ckparrothead

It's not really true that Chase Litton had no other offers aside from Marshall. He had firm offers from Tulane to help try and replace Joe Montana's son, and from UMass to help them replace a really prolific senior in Blake Frohnapfel. Regardless, he's officially enrolled at Marshall University now. He's Class of 2015 but he enrolled early, he began classes in January. Turns out the problem with going to college in 2014 was indeed grades at Wharton. He needed to take classes in summer to finish up his degree, and once he did that, he joined up with Atlanta Sports Academy, the prep school where Marshall got other standouts like Corey Tindal and Deon-Tay McManus (both will be on NFL radar). Because Litton is enrolled early, he's expected to be part of the four-way competition to be Rakeem Cato's replacement. They have Gunnar Holcombe who was Cato's backup this year and took about 20 throws in mop-up duty. They have a redshirt freshman named Cole Garvin. They also have Michael Birdsong as a transfer from James Madison. Doc Holliday knows how to recruit. He was Urban Meyer's main recruiter at Florida and helped build up the talent there. He probably learned a thing or two about recruiting quarterbacks from Urban Meyer, because Cato was an incredible success that other people should have seen coming. You don't come out of the boiler plate of Miami high school football talent as the State Champion, having beaten the likes of Teddy Bridgewater, without having talent. Cato came in and was a four year starter at Marshall, broke all of Chad Pennington's school records, and even broke some of Russell Wilson's NCAA records like most consecutive games with a TD pass. He obliterated that one too, the record had been 38 and Cato threw a TD in 46 straight I think. Looking at the QBs that Marshall has, between Birdsong, Litton and Holcombe...I'm jealous. They're doing some good work up there trying to replace a legend like Cato. Birdsong in is a HUGE kid with a great arm. You watch him and kind of come away thinking his feet look a little dead but then you see him take off and he can actually move, and he's so big and strong people have trouble bringing him down. He looks like a grown man out there. I also have liked Gunnar Holcombe when I've seen him come in to play behind Cato, enough not to be surprised if he wins and plays well. But year after year it seems like South Florida is just slapping their ***** around when it comes to the QB position. Ah well.

Isn't there a transfer coming in? My feeling is if Mike White doesn't step up (and he actually may) then the Bulls are screwed. Again.

Some of the first things that stand out to me about him are all throwing ability related, so that's a good start if you're one of those guys that thinks you can teach a player everything except the natural talent aspect of it. That ball he threw for the touchdown came out HOT. He's got huge hands from what I can see. That's a good sign. Little bit wristy on the delivery. Ball spin is perfect in 7 on 7 settings...and that throw in the video. Not concerned about his thin frame.

By "wasn't a quality offer", you mean one that probably wouldn't hold up until NSD? That or no real chance to compete for the start. If the kid wants to play football it doesn't do him any good to be third string his whole career at an FBS school.

His father told me that he had an FBS offer but if he felt it wasn't a quality offer then I could see him eschewing it for the promise of a good degree, plus staying local.

Ah ok. There's a wide receiver there by the name of Xavier Milton that really has scouts' attention. Melbourne is REALLY far out of their way for these scouting trips and that's one disadvantage the area has. But they've come to see Milton anyway.

CK my earlier post wasn't a slight against you, just how "unknown" Ziarno is. I respect your analysis, there is nobody else who can break down talent like you can on this board! That being said, if Woulard wanted to transfer here, you'd have to take him in a heartbeat. Kid would also have the best shot at PT here immediately. I never perceived any offense. No worries.

Chris Dunkley was not the reason the pass defense was bad. That's just something people say because it sounds nice.

