Rated recruits we just have more information available.

TRIGGER = 2: One QB recruit, a 2-star.

JUMBO = 1: Of the 3 interior line recruits (2OL and 1 DL), only the DL recruits meets the jumbo criterion (250+). The Committee considers this a major disappointment of this group.

NEEDS = 12 (of 12):
WR = 5 (of 5): Eight (yes, 8!!!) WR recruits. Masella will need to have multiple QBs and balls in the game at the same time to keep this many guys happy. In addition to quantity however, the Rams signed quality. Four are Rated, one a confirmed 2-star. The 2-star QB should not have to wait for future recruiting classes to find good targets. Decent size in this group with five of them reporting in at six feet or more.
DB = 4 (of 4): Another fairly large group with five recruits, four of them Rated, and two are 2-stars, neither confirmed. Again, some decent size with 3 of the 5 over six feet.
LB = 3 (of 3): Masella and staff touch all the Needs bases with four recruits, two Rated, one an unconfirmed 1-star. All are in the 220-235 range and are over six feet.

COMMITTEE ADJUSTMENTS = Minus 2
The Committee was initially blinded by all the stars and the speed, but eventually concluded that this class is a bit anti-synergistic in that the whole is LESS than the sum of the parts. As pointed out above, the Needs categories accounted for 17 – all but 6 – of the recruits. With the possible exception of QB, other positions are not well represented in this class. In particular the down linemen, which require 8 or 9 starters for every game, are woefully underrepresented. While filling some needs in 2011, Masella has put some serious pressure on the recruiting class of 2012 to keep his scholarship express moving in the right direction.

THE RATINGS RACE with 3 to go:

71 Fordham
60 Holy Cross
54 Lafayette
43 Lehigh

[DFW HOYA]

FORDHAM = 71
IF the Patriot League ultimately approves football scholarships, and IF the Rams continue as Patriot League associate members, the other six football programs are going to have to run long and hard to overcome the head start that this group gives the boys from The Bronx.

If the PL does this, ONE football program really struggles to overcome all that.

Otherwise, I think Fordham is on the right track if they intend to pursue this path.

[RichH2]

An impressive set of pitch and catch kids. They are building. On paper they have a distinct edge in athletes already. HC has not been able to create a winning squad yet surprisingly. The gap will no doubt be much wider by 2012. With a better coaching staff they will leave the PL in the dust. Of course , as of now they dont have anywhere to goxwhistlex

[breezy]

In trying to follow recruiting activity for Holy Cross during the past few months, I am struck by the fact that -- unlike past years when HC and other Patriot League teams would compete for the same recruits -- none of the Fordham recruits appeared to be on HC's radar and vice-versa. Having scholarships gives Fordham the opportunity to recruit in a different universe, competing with other scholarship programs rather than its PL compatriots.

That said, however, I agree that the distribution of the recruits is strange -- perhaps based on covering the other positions with returning players, or perhaps resulting from a strategy of simply taking the best players available (where have we heard that before?).

As always, Carney, good analysis.

[ramMan]

THE BAD
Of the 23 recruits, 8 are WRs. That leaves only 15 to fill out the pipelines for the rest of the team. When you add in the other two “Needs” areas – DB (5) and LB (4) – that leaves only 6 for the rest of the team. The Rams received a goodly number of Distribution points (see below), but the Committee does not consider this a good distribution.
Only 3 recruits are down linemen...

DISTRIBUTION = 7: As mentioned above...the Committee is not impressed with the true distribution here and feels that Masella and staff did not do a good job of keeping the pipelines filled.

NEEDS = 12 (of 12):
WR = 5 (of 5): Eight (yes, 8!!!) WR recruits.
DB = 4 (of 4): Another fairly large group with five recruits...

COMMITTEE ADJUSTMENTS = Minus 2
The Committee was initially blinded by all the stars and the speed, but eventually concluded that this class is a bit anti-synergistic in that the whole is LESS than the sum of the parts. As pointed out above, the Needs categories accounted for 17 – all but 6 – of the recruits. With the possible exception of QB, other positions are not well represented in this class. In particular the down linemen...


Coach Masella reviewed Fordham's incoming football class at this year's annual Meet the Recruits Night. Below are excerpts from a post on the Fordham football message board by JimboCBA72 who attended the event.

"...here's a summary of what Coach M had to say about the recruits..."
"Last year the emphasis was on lineman with thought it would take them a year to mature and develop and this year the focus was on skill positions with thought that some of them could contribute right away."
"Coach felt we dropped far too many passes last year...so their recruiting emphasis this year was on kids who '...could catch the ball'. Referred to many of them as possession receivers."
"DB was another area of focus."

[Fordham]

Great work as always, carney. Thanks for the time and effort you put in.

As ramMan said before me, the dearth of OL in the class was deliberate. The overall plan was to make last year's class big on linemen and allow them a year to develop before seeing the field. The year 2 plan was for this class to be heavy on speed, skill and loaded with kids that are expected to contribute as incoming frosh. It will be very interesting to see what kind of fruit this plan bears as this will really be the year to see what impact the move to scholarships has for us. If you see a 2 deep (particularly a starting group) that is dominated by the last 2 years' classes, it's a good sign imo, of the effect of recruiting with scholarships.

As for us being light on DB's, the reality is that many of these listed WR's will end up in the defensive backfield. Masella recruits athletic high school QBs for DB first and then just looks for athletic fast kids.

Very excited about this group and to see what kind of jump we make up in competitiveness with a bunch of them expecting to see major playing time this year.

Thanks again, carney.

[TheValleyRaider]

8 is a good number of WRs for a team, much less a recruiting class. It'll be interesting to see the attrition rate for that group over the years, or how many of them stick at WR

I'd say the obvious switch would be to DB, but you've got a bunch of those too xlolx