Is it just me, or does it seem like Georgia has seriously accelerated its evaluation and offer time to recruits since Jeremy Pruitt showed up?
The 6-foot-4, 218 pounder camped at Georgia on Tuesday and was offered by Mark Richt and staff on Wednesday during an unofficial visit. During his time at camp, McCrae posted an unofficial 40-yard dash time of 4.62 seconds.
McCrae had been evaluated by Bobo and Ekeler previously and Tuesday wasn’t his first trip to Athens, but you get the feeling from the story and this tidbit from Carvell…
By the end of the day, McCrae had committed to UGA over Kentucky, Louisville, and Michigan State. His runner-up school was Auburn, even though he hadn’t earned an offer from there yet.
“I think Auburn was fixing to pull the trigger,” he said. “If Auburn would’ve offered first, I would’ve committed there.”
… that the staff moved this into a higher gear once it sensed that other programs were focusing in on the kid. Also, don’t forget this follows on the whirlwind courtship of Quincy Vasser.
Remember, this is the same Mark Richt who liked to move deliberately in making offers and complained about other programs tossing out offers like candy. Now if you don’t want to be guilty of the same practice – and I don’t think Richt does – but you want to be assured you’re making the right calls with your offers, you’ve got to work harder and you’ve also got to be very confident in your player evaluations.
It’ll be interesting to see where this all shakes out in two or three years, but Georgia looks like it’s doing recruiting differently these days.
Get The Picture 
And maybe we can build in a little cushion over 85 each year, for the inevitable attrition?
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that’s crazy talk right there. What better way to save money in the reserve fund than only have 71 scholarship players per season?
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I think we tried to do that when Pruitt came on board. And we went over a few spots. This time, I suspect they’ll adjust somewhat, maybe be a little more bold in taking a chance on another spot or two. Depends on the need, how bad they want the guys in question, all that stuff.
But if what I’ve read is correct, which is the same thing you guys read, we’re close right now. Maybe 83 or 84.
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Carvel has a couple of interesting tweets about recruiting since Pruitt arrived. Does seem to be a big change in philosophy. Got to get him recruiting o linemen!
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I thought the same thing. 7 of 10 recruits are on the D side of the ball.
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Who’s up for some 13-10, 10-7, 7-3, and 3-2 games?
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So long as we’re the bigger number every time, I’ll take it.
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Me too. I love low scoring football and baseball games.
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For CF, I’m afraid they are a thing of the past. I enjoyed the 6-3 LSU-Bama game a few years ago. Thought it was a great game. Two great defenses slugging it out.
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That 17-9 win over the Gators should count as low-scoring these days, too, and who among us didn’t love that one?
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Right on. The 6-3 games are very rare, and will soon be extinct. The 17-9 games are likely their replacements. But I wouldn’t take root of their lifespans either, the way it’s going.
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Yeah I found those tweets at the end of the article pretty interesting. I mean, 2 years ago he was a DB coach, and some doubted how much coaching he really had to do since Saban likes to be so hands on with DB’s. Now he’s supposedly been given the keys to the kingdom by Richt. It’s exciting but a little unnerving at the same time. 🙂
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He seemed to do OK away from Saban last year, didn’t he?
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JP out-Sabaned Saban and he did it without being smart about it
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I just hope we’re open and honest with these guys. Please no last minute grayshirting of the SEC West variety where you have a spot until you don’t. Otherwise, if we think a guy can play based on internal evaluations, good for us that we’re accelerating the process.
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I just hope that Coach Richt doesn’t try and seduce their mothers or stab their fathers.
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I’m sure we will be, if it comes to that. But I don’t think we’ve been in that situation yet. There’s a way to do it openly and fairly, so the kid has all his options, and all that.
But the point is, it’s worth it to use the grayshirt in the right way, to negate the risk of being one or two over. That’s better than one or two under, when those spots can be filled by players you really want.
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Just address O-Line recruiting. That’s the biggest systemic issue that has hurt the program during Richt’s tenure.
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Read that Bobo was on this kid for 2 years … He was injured last year so he kind of cooled, but shot up the rankings based on camp performances.
With that said, CJP is definitely a recruiting beast … He got married a few weeks back and the reporters asked him where they planned to honeymoon … His response was that there wasn’t time for that right now because he had to recruit.
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….His response was that “there wasn’t time for that”…He did learn somethings from Saban!
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Deandre Baker from Miami Northwestern? Same high school for Amari Cooper and Teddy Bridgewater. Nice pipeline indeed!
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And that flame out Jacory Harris
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Jacory is currently being re-educated with the Edmonton Eskimos whose opportunity is nowhere motto is if you can make it in Edmonton you can make it anywhere!
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Lived there and watched them play in the early 90s. They were quite good. First game I saw was with B.C. who had this “too short” QB out of Boston College. My two friends with me were Boston College grads who had watched him for a couple of years there. Got a rehash of the Miami game Hail Mary with tidbits.
Sorry to hear the Eskimos ain’t doin’ so well, but they probably are better than the Jags (and Dolphins?)although they probably aren’t as good as your Gov’s team at the new school he set up in Tampa at FU’s expense.
