And the first day of the Early Signing Period is in the books! By my count we had a total of 90 players either flip their commitment between two Power 4 programs or newly commit to a Power 4 program just today. This is far too much to breakdown in a single post, so we’ll go through and hit the headlines. First and foremost: Oregon now has the #1 class in the nation.
Oregon attained the #1 class in the nation today chiefly by flipping two recruits: 5 Star CB Na’eem Offord, previously committed to Ohio State, and 4 Star QB Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, previously committed to California. They also benefitted by flipping 4 Star LB Gavin Nix from Miami earlier in the week before the beginning of the ESP. It would be shortsighted to not acknowledge another critical factor: they did not get any players flipped away from them.
The Ducks and Texas were the only teams which moved up within the Top 5, and just so happened to be the only teams which did not lose any recruits in their class. I need to look into whether being able to keep your own commitments is a sustainable action class over class, but it is undeniable that defensive, internal recruiting is key to building a strong class.
Oregon (and Texas) finished out strong on ESD, but who else rose up the rankings yesterday?
Florida State had the biggest single-day movement of any program on the first day of the Early Signing Period. They follow the trend of their in-state rival the Florida Gators in going on a tear at the end of the cycle to pull out a respectable class from the jaws of misery. How did they manage this feat while losing their highest rated recruit - 5 Star IOL Soloman Thomas - to LSU?
Simple: they flipped 4 recruits in a single day, 3 of which were blue chip prospects. All of them come from either Georgia or central/northern Florida. 3/4 were on the offensive side of the ball, and 2 of them were previously committed to in-state opponents. This might suggest that even amidst their down season they are still able to persuade nearby recruits to come to the program which is a good sign. However it is equally likely that the specific recruits they flipped were not essential to their old programs’ classes and thus didn’t receive much defensive pressure. It’s difficult to say from this vantage point.
Instead of making a claim and sticking to it, I’m just going to be a coward and show you all the flips that happened yesterday.
Unfortunately not everyone can be a winner on the recruiting trail. And this cycle, UCLA and Minnesota were the two biggest losers on ESD. UCLA was hit particularly hard by losing its QB of the future Madden Iamaleava (younger brother of Nico) to Arkansas as well as two other recruits. A funny little note is that UCLA had two players flip to Arkansas in specific! I don’t know if there’s any real mechanism behind that, but I do find it funny.
Minnesota is the same story more or less, losing two commits to other P4 programs that they were not able to compensate for with players not previously P4 committed. In fact they only brought on a single new player into their class yesterday - an unranked kicker from rural Minnesota named Daniel Jackson. Not exactly a move which will send you shooting up the rankings.
As I alluded to earlier, there were 60 players who previously were not committed to a Power 4 program which committed to one yesterday. That would be far too long of a table to list them all out in this post, so here are the 30 highest rated players who made their decisions yesterday. The two biggest names are 5 Stars DL Jahkeem Stewart and WR Jerome Myles. Stewart is an interesting case, as between transferring high schools and reclassifying into the Class of 2025, he only has a single season of varsity high school under his belt as a Sophomore in 2023. Time will tell if he can develop into his fantastic athletic profile and become a force on the field.
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