Lausch didn’t miss spring practice. He was at most of the practices.
HS Recruiting is Close to Flopping
- Thread starter AdamOnFirst
- Start date
Sure. I just don’t think that our current HS recruiting is all that materially different than it was under Fitz. Unfortunately that means I have many of the same gripes I had about Fitz’s recruiting, namely complete absence of impact offensive skill players.
Fortunately we have taken some actions that make it easier to recruit in the portal to plug some gaps. I hope we can make similar improvements/changes in recruiting HS players sooner than later.
After the latest round of priority targets went off the board, getting harder to pull those rabbits out of the hat so good might be off the table. Glad you like the QB and yes that is important. But still seems hard to see us ending up above bottom 3 in BIG. Especially concerning is our showing in a pretty good IL class. (Yes I realize that the QB is from IL)
And considering that last couple classes were weaker, next few years could be pretty lean
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1. Comparable to the middle of Fitz' term, or the end when it picked up considerably? I'm not seeing that pickup here at all.
2. Comparable means we're falling behind. Fitz was putting together classes in the middle or middle bottom of the Power 4/5 for most of his tenure. In a power 2 era, that's substantially worse, we have a huge advantage over everybody outside the power 2. If we're still putting in classes similar to the bottom half of ACC teams, we're going to get smoked in the Big Ten. Here in the Big Ten, it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place.
Satchell, Fors and one or both of TJ/Favorite would be a nice way to wrap up the class.
We have a huge advantage over teams outside the Power 2… once the House Settlement and Revenue Sharing kick in. We’ve limited ourselves via self-inflicted wounds by refusing to offer incentive payments to HS recruits.
But we play inside Power 2 so while we may not be "uncompetitive" outside the P2, inside the P2, it looks to be an issue
I am hopeful the optimism is warranted, but given we've self imposed restrictions on ourselves from the jump, I don't know if I see it getting any better. I also find it extremely unlikely the House settlement successfully imposes much of a cap. I'd expect it to mostly function like a floor. A lot of reporting on this already developing is already underway. It looks like top end rosters are going to be $40+ million within a year or two. Underestimating the change would be just another way for NU to bungle succeeding in the evolving state of play.
Spending the most doesn’t guarantee you a conference title. Spending the least guarantees you won’t get a conference title. Be smart.
This is exactly how most schools view it. It’s a floor, not a cap. Everyone is going back under the table with their deals in addition to the revenue sharing.
We were talking this years HS recruiting and what we have seen so far is that we are bringing up the rear in the BIG again and that screams something else other than competitive,
Again, I don’t give a shit about rankings.
For instance I actually really like our most recent commit’s tape, but he has no other P4 offers and is not even rated.
Good contact balance and reactionary athleticism, especially as a center prospect.
If your argument is that our very low current class rankings - which are useless in and of themselves but useful as a heuristic and seem to align with the very, very few competing offers our guys have, which in turn seems to align with our low star rankings - is hiding what you think is actually a much better class, a class that is more comparable to the likes of Iowa than the likes of Wake Forest and Purdue, I'd love to hear it. Still skeptical anybody can reliably survive purely on no-name diamonds in the rough, especially with the portal rules, but it would be interesting.
We aren’t “surviv[ing] purely on no-name diamonds in the rough.”
QB O’Brien — no other P4 offers, committed early
RB Morris — Arizona, Boise State, Boston College, Cal, Stanford, Washington, and other non-P4s
WR Reinke — Iowa, Stanford, and other non-P4s
WR McDuffie — no other P4 offers
OL Burbach — Iowa State, Minnesota, Texas Tech, Vanderbilt, and other non P-4s
OL Jakubczak — no other P4 offers, camp offer
DL Zalewski — no other P4 offers
DL Lorek — no other P4 offers
LB Curry — Iowa State, Kansas State, Louisville, Pitt, Rutgers, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, West Virginia and other non-P4s
LB Reilly — Cincinnati, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Wake Forst, West Virginia, and other non-P4s
DB Davis-Ray — Kentucky, Michigan State, Minnesota, Purdue, Stanford, and other non-P4s
DB Kinney — Arizona State, Maryland, Minnesota, and other non-P4s
So… yeah, there are probably more “diamonds in the rough” on that list than ideal, but we’re not exclusively living in that world.
It is pretty clear that this current class is, at least on paper, as weak as we've had in some time. I don't think it should be a surprise. Northwestern has historically always been difficult to recruit to. But, on top of that, we have a program that has been pretty lousy in three of the last four seasons, including the most reason season. We have a young head coach who is relatively unknown. He doesn't even have any P4 assistant coaching experience to draw from. On top of that, his main assistants are also very young and untested. No high level recruit is going to take a chance on this.
In the end, though, one of two things is going to happen. Either Braun and the guys are going to have some success this coming season which will turn some heads and maybe bring some buzz to this program among recruits, or it is going to be another rough season in Evanston. In the latter case, I fully expect the new AD will want to make a change heading into the new stadium and maybe ditch the FCS experiment. I think hiring Braun from the FCS as the Defensive Coordinator was a risky, but interesting move by Fitz. But to make Braun the permanent head coach after the fiasco was probably a rash, not well-thought-out decision by a leadership at NU that proved itself to be pretty inept across the board.
So I've been reading through each guy's offer list as he commits and following it pretty closely, and this is a pretty bad list, with only 2-3 exceptions that look like high 3 stars. You saying you think they're better?
I’m saying that (i) I don’t think that the situation is materially different from the bulk of the Fitz years and (ii) I don’t think we should be surprised recruiting under Braun isn’t going as well as the tail end of the Fitz years for a lot of reasons.
