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Recruiting: 2017

NJCat

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North Carolina
The Athletic went back to the class of 2017 and evaluated it on the basis of actual on field performance:

5 points: All-American, award winner, top-50 NFL Draft pick
4: Multiyear starter, all-conference honors
3: One-year starter or key reserve
2: Career backup
0: Minor or no contribution, left the program

No surprise, Bama ranked #1 and OSU #2. But just outside the Top 10? Yep. NU.

11. Northwestern
Adjusted average: 2.90
Hit rate: 87%
Class rank in 2017: 50th
Four-year record: 29-19
Top signees: OL Rashawn Slater, LB Blake Gallagher, DE Earnest Brown IV, DE Samdup Miller, S JR Pace

Northwestern classes tend to grade out well in these re-ranks because they don’t endure much attrition. From the 2017 class, three signees left the program due to injuries. Two are currently in the portal as grad transfers. And that’s it. Everyone else has stayed, and most have made an impact to help the Wildcats win two Big Ten West titles and achieve three top-25 finishes in four years.

This class offered a good mix of early contributors and multi-year starters, and Slater became one of the great steals of this recruiting cycle. Northwestern was the first to offer the under-the-radar three-star from Houston. His only other offers when he committed were Wyoming, Illinois, Kansas, Rice and SMU. After starting 37 games in three years, Slater is now the No. 6 overall player on Dane Brugler’s top 100 draft board.

Congrats to Coach Fitz for identifying diamonds hidden in the rough and developing them to their full potential.

 
The Athletic went back to the class of 2017 and evaluated it on the basis of actual on field performance:

5 points: All-American, award winner, top-50 NFL Draft pick
4: Multiyear starter, all-conference honors
3: One-year starter or key reserve
2: Career backup
0: Minor or no contribution, left the program

No surprise, Bama ranked #1 and OSU #2. But just outside the Top 10? Yep. NU.

11. Northwestern
Adjusted average: 2.90
Hit rate: 87%
Class rank in 2017: 50th
Four-year record: 29-19
Top signees: OL Rashawn Slater, LB Blake Gallagher, DE Earnest Brown IV, DE Samdup Miller, S JR Pace

Northwestern classes tend to grade out well in these re-ranks because they don’t endure much attrition. From the 2017 class, three signees left the program due to injuries. Two are currently in the portal as grad transfers. And that’s it. Everyone else has stayed, and most have made an impact to help the Wildcats win two Big Ten West titles and achieve three top-25 finishes in four years.

This class offered a good mix of early contributors and multi-year starters, and Slater became one of the great steals of this recruiting cycle. Northwestern was the first to offer the under-the-radar three-star from Houston. His only other offers when he committed were Wyoming, Illinois, Kansas, Rice and SMU. After starting 37 games in three years, Slater is now the No. 6 overall player on Dane Brugler’s top 100 draft board.

Congrats to Coach Fitz for identifying diamonds hidden in the rough and developing them to their full potential.


This puts a spotlight on the reasons why NU has been very successful and why star rankings are not the end all be all.
 
The Athletic went back to the class of 2017 and evaluated it on the basis of actual on field performance:

5 points: All-American, award winner, top-50 NFL Draft pick
4: Multiyear starter, all-conference honors
3: One-year starter or key reserve
2: Career backup
0: Minor or no contribution, left the program

No surprise, Bama ranked #1 and OSU #2. But just outside the Top 10? Yep. NU.

11. Northwestern
Adjusted average: 2.90
Hit rate: 87%
Class rank in 2017: 50th
Four-year record: 29-19
Top signees: OL Rashawn Slater, LB Blake Gallagher, DE Earnest Brown IV, DE Samdup Miller, S JR Pace

Northwestern classes tend to grade out well in these re-ranks because they don’t endure much attrition. From the 2017 class, three signees left the program due to injuries. Two are currently in the portal as grad transfers. And that’s it. Everyone else has stayed, and most have made an impact to help the Wildcats win two Big Ten West titles and achieve three top-25 finishes in four years.

This class offered a good mix of early contributors and multi-year starters, and Slater became one of the great steals of this recruiting cycle. Northwestern was the first to offer the under-the-radar three-star from Houston. His only other offers when he committed were Wyoming, Illinois, Kansas, Rice and SMU. After starting 37 games in three years, Slater is now the No. 6 overall player on Dane Brugler’s top 100 draft board.

