Top Five Mack Brown Recruits on Offense

I don’t follow his system at all. Is this based on impact at the time of the committment or long term impact of the recruit?
If the former, I don’t think Vince Young is actually no. 1. Simms was a bigger deal out of HS as the son of Phil Simms and coming from OOS (new jersey).
If the latter is the criterion, why are we not seeing Colt McCoy?

Gilbert, though a fantastic get for the staff, was an easy committment. Vince took a little more effort, Simms considerably more. Malcolm Brown was something of a challenge, Cedric Benson dreamed of being Ricky Williams. How does the complication of the recruitment weigh into the ranking?

Apparently if you are Ketch you go by recruiting ranking and just pick 5 five star guys at impact positions and then organize them according to the wisdom of hindsight. In other words, you just always make Vince Young no. 1 and then proceed from there with your own rankings.

To me the 5 greatest offensive committments were:
1). Vince Young: Won a championship, GOAT, etc.
2). Colt McCoy: filled a major need with big production as a stealth bomber recruit. Great job of evaluation, they didn’t have to know he’d be that good, just that they thought him worthy of taking makes the staff heroes on this one.
3). Garrett Gilbert: Easy get but the perfect quarterback for the Texas system. Can throw on the run (West coast scheme), has an NFL arm, leadership/intangibles, I feel bad for preferring Russel Sheppard at the time. I shouldn’t have just typed that.
4).Jamaal Charles: Defines what Texas has and should look for in the spread era: explosive athleticism and world class speed. Goodwin
5). Chris Simms: Big coup for Mack while he was establishing Texas as a recruiting giant.

I’d actually put Westerman on the list.

I don’t follow his system at all. Is this based on impact at the time of the committment or long term impact of the recruit?

He’s obviously not talking about the long term impact or Colt would be on the list. (Even Ketch isn’t that dumb). He’s rating them solely based on their status as a recruit.

He’s got the order right, too. Vince Young was the number one player in the country, and his commitment was a bigger deal than that of Simms.

I’d actually put Westerman on the list.

5* OOS guy who could’ve named his school. He’s definitely somewhere in the neighborhood, if not top five.

I don’t follow his system at all. Is this based on impact at the time of the committment or long term impact of the recruit?

Another reason why it’s very unlikely he’s talking about the long term impact of the recruit: he has Malcolm Brown on the list.

I’d actually put Westerman on the list.

You know, I think it might be best for Ketch (and everyone else) to at least make your list of Top 5 recruits be kids who have actually signed a letter of intent.

I recall Roy Williams being a really big deal. So was BJ Johnson.
 
Charles was a well-regarded recruit, but he wasn’t considered as a program changer.
 
I’d probably switch out Roy and Cedric. If you’ll recall, at one point, Texas wasn’t sure they were even going after him. It took convincing, despite his high school accomplishments.
 
I think Ketchum just about got this one right.

My question is: “Why the heck are you suscribing to Geoff Ketchum’s Tweeter?”

Does Mack’s recruitment of Ricky to stay for his senior season count?

For many of the reasons listed above, I’m glad I don’t pay good money to read Ketch’s shit.

Under Mack’s tenure aren’t there certain areas of Texas (parts of Dallas, East Texas) where he finally outflanked Aggie/Sooner, broke through the line, established a beach head and now has a pipeline running to Austin?

When Texas was wandering in the wilderness a lot of inner city High School coaches and players considered Texas a white-only country club. Mack was able to to parlay the street value of Ricky (the real catalyst James Brown) and start selling to those areas. Who are these Rosa Parks recruits who dared commit to Texas?

I would say that any recruit from a former anti-Longhorn area would be big, regardless of talent. Mack early on recognized the strategery of networking with every single high school coach.

I’d probably put Simms #1. Remember, this was 1999. Simms was the #1 player in the country, the son of Phil Simms, and from New Jersey.

I think Simms #1 as well, if we don’t count Ricky’s senior season. That recruit started an avalanche with the Big 3 which turned in to everyone thinking it was cool to come to Texas.

And, he ripped Simms out of the hands of then-national power Tennessee.

Good point. Tennessee then = Alabama now.

Christian Scott opened up Skyline, which is producing ridiculous talent these days. They have a linebacker and receiver that are going to be standouts in the 2012 class.

Simms was a bigtime coup, but the excitement over VY coming out of HS was palpable. Simms had the measurables but watching VY just blew your mind. Anyway, its heresy to put VY anywhere but 1. Both were the top offensive recruitster out of HS, but I think the “list” should take into account overall strength of the class in a given year. I really don’t think this is hindsight.

I’d put M. Brown at 3 over Gilbert. Brown is rated a few spots higher nationally, but the real reason is that our QB recruiting has been getting easier while we’ve been whiffing with RB’s. Plus I love Brown’s style, just so smooth for a relatively big boy. I think he maintains close to his current weight, adds tools to his game and improves his fast twitch explosivityness.

As for the #5 spot, horns everywhere were excited about Benson, but Tony Hills was a 5 star, basically AS-J circa 2003. I might put him there just as a shout out to Sandra Bullock.