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Rick Scott the carpetbagger lacks a proper appreciation of college football and Mike Bianchi needs to stay out of Mississippi. Otherwise Boom seems to be doing well so much so that last season almost prematurely terminated his mission.
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FWIW, Thomas Davis was raving about this kid on Twitter yesterday (TD went to the same high school), said this kid is gonna be the real deal. Apparently our coaches agree!
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Moobs approves.
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Anyone else find these statements contradictory? I suspect we have not heard the last of Mr. McCrae’s recruiting.
“I just committed,” McCrae told Dawgs247 in a telephone interview Wednesday Night. “I’m a Bulldog. Everybody, my whole family, we are just cheesing. This is a dream come true.”
VS.
“I think Auburn was fixing to pull the trigger,” he said. “If Auburn would’ve offered first, I would’ve committed there.”
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I heard that his background check came back clean. Just not Auburn material.
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But at least now we know who’s trying to move the cheese
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I’ll believe it when he “inks a pact” as they used to say.
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That was my first impression. But I don’t think so.
The title of the OP tells the story – I Am Committed. I believe this kid is one of the few who understands what ‘committment’ means, and simply means what he says. When asked what would happen if Auburn, which is only about 90 miles from Cuthbert, offered him, he said he was done, already committed to Georgia.
I believe him.
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Sometimes you want to be wanted. You want to go with the one that bet on you first.
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That is the kind of speed that Ekeler wants on special teams. I am sure that played into it as well.
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Ekeler is tne new Belin. His need for speed came in handy duirng a hazardous tour of duty inside the Southern Cal perimeter
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We had slow guys (relatively) the past couple of years trying to get down field. They couldn’t get past the blocks before the ball was caught. This guaranteed a return and the chance for something big for the bad guys.
At minimum, the bar is set at running a 4.6 per man. With just that little bit extra, we can get guys down field faster and put the pressure on the other team to catch cleanly and not make a mistake. That is a huge difference.
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I’m all for that and am excited to see what the new coaches do this season!
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This is no different than offering Dawg Night (is it?) where we offer and get a couple on the spot. My take on recruiting at UGA is that we have a few stashed that aren’t making the recruiter sites. Some people view players negatively if a site doesn’t rank them in their top numbers. Richt and company find several/yr that seem to pan out well and don’t get on lists until after we recruit. I think we have better info and can spot talent better than turdheads at sites with lotsa film where they break down every move a kid makes. I know, we hire the recruiter sites for their lists and recommendations, but when we take a few on viewed performance we do quite well.
I think recruiting is cruisin’ like usual.
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Only problem is recruiting like usual, doesnt get the job done.
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I am not entirely convinced recruiting has been the problem.
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What do you think the problem is then if it isnt the recruiting? Because there is a problem.
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Defense and special teams coaching. Those are consistent themes.
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meh. I would just say that those are symptoms of poorly managed recruiting.
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I agree with you hassan. They had the athletes all along in Athens. The problem on D was bad coaching, particularly the DBs. The problem with STs was NO coaching.
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It’s been those, and recruiting too, IMO, just to name the major problem spots.
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It’s harder to answer what hasn’t been a problem at Georgia.
Quarterback coaching, maybe.
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What I would really love is to not hear of any more problems and every 2 weeks or so pick up another recruit…just a trickle of good news for the rest of the summer…..too much to ask?
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Amen to that. We’ve paid our “bad news” dues the past 3 months.
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Our plight has even made it to the Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/10169/
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Our bad news dues happen every year. Hoping your skin has thickened up by now.
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Every week.
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I think a recruiting reality that Richt has come to terms with: miss out on offering a kid early, and you fall behind in his recruitment. Its human nature. When kids look at which schools offer first and which schools have not offered yet, it can be a blow to the ego. This reality makes evaluation even more critical during the early stages.
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Exactly right. And we haven’t had the evaluation accuracy on the defensive side since BVG left. And we have been consistently outworked by our competitors. Apparently those days are now over.
This is a really good looking kid. I think he’ll end up at OLB. Maybe TE, but probably OLB. His speed is good but can be much better. And I mean ‘football speed’ which is not the same speed as a straight ahead 40 time.
Interesting he’s from Cuthbert, like Davis. And he got a quick offer from our DC, just like Davis. Davis was even quicker, for those who don’t know:
VanGorder had gotten a few calls from some high school coaches about Davis, who had no offers. Finally, in late January he decided to go down there and take a look at him. When he arrived they had just started basketball practice. He watched Davis practice for about 10 minutes, pulled out his phone, called Richt and said he wanted to offer him, which he did at the end of practice. The rest is history.
So yeah, there are times you want to be quick with the trigger. Sounds like it’s a good thing we offered this kid when we did. It may have been just in time.
This is indeed more evidence of that.
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Yeah recruiting has picked up in pace, but will it remain this way? How much of what we’re seeing is due to the fact that new coaches, from totally different backgrounds, are coming in with one or two targets they’ve been evaluating for a while and now pull the trigger on them in Athens. Quincy Vasser is a perfect example. The one coach who would’ve been following him, offered him. Kevin Sherrer probably made JUCO evaluations a top priority while at South Alabama. I agree Pruitt has picked up the offering pace at UGA which ultimately will be a net positive. But some of this has to be attributed to new faces in new places.
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