Congrats to Coach Fitz for identifying diamonds hidden in the rough and developing them to their full potential.


This is incredible. Thanks for posting. A must read for all our recruiting naysayers.
 
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The Athletic went back to the class of 2017 and evaluated it on the basis of actual on field performance:

5 points: All-American, award winner, top-50 NFL Draft pick
4: Multiyear starter, all-conference honors
3: One-year starter or key reserve
2: Career backup
0: Minor or no contribution, left the program

No surprise, Bama ranked #1 and OSU #2. But just outside the Top 10? Yep. NU.

11. Northwestern
Adjusted average: 2.90
Hit rate: 87%
Class rank in 2017: 50th
Four-year record: 29-19
Top signees: OL Rashawn Slater, LB Blake Gallagher, DE Earnest Brown IV, DE Samdup Miller, S JR Pace

Northwestern classes tend to grade out well in these re-ranks because they don’t endure much attrition. From the 2017 class, three signees left the program due to injuries. Two are currently in the portal as grad transfers. And that’s it. Everyone else has stayed, and most have made an impact to help the Wildcats win two Big Ten West titles and achieve three top-25 finishes in four years.

This class offered a good mix of early contributors and multi-year starters, and Slater became one of the great steals of this recruiting cycle. Northwestern was the first to offer the under-the-radar three-star from Houston. His only other offers when he committed were Wyoming, Illinois, Kansas, Rice and SMU. After starting 37 games in three years, Slater is now the No. 6 overall player on Dane Brugler’s top 100 draft board.

Congrats to Coach Fitz for identifying diamonds hidden in the rough and developing them to their full potential.


Excellent. These are unique characteristics of our program and Fitz. The right QB, a couple more explosive players, and more depth on the lines and we win the Big Ten.
 
Yeah... but now think where this program can go if we start getting even higher star ranked recruits!

You are missing a big part of the point. The guys we get are undervalued and many times end up being as good or better than those guys that were rated ahead of them. Our staff is excellent at identifying and in most cases developing undervalued talent. I trust the staff’s player evaluations more than the star rankings and the results from the 2017 class provides further justification for doing that.
 
The Athletic went back to the class of 2017 and evaluated it on the basis of actual on field performance:

5 points: All-American, award winner, top-50 NFL Draft pick
4: Multiyear starter, all-conference honors
3: One-year starter or key reserve
2: Career backup
0: Minor or no contribution, left the program

No surprise, Bama ranked #1 and OSU #2. But just outside the Top 10? Yep. NU.

11. Northwestern
Adjusted average: 2.90
Hit rate: 87%
Class rank in 2017: 50th
Four-year record: 29-19
Top signees: OL Rashawn Slater, LB Blake Gallagher, DE Earnest Brown IV, DE Samdup Miller, S JR Pace

Northwestern classes tend to grade out well in these re-ranks because they don’t endure much attrition. From the 2017 class, three signees left the program due to injuries. Two are currently in the portal as grad transfers. And that’s it. Everyone else has stayed, and most have made an impact to help the Wildcats win two Big Ten West titles and achieve three top-25 finishes in four years.

This class offered a good mix of early contributors and multi-year starters, and Slater became one of the great steals of this recruiting cycle. Northwestern was the first to offer the under-the-radar three-star from Houston. His only other offers when he committed were Wyoming, Illinois, Kansas, Rice and SMU. After starting 37 games in three years, Slater is now the No. 6 overall player on Dane Brugler’s top 100 draft board.

Congrats to Coach Fitz for identifying diamonds hidden in the rough and developing them to their full potential.

It would be interesting to see this data for the past 10 years or so, as we are a developmental program by necessity. For Fitz to have the kind of sustained success that he's had, our adjusted on-field ranking should be in the top twenty. We've had difficulty landing the highly-touted recruits with a gazillion offers, and have lost our share of battles, yet Fitz finds a way to field good teams and get the most out of our players. Recruiting is not easy. We do need to improve our success rate for our A list targets, that's for sure.
 