I think he got the list right as well. Simms vs. VY is an interesting debate, but I think giving Simms the nod because he is OOS ignores the fact that VY was a legend in Texas, and losing him to OOS would have been a bigger negative than bringing in Simms from OOS was a positive. Plus businesses in Austin gave away free shit the day VY committed.

Simms was pulled from powerhouse Tenn. VY was pulled from powerhouse Miami after specifically dropping UT from his list in the spring.

I think Charles would belong on there if he hadn’t committed so early. He committed very soon after coming back from a pretty serious injury.

“I recall Roy Williams being a really big deal. So was BJ Johnson.”

I remember BJ has being the big prize that year over Roy (due to injury). I actually think M. Flowers was considered a bigger deal than BJ or Roy in their respective years.

In hindsight, I think Simms was the biggest commit. When he committed, we had been wandering in the recruiting desert for 15 years. We couldn’t land in-state studs, much less the number 1 prospect and highest profile recruit to come out in years. The hype for Simms was even greater than VY. He had the NFL pedigree and was going to be the next Elway or Marino, His commitment put Texas recruiting back on the map on a national scale, and we haven’t looked back since.

VY committed as the cherry on top of the ridiculous 2003 class. But by that time, the momentum not only for the program but for that particular class was in full force. We had the big banquet weekend that year when it seemed like every stud in the state committed. VY came after that.

Simms was a big deal but you cannot forget Cory Redding from that 1999 class. He was a huge get at the time too, if I am not mistaken he was the number 1 defensive player in the country.

And forgive my ignorance, but Sailor don’t you mean Ryan Perrilloux, the quarterback? Or are you talking about your underage cabana boy Robert?

Confetti goes where he tells it to.
 That’s right up there with smite some bitches…

I think the Robert thing was a joke.

Scott and Redding were defensive players and the list is offensive recruits. Otherwise I would put DJ on the list.

My list:

Simms – #1 recruit in the country with a spectacular pedigree
VY – ranked behind Simms because there were some disbelievers in his ability to play QB at the highest level, hell there still are
Brown – we have gotten squat at RB for a few years and really needed this one
Gilbert – ranked behind the other three because we now feel like we SHOULD be in the mix for the #1 QB/player in the nation
Roy – “West Texas Legend”, yes I remember people talking about BJ being the more polished receiver and ranked higher, but everyone knew Roy had the better upside

I don’t recall Ced being a concensus top 20 recruit but maybe I am wrong. He was thought to be a bit of a tweener – Emmitt Smith type. Not fast enough to be a scat back and not big enough to be a power back.

I’m on the Simms team here, but could go either way. But I want to go back to a point Mockingbird made.

Right off the bat, when Mack signed the Texas City Four, it signaled the beginning of the end to Aggie dominance in southeast Texas. I still think it had a huge impact on his initial credibility with high school coaches who had grown accustomed to RC Slocum taking them out for coffee.

Of course, none of those kids were offensive player (Ervis Hill always an assumed DB), so they don’t fit here, but some of the smaller names made a big impact in those first few classes.

Others?

As far as recruits and expectations:

1. Simms
2. VY
3. Ced
4. Roy
5. DJ

The hype was greater for Simms. Not to oversimplify, but we got Simms and it was like “Holy fucking shit, how did we do that??”. We were expected to get VY, and it would have been a surprise had we not. So that plays into the hype. Plus as someone else mentioned, a lot of people thought VY was going to make a very nice receiver for us.

Mocking Bird makes a really strong point. Football related media has a habit of narrowing football down to the “one man” or “top five” lists because it’s easy copy and readers get it. If you want to frame it that way, I don’t have any quibbles with mentioning guys listed above, because they all have their place.

However, the across the board talent and depth of Texas owes a lot to the supporting cast that we’ve been pulling due to Mack. Landing some of these kids may owe less to a star skill player than a strong-performing local hero from somewhere that used to be a Sooner/Aggy/LSU pipeline.

This thread confirms my suspicions that UT defenders aren’t recruited, but grown in that greenhouse between the Tower and the biology building.

Oh. It says offense. Disregard.

Remind me who all was in the Texas City group…

Ervis Hill
Everick Rawls

Jermaine Anderson?

A kid with the last name of Jones who was really tall a blocked a shit ton of field goals and maybe a PAT or two.

I would lean slightly for Simms because his presence had so much to do with the signing of the “Big 3”, which included both Roy and BJ and some say on Ced as well. If this is about the Pied Piper effect at critical program junctures, which it seems to be, then both Simms and Redding (yeah I know it’s just offense but I’m making a point) have to be at the top for their respective sides of the ball. Cory was a high school LB from Galena Park North Shore and broke the Wrecking Cew spell that the evil Aggy had cast upon us on that side of the ball, at his particular position and in that area of Texas.

Like srr, I don’t know how you put anyone on the list who hasn’t even signed an LOI yet nor played a down of football. For example, if Malcom decommits, where are we then, and if he’s a bust, it would probably set us back even farther at RB so I’d have to leave him off although he may top this same list if revisited in three years.

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