The surprise firing has to be Chuck Bresnahan. Several times this year, beginning right away with the first game they nearly dropped to Western Carolina, I sensed an uneven amount of preparation in the defensive game plan...as if Bresnahan was basically taking some weeks off, thinking we should be able to just play our base style of defense all day against this team and we'll be fine. Several times I also got the feeling Willie Taggart was not OK with this. So that could be it. He could have gotten the feeling that the game was just passing Chuck by, he can't put in the work on a weekly basis. The Wulff firing was pretty obvious. I don't care how bad your QBs are (and USF's were pretty **** bad), you can get better than 50% completion out of a tree stump if you game plan and call plays effectively. There was a long and persistent stretch where they were getting 40% completion which was just insane. Ron Cooper is a curious firing. People around here keep talking like moving Chris Dunkley to corner was a mistake. On the contrary, it was brilliant, and our DB coach must be pretty good to have helped him make the transition as well as he made it. I wonder if there's something else behind his firing. I also wonder if both Cooper and Bresnahan are looking to join Jim Harbaugh wherever he ends up coaching next year and maybe that's one reason for the firings.

With Brett Kean I continue to see nice feet but marginal talent.

Different type of player. Like I said, somewhere closer to an Antonio Brown/Emmanuel Sanders.

Is there any evidence whatsoever that Tay Bender is on radar because if not I'm not going to bother salivating over him.

Why in the hell do they keep listing Tay Bender as having 4.38 speed? That can't be accurate, can it? And if so, how is he not extremely coveted? He's a good passer with 6'4" & 220 lbs size. If he's got 4.38 speed then there have to be big time teams all over him.

I don't know anything about A.J. Legree but based on what I have seen of both players I would slot Jarvis Baxter ahead of Rodney Adams. There is a possibility that Rodney Adams was just uncomfortable in a new environment and in new surroundings, but I thought he was very disappointing. Lots of drops, bad finishes, etc. I would not at all be surprised if Jarvis Baxter immediately became the top producing receiver. In fact I'd probably forecast it. Though, I must say there are receivers on the team I really like (Ryeshene Bronson, Tyre McCants, Stanley Clerveaux).