They've done this since the 2014 recruiting class, so I looked to see where we were ranked each of those years:

2014: 7th
2015: unranked
2016: 30th
2017: 11th

Goes to show how important winning is to building these classes, as you have the 2014 class coming off of the 10-win 2012 season and the 2017 class coming off the 10-win 2015 season. Bodes well in 2 years when they check the 2019 class.
 
It would be interesting to see this data for the past 10 years or so, as we are a developmental program by necessity. For Fitz to have the kind of sustained success that he's had, our adjusted on-field ranking should be in the top twenty. We've had difficulty landing the highly-touted recruits with a gazillion offers, and have lost our share of battles, yet Fitz finds a way to field good teams and get the most out of our players. Recruiting is not easy. We do need to improve our success rate for our A list targets, that's for sure.

2022 will be a nice heat check for the program. Mosley is a good sign.
 
It would be interesting to see this data for the past 10 years or so, as we are a developmental program by necessity. For Fitz to have the kind of sustained success that he's had, our adjusted on-field ranking should be in the top twenty. We've had difficulty landing the highly-touted recruits with a gazillion offers, and have lost our share of battles, yet Fitz finds a way to field good teams and get the most out of our players. Recruiting is not easy. We do need to improve our success rate for our A list targets, that's for sure.

Many of the kids in the 2017 class were A list targets for us that just weren’t valued properly by the recruiting services. While we do a very good with player development, many of the kids we bring in are as good or better day 1 than more highly rated kids in their class. It’s not just about our staff’s development abilities, it’s also about their player identification capabilities.
 
You are missing a big part of the point. The guys we get are undervalued and many times end up being as good or better than those guys that were rated ahead of them. Our staff is excellent at identifying and in most cases developing undervalued talent. I trust the staff’s player evaluations more than the star rankings and the results from the 2017 class provides further justification for doing that.
I was just sort of being a smart-ass.
 
While I think we get more out of our players than some programs do, and we should be encouraged by the fact that we score relatively highly, the reality is that this scoring system is skewed a bit in our favor. We are going to have some players that score a 2, 3, or 4 points that wouldn't score as many elsewhere. Simply because we have to field a team. I'm not talking about the All-Conference honors, but we have multi-year starters that might not start multiple years at other programs. And we may have single year starters that wouldn't sniff the field at Ohio State. Some our 2 point players would be zero points at some other schools. Now this all said, we still ranked 11th here, with a class that except for 2019, saw bowl game victories and two B1G West titles, and so that definitely does say we have been punching above our weight when it comes to productivity relative to the recruiting rankings for this class.
 
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Many of the kids in the 2017 class were A list targets for us that just weren’t valued properly by the recruiting services. While we do a very good with player development, many of the kids we bring in are as good or better day 1 than more highly rated kids in their class. It’s not just about our staff’s development abilities, it’s also about their player identification capabilities.

27 of our 38 offers reported on TOS for 2022 are at least 4 stars. The percentage was higher before last week. It's almost 100% when you account for the 3 stars who are just barely missing out on the 4th star. Our initial offers are highly rated players year after year. I agree 100% on trusting the staff. But the staff and the recruiting agencies line up on the can't miss kids. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that we need to continue to sign a higher percentage of those players if we want to win the Big Ten. All the while finding the players the agencies miss, and developing and retaining everybody regardless of stars.
 
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27 of our 38 offers reported on TOS for 2022 are at least 4 stars. The percentage was higher before last week. It's almost 100% when you account for the 3 stars who are just barely missing out on the 4th star. Our initial offers are highly rated players year after year. I agree 100% on trusting the staff. But the staff and the recruiting agencies line up on the can't miss kids. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that we need to continue to sign a higher percentage of those players if we want to win the Big Ten. All the while finding the players the agencies miss, and developing and retaining everybody regardless of stars.

Find good players with solid academics and the proper for NU regardless of their location or star rankings.
 
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27 of our 38 offers reported on TOS for 2022 are at least 4 stars. The percentage was higher before last week. It's almost 100% when you account for the 3 stars who are just barely missing out on the 4th star. Our initial offers are highly rated players year after year. I agree 100% on trusting the staff. But the staff and the recruiting agencies line up on the can't miss kids. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that we need to continue to sign a higher percentage of those players if we want to win the Big Ten. All the while finding the players the agencies miss, and developing and retaining everybody regardless of stars.