Oh. Okay. So we pretty much agree on the facts and disagree about the implications.
Basically, yeah.
The optimist’s take is that Braun can piece together a bowl team this year, thus saving his job and building a little momentum into 2026 on top of the stadium opening/unveiling. That could/should/would make recruiting a bit easier, both in the portal and for HS kids.
The pessimist’s take is that Braun again flounders to a 3- or 4-win season, gets canned, and Jackson uses his football-heavy network to bring in a more established coach. While that could improve our longer-term trajectory, it could/should/would make recruiting more difficult in the short-term absent a home run hire.
I'd say that's a slightly pessimistic realist take, or pessimistic on Braun. The actual pessimist take is NU will continue to talk an okay game but continue to be steps behind other schools institutionally at adapting to the ever-evolving state of play in college athletics and our series of bizarre self-imposed restrictions will continue to prevent us from climbing out of the conference basement regardless of coach. NU is frequently seemingly run by the dumbest group of smart people around, and despite Jackson's upgrades it's unclear to me if wide swaths of Northwestern's institutional infrastructure even recognize how any of this works now.
Jackson isn’t going to let NU remain a dinosaur, based on everything I’ve heard. We might not ever be truly cutting edge, but we aren’t going to be lagging nearly as much as we have historically.
My concern is it isn't up to Jackson alone, the broader institution, trustees, and general council's office can continue to cause all kinds of little problems.
I’m going to guess the average quality of the 3 stars of the last couple of classes is less than the average 3 star quality of most or all of Fitz’s classes. And what is really missing recently is guys like JJ, Thorson, Skoronski, Ifeadi, and several other 4-stars. They didn’t work out, but he also brought in two 5 star tranfers Prater & Johnson. You can’t be a consistent winner without at least some of these types.
That is fully 5 guys with no other P4 offers (I will give you O'Brien because, as you say, we got him very early, so 4) It is hard to find another BIG team with even one. The recruiting class is currently ranked 16th in conference with 12 recruits (out of a potential class of 16-18) . Only teams behind us are MD with 6 and NEB with only 4 and both have Blue Chip (4 or 5 star) recruits which we do not have for the 3rd year in a row. Hard to not see them surging past us as they fill out their classes. The only teams above us within shouting distance are MSU, WIS, and maybe IA and I think only IA has a single recruit with no other P4 offers. Those three all also have Blue Chip recruits. Is that being competitive?
I agree that ratings are not everything, But combined with other offers and recruiting battles we are losing, it does tell a story. True, we are not just surviving on just no name potential diamonds in the rough but it seems that we are relying on them for a lot. Yes, there are some nice pieces but overall, we are bringing up the rear (in the BIG) in HS recruiting. And this has been going on for 3 years now. Add to that that with the portal if these guys develop into solid players, many of them may end up finishing their college careers elsewhere. If we don't get our act together quickly, we could find it pretty hard to compete in the coming years,
I never said things are going great with this recruiting class, just not as badly as the Chicken Littles around here would have you think.
And we are also about to add Fors, who is choosing NU over offers from Illinois, Boston College, Indiana, Iowa State, Kansas State, Michigan State, Purdue, Wake Forest, and a bunch of non-P4s.
The use of Chicken Little is getting worn. Since you refer to so many as that, you might expand your repertoire to Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, and Turkey Lurkey.
The prior AD and current president are morons. That said, what would you have them do after they (mistakenly) fired Fitz? No other coach worth his salt was coming to NU to work for those two idiots. Also, it was announced that they would not be playing at Ryan Field the next 2 seasons. It was a total disaster. If I recall correctly, Bronco Mendanhal was the only coach anyone has heard of who was even considering it.
Braun was the only coach on staff who was not tarnished by the “scandal”. So they named him interim coach. Then he won 8 games and was BIG coach of the year. At that point, they had to make him the permanent HC. This season will give an indication whether 2023 was a mirage or if Braun is BIG HC caliber.
If things go south and Braun is canned, I do think NU can get a good coach to come here. High quality of living, low expectations, long leash, new stadium etc.
I dunno, the last few years have mostly sucked ass for NU football on and off the field, so I don't feel like chicken little saying things are going badly and seem to be trending further downhill.
I agree that rankings are overrated, provided we are floating around the top 60. I know you know your stuff on the tapes, but for most of us, we read the cliff notes, which for me, is the ranking system. Give me a top 60 ranking and I feel fairly good about recruiting.
I’m more of a Casey Kasem guy myself.
To me, these expectations are way too low. The environment has changed over the last few years. NU is in the P2. NU’s revenue distribution puts them in a position to compete payment wise with all but about 25 programs. If you are 60ish, it’s bottom 3 in the B1G and potentially last. That will produce a lot of sub 500 years. We need to be top 35ish.
We can hope that that is true but remember McKeon still here so it may take longer than we think
Agree other than making him permanent HC after his first season, It was not a rash decision, We really did not have any other real alternatives at the time. No one of any merit was taking Bragg's calls
Top 60? This isn't ten years ago where there are five competing major conferences with over 60 teams. NU has the benefits and competitive challenges of being in one of the two highest profile and richest conferences. Assuming class rankings roughly align with the reality of talent quality that is actually being brought in, anything remotely close to 60 is going to be annual roadkill in the Big Ten. Frankly, anything that isn't close to 30 is only marginally competitive.
I’d imagine it just doesn’t make sense to buy out McKeown’s last year if he doesn’t want to go willingly. Women’s basketball not enough of a revenue impact at NU.
We could also, and I’m just throwing this out there… not caterwaul about recruiting rankings and instead focus on on-field results, which clearly need to get better if Braun wants to keep his job long-term.
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