Recruiting 101 ... One Way to Build a Team

http://cfn.scout.com/2/616145.html

How would you build a team? Pete Fiutak gives his thoughts on his recruiting plan and what he'd do to put together a program. Build on the lines, get top defensive backs, like Chad Jones, and ...

 

Interesting read, thanks! :thumb:

 

It is an interesting article, but I disagree with some parts. Try building your program around JUCO, and as soon as you have one bad year of recruiting your program will fall apart. It takes most of them a year to learn the system, and then they play for one more. Of course the the great ones can come in and make an immediate impact. Miss. St. tried this JUCO thing, and it eventually killed them. I would have mentioned the importance of corners that can cover man to man. If you can shut down the recievers in man to man, you can easily stop the run, and that makes the game a whole lot easier on defense.

 

I agree. WRs and CBs are both speed positions. And the LB has to have lateral speed.

 

Very interesting what he says about the DT and DL, seems to be he places the most importance on those two and I would say that that is our biggest strong point and a definite reason that we have succeeded. It's great to have a plug and play defensive line, there is hardly any dropoff. That said, Barksdale is a beast and I wouldnt be surprised at all to see him come in and start next to Dorsey. Add in Woods, Alexander, Favorite, Nevis, etc., it's amazing. Tyson Jackson and Ricky-Jean starting on the outside. We are DLU along with NCST.

 

On offense everything starts with the O-Line.. if you have 5 maulers up front, you can have walk-ons at the skill positions and still win (non-bcs)... Look at the 03 tigers... An amazing line made a running back who turned out to be merely average (vincent) look all-world...
The second thing you need on offense is a gimmick. No small team is gonna line up in the I against a BCS squad and win... Just not gonna happen. Look at Navy. Talent-wise, they are probably in the bottom 10 in the country, yet they can beat BCS teams because they have a gimmick system that neutralizes the oppositions speed and strength. Thats why you saw so many non-bcs schools running the spread read option. Now that everyone is running it, its not as effective, but at first, when a BCS team saw this offense against a non-bcs team, it was the only time of the year they were going to see it. Look what a gimmick offense did for Arkansas last year. But Arkansas also demonstrates the weakness of a gimmick offense, and that come in the post-season. Most gimmick offenses are effective during the season because a team only has one week to prepare for it and then they are done with it for the year. Postseason plays gives a team 2 to 4 weeks to prepare and the gimmick usually gets broken down.

On defense, it starts at the corners. If you have two shutdown corners, that means you can play man outside or cover 3. If you can play man or cover 3, then you can bring up the SS to support the run. Next you need DTs. If you have at least one DT who can eat up blocks, then that again frees up a defender to stop the run.

 

I agree, cherry picking the JUCO's for a couple of their best at an area of need is ok but you don't want to bring in many IMO.

 

Arkansas didn't run a "gimmick" offense, they just had no passing atack because their QB's stunk and they ran every running play in their playbook. Which in my opinion didn't illustrate a weakness in their play calling/strategy but a wekaness in their passing game.

And the spread will work if run effectively with the correct personnel and a good offensive co-ordinator no matter how many times an opponent sees it. It's the players runnig it to perfection and the coaches calling the correct plays that makes any offense go no matter what the design.

But sometimes that isn't enough either, sometimes the defense is just too good no matter what kind of offense a team runs. The spread is not a gimmick offense, it is based on many of the same things the wishbone, veer and I were based on, with many of the same keys.

 

It's scarry to think what that team could have done with just a decent QB and a couple of quality recievers.

 

Arkansas did run a gimmick offense... they ran a HS offense that noone else runs, making it gimmicky... and as far as the spread goes... its not nearly remotely close to as effective as it used to be when it was a novelty.