Your analysis is skewed. At this stage of the recruiting cycle the only NU offers that have gone out are for the players that everybody knows are great. Like Fitz said, the offers you see at this point are for the “three play guys” that everybody can recognize as studs almost instantly. Not much detailed evaluation being done or needed with the possible exception of the QB position. The only other diligence being done is on the academic/character side. I would not call these guys the A list (except for QB), I would call these guys the no brainer list. The round of offers that was recently extended and will be extended through April/May of the recruits junior year are the offers where significant evaluation is being done and where our staffs talent identification skills are highlighted. This next group of 30-40 offers extended over the next 3-4 months is our A list and where we’ve done our best work.
 
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Many of the kids in the 2017 class were A list targets for us that just weren’t valued properly by the recruiting services. While we do a very good with player development, many of the kids we bring in are as good or better day 1 than more highly rated kids in their class. It’s not just about our staff’s development abilities, it’s also about their player identification capabilities.
That is true, but I think another major factor is NU's focus on getting high-character, coachable kids who are good fits for the program. This results in a team full of guys who play disciplined football (essential to NU's schemes) and stay with you until they graduate.
 
Your analysis is skewed. At this stage of the recruiting cycle the only NU offers that have gone out are for the players that everybody knows are great. Like Fitz said, the offers you see at this point are for the “three play guys” that everybody can recognize as studs almost instantly. Not much detailed evaluation being done or needed with the possible exception of the QB position. The only other diligence being done is on the academic/character side. I would not call these guys the A list (except for QB), I would call these guys the no brainer list. The round of offers that was recently extended and will be extended through April/May of the recruits junior year are the offers where significant evaluation is being done and where our staffs talent identification skills are highlighted. This next group of 30-40 offers extended over the next 3-4 months is our A list and where we’ve done our best work.

I'm not sure my analysis is skewed if your analysis requires reinventing the alphabet. Whatever you want to call these kids - no brainers or A listers - we didn't offer them without wanting them. I agree with your point about us excelling in this next batch of offers.

Editing out attributing an argument to you that I don't think you've made.
 
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I'm not sure my analysis is skewed if your analysis requires reinventing the alphabet. Whatever you want to call these kids - no brainers or A listers - we didn't offer them without wanting them. I agree with your point about us excelling in this next batch of offers, but I disagree to the point where your dismissive of our ability, or the expectation, that we get one, two, or more of these no-brainer A+ listers.

The main point is the traditional peak evaluation period for the junior class is January through May of their junior year. Evaluations are made by college staffs after the college football season is over and after they have a chance to evaluate tape from the prospect’s entire junior season of HS. This is when the bulk of the offers go out and any offer extended during that period should be considered an A list offer.
 
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This is incredible. Thanks for posting. A must read for all our recruiting naysayers.

To paraphrase Jordan Mosley, Fitz's guys leave better than they came. This is some strong evidence for that proposition.

(It's also not mutually exclusive with guys who come in with stronger resumes or better pedigrees. No one short of Trevor Lawrence shows up on day 1 with nothing to improve upon.)
 
Our staff is top notch at identifying and developing talent.

Also speaks to the issue of stability. So many programs that get lots of top recruits also have lots of coaching turnover and many of those top recruits hit the portal earlier than ours do.

Yet another reason why I think the transfer portal will help us far more than most other teams.

Guys come here knowing they're not going to have to deal with major instability that we're seeing elsewhere.

Can come here, compete for titles in a stable situation, make it to the NFL, and get a top 10 education; all in a stable situation with best in class facilities (stadium renovation is when not if).
 
Your analysis is skewed. At this stage of the recruiting cycle the only NU offers that have gone out are for the players that everybody knows are great. Like Fitz said, the offers you see at this point are for the “three play guys” that everybody can recognize as studs almost instantly. Not much detailed evaluation being done or needed with the possible exception of the QB position. The only other diligence being done is on the academic/character side. I would not call these guys the A list (except for QB), I would call these guys the no brainer list. The round of offers that was recently extended and will be extended through April/May of the recruits junior year are the offers where significant evaluation is being done and where our staffs talent identification skills are highlighted. This next group of 30-40 offers extended over the next 3-4 months is our A list and where we’ve done our best work.

This is a good way of putting it. NU’s “secret sauce” is finding A-list guys who are otherwise flying under the radar. Rashawn Slater is a perfect example — he was the fourth commit of NU’s 2017 class. Fitz got in early.

I do wonder what NU’s hit rate is on the “no brainers.” It seems like this is the area where a Top 10 finish, and two Big Ten West titles in three years, can start to swing things.
 
This is a good way of putting it. NU’s “secret sauce” is finding A-list guys who are otherwise flying under the radar. Rashawn Slater is a perfect example — he was the fourth commit of NU’s 2017 class. Fitz got in early.

I do wonder what NU’s hit rate is on the “no brainers.” It seems like this is the area where a Top 10 finish, and two Big Ten West titles in three years, can start to swing things.
I don't think our hit rate is good at all with "no brainers", which include guys like Justin Fields, Andrew Luck, Sam Darnold, Will Shipley, etc. Good news is that we got one in last year's class, some fellow named Skoronski. I think that turned out pretty well.
 
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I don't think our hit rate is good at all with "no brainers", which include guys like Justin Fields, Andrew Luck, Sam Darnold, Will Shipley, etc. Good news is that we got one in last year's class, some fellow named Skoronski. I think that turned out pretty well.

Right, we seem to secure a clear 'no brainer' every 3-4 years or so. If we can up that to one every year on average, we'll really be in contention to win the conference.
 
This is a good way of putting it. NU’s “secret sauce” is finding A-list guys who are otherwise flying under the radar. Rashawn Slater is a perfect example — he was the fourth commit of NU’s 2017 class. Fitz got in early.

This is basically the essence of "Moneyball" - finding people who you know are good who for whatever reason are undervalued by your competitors. Of course if it were easy, NU would have multiple titles.
 
I don't think our hit rate is good at all with "no brainers", which include guys like Justin Fields, Andrew Luck, Sam Darnold, Will Shipley, etc. Good news is that we got one in last year's class, some fellow named Skoronski. I think that turned out pretty well.

You could argue that Justin Jackson was a no-brainer. Possibly the same with Clayton Thorson and Matt Alviti (both top 10 QBs in their class, one pro one dual threat).

Of course, what they all have in common is that they're local recruits.

2022 doesn't look like an exceptionally strong class for Illinois, but NU certainly seems to be in the running at least with Fleurima, who basically has offers from the entire Big Ten and I'd consider a "no brainer."
 
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You could argue that Justin Jackson was a no-brainer. Possibly the same with Clayton Thorson and Matt Alviti (both top 10 QBs in their class, one pro one dual threat).

Of course, what they all have in common is that they're local recruits.

2022 doesn't look like an exceptionally strong class for Illinois, but NU certainly seems to be in the running at least with Fleurima, who basically has offers from the entire Big Ten and I'd consider a "no brainer."

Don’t forget Evanston’s own Sebastian Cheeks. Another no-brainer.
 
I'm getting nervous that we may jeopardize our academic standing by recruiting all these kids with no brains.
The no-brainer tag is applied to those giving the offer, so we have a bunch of coaches not using their brains. :D
 
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This is a good way of putting it. NU’s “secret sauce” is finding A-list guys who are otherwise flying under the radar. Rashawn Slater is a perfect example — he was the fourth commit of NU’s 2017 class. Fitz got in early.

I do wonder what NU’s hit rate is on the “no brainers.” It seems like this is the area where a Top 10 finish, and two Big Ten West titles in three years, can start to swing things.
I hate to say it, but there's also the flip side.

As important as many of us consider the star rankings to be, the reality is also that the guys we get early are often frozen out in the process. How many guys have we gotten that got upgraded to 4+ star late in the process? And conversely, how many guys did we get that were early 4+ star and then fell off later?

If you weigh, it does seem that the latter occurs much more often when it should be roughly equal at worst. It really should favor the former in reality given the on-field results as the numbers from The Athletic show.

Either way, that's why offers list is used as the most informative list, though even that doesn't really work as well on guys that commit to us very early in the process without seeing every possible offer that might become available.
 
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I hate to say it, but there's also the flip side.

As important as many of us consider the star rankings to be, the reality is also that the guys we get early are often frozen out in the process. How many guys have we gotten that got upgraded to 4+ star late in the process? And conversely, how many guys did we get that were early 4+ star and then fell off later?

If you weigh, it does seem that the latter occurs much more often when it should be roughly equal at worst. It really should favor the former in reality given the on-field results as the numbers from The Athletic show.

Either way, that's why offers list is used as the most informative list, though even that doesn't really work as well on guys that commit to us very early in the process without seeing every possible offer that might become available.

There was a terrific post on the Rock from a player parent that addressed a unique scenario that greatly impacted one of our recruits exposure.
 
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This puts a spotlight on the reasons why NU has been very successful and why star rankings are not the end all be all.
No one said that they were the be all end all. Just that on a pure talent basis we are not at the top. But they are carefully picked with how they fit into the program and system and then developed to work together. The often get opportunities to play here that they would not get elsewhere and they stay allowing that knowledge to be used on the field.
 
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27 of our 38 offers reported on TOS for 2022 are at least 4 stars. The percentage was higher before last week. It's almost 100% when you account for the 3 stars who are just barely missing out on the 4th star. Our initial offers are highly rated players year after year. I agree 100% on trusting the staff. But the staff and the recruiting agencies line up on the can't miss kids. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that we need to continue to sign a higher percentage of those players if we want to win the Big Ten. All the while finding the players the agencies miss, and developing and retaining everybody regardless of stars.
Doesn't matter till we actually land them
 
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I don't think our hit rate is good at all with "no brainers", which include guys like Justin Fields, Andrew Luck, Sam Darnold, Will Shipley, etc. Good news is that we got one in last year's class, some fellow named Skoronski. I think that turned out pretty well.

That therein is the crux of the problem. Or our remaining gap. We need to close on these guys. More Skoronski's. More Thorsons and JJTBC's. Gary Barnett was able to bring enough of them to Evanston for multiple top 25 or top 30 classes to help win 3 titles. With world-class facitiities and a much stronger track record and program in place, there's no reason we can't succeed, and I expect us to step things up in a big way especially when recruits can visit our facilities (hopefully later this year) and coming off our 2nd West title in 3 years and top 10 finish.
 
That therein is the crux of the problem. Or our remaining gap. We need to close on these guys. More Skoronski's. More Thorsons and JJTBC's. Gary Barnett was able to bring enough of them to Evanston for multiple top 25 or top 30 classes to help win 3 titles. With world-class facitiities and a much stronger track record and program in place, there's no reason we can't succeed, and I expect us to step things up in a big way especially when recruits can visit our facilities (hopefully later this year) and coming off our 2nd West title in 3 years and top 10 finish.

Well I think the remaining gap is actually the gameday experience at Ryan Field. I honestly believe that's what holds us back from the top end recruits. If we had an OSU Game Day-esque experience every Saturday, I'm positive we would be consistently pulling 5 star recruits. Unfortunately, unless Fitz is truly a miracle worker, I don't see that happening.
 
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You could argue that Justin Jackson was a no-brainer. Possibly the same with Clayton Thorson and Matt Alviti (both top 10 QBs in their class, one pro one dual threat).

Of course, what they all have in common is that they're local recruits.

2022 doesn't look like an exceptionally strong class for Illinois, but NU certainly seems to be in the running at least with Fleurima, who basically has offers from the entire Big Ten and I'd consider a "no brainer."
Morris, Brown and Fluerima all nobrainers
 
Well I think the remaining gap is actually the gameday experience at Ryan Field. I honestly believe that's what holds us back from the top end recruits. If we had an OSU Game Day-esque experience every Saturday, I'm positive we would be consistently pulling 5 star recruits. Unfortunately, unless Fitz is truly a miracle worker, I don't see that happening.
I think this is exactly right. Since we lack the number of on-campus students and alumni bases that the big state schools have, we will likely never have a huge home crowd like our rivals do. We could still fill Ryan Field and provide an exciting atmosphere IF NU football became a big thing in Chicago and non-NU alums got excited to come to games because it was the thing to do.... I imagine Duke basketball is kind of like that in Durham. I worry, however, that this is not really compatible with Coach Fitz. To become a hot ticket, NU needs to play a more exciting, fast-paced style I would imagine. The defense first, conservative offense is probably not as likely to bring in the ordinary sports fan. Thus, I think what we are seeing now may be as good as it gets -- which is still pretty good considering the alternative we've seen as NU fans.
 
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