Some thoughts: 1. Size/Strength: Obviously he's not a big guy. Let's classify him him the Antonio Brown/Emmanuel Sanders mold. Probably in more than one way, truth be told. From our own neigbborhood, we'll compare him tangibly to Chris Dunkley. Again that comparison probably holds in more than one way. I wouldn't classify him as strong. Nor would I say he's a good blocker. There are a few instances where he gets after it a little but not in any way that stands out. 2. Speed: This is where he becomes enigmatic. There are a lot of instances where he is clearly so fast that guys covering him can't handle it. They're purely outclassed in the speed/quickness department. He will run a deep vertical against perfect press-man coverage, where a guy opens his hips at exactly the right time, and it doesn't matter. It looks unfair. Yet when he gets into the open after a catch, he gets caught from behind. That's very difficult to wrap your head around. With a Ted Ginn for example, if he broke into the open forget about it. He will open up that gait and the distance from other defenders would only keep increasing. Normally you would say that he has more quickness and acceleration than top speed and that's fine. We've seen that a million times before. But I'd swear he's creating separation consistent with guys that have top speed advantages...and then that advantage is just failing to show up in select situations. There are probably two possibilities. Either he is indeed a fast guy, think DeSean Jackson, and he needs a lot of strength/conditioning work to get his legs strong enough that he can cut or slow down and then re-accelerate back to his top gear...or he is indeed one of those guys that is just a lot quicker than fast and the JUCO landscape is one where there will commonly be one guy in the secondary that has legit speed whereas the rest do not. Either way his HUDL profile from high school says 4.48 and I find that believable. His ESPN profile says 4.85 and I find that laughable. I could **** well tell the difference between 4.48 and 4.85 with my naked eye even if there were no other players on the field. 3. Quickness/Acceleration: There are two things that constitute the most impressive aspects of his game. The first is his speed control. The second, I'll get to later. He has an impressive amount of control over his faculties while on the hoof. He runs balanced with good ground-to-foot contact, a wide footprint. This gives him the balance to cut without losing a lot of speed and he uses this to immense advantage at Trinity Valley. He gets open VERY easily. But he's also able to control his speed by accelerating and decelerating, rather than just through cuts. He has really good gearing, slow to quick, quick to slow, quick to stop, stop to start, etc. 4. Hand-Eye Coordination: This is the second most impressive aspect of his game. I'm not necessarily impressed by the one-handed catches or his ability to pull in the ball after it's popped up in the air a few times. I'm more interested in how consistently he can locate the football in the air, adjust to it, and haul the football in with his hands while running in fourth gear WITHOUT jumping into the air as a means of steadying his eyes. This is not an easy thing to do. I've heard the quality referred to as "quiet eye". The process of locating a football in the air and tracking to it is not an easy one. Your eyes need to focus on the ball in flash images with high enough resolution that you're able to process the flash images through your past experiences which tell you exactly where the football is coming in. This is all neuroscience stuff which has been studied and related to football by many people much smarter than I. One shortcoming many receivers have is the inability quiet their vision long enough to focus on the ball and get the necessary perception data, unless they slow down their footfalls or stop them altogether via a jump into the air. Probably the first thing I noticed with Jarvis Baxter is that he does this all very fluidly and at a very fast pace. He genuinely scores high marks in this area of evaluation. 5. Return Prowess: Something I kept wanting to see more of in the HUDL video was his returning because I could tell by his receiver work that he must be a good return man. Sure enough it would appear he's got 245 yards on 12 punt returns in two years with Trinity Valley. That's a 20.4 yard punt return average, which is immense. Probably the most impressive thing about it is the fact he only scored one touchdown. That sounds counter-intuitive but it points to a consistency of his punt return work, as opposed to for example him having 70% of his punt return yardage coming on two big returns. He had punt returns of 52, 45, 36 and 36 yards. Even if you take away those four he still averages nearly 10 yards per punt return on the remaining 8. That's consistency. On the downside, some things I saw on HUDL tape make me wonder about how safe he is at fielding the punts. An area for exploration. 6. Production: This kid is very productive at the JUCO level. In 2013 he had 49 catches for 767 yards and 8 TDs. In 2014 he increased that to 58 catches for 1108 yards 17 TDs. Probably only three receivers (Damian Ratley & Dede Westbrook both from Blinn College, or Patrick Bolton of Rochester Community College) can boast as good or better receiving production at the JUCO level. Baxter is clearly top four or five in that regard. In terms of archetypes you can think of Baxter like Odell Beckham versus Westbrook's Brandin Cooks. Westbook is the small super fast guy with 4.38 speed that plays inside and does crazy things with the football in his hands because he's faster than everyone, but who might not have the real polish as a receiver that you want to see. And of course Patrick Bolton is Sammy Watkins, except with more penchant toward one-handed catches. Seen that guy make one-handers look easy with both his right hand AND left hand. He's tall but built for speed. Ratley would be like an Allen Robinson, clearly the big physical specimen at 6'2", very well rounded and dangerous in many ways. Baxter is a guy that has great balance and route running ability, great hands, speed and quickness that kill defenders, and looks equally interesting on the perimeter as he would in the slot. Of all those receivers, Baxter probably gets open the best by virtue of his route running against legit coverage. He's probably the best technical receiver among them.

Incidentally I don't want to bring up such an explosive subject but Woulard himself looks like he's going to have a hell of a battle with the top rated high school quarterback in the country next year, Josh Rosen. Not to mention, the Neuheisal kid will be involved in that battle. He's already been slated as the guy that came in for Hundley when he got hurt this year, so it's not that unbelievable that Neuheisal could be deemed the bridge to Rosen, if Rosen himself doesn't take the job straight away. And if Asiantii loses that three-way battle, you can look for him to transfer. I wonder if he's burned too many bridges here (or the other way around) to consider USF. I kept trying to tell people during offseasons' past...winning is too important to allow butt-hurt to guide your decision-making. If you're losing because you can't score and you can't score because you have no quarterback, then I don't care how butt-hurt you are about how the Asiantii Woulard thing played out, or how the Chase Litton thing played out, the most important thing question is whether they're talented and can help us. Either one of them absolutely could.

this would be more like your robert davis 2.0 Much more accurate. I can live with that, for sure. I mean, if the downside for me as an evaluator is Robert Davis then that's not such a bad thing. At the time that I was onto Davis he had no reports of interest from anyone and was just a very small back that played in a low level division of high school football and had an offer list that looked like he might be destined for FCS. I'd say he's done pretty well for himself since that point. Davis was recruited by a team that might end up the best of the G5 schools when all is said and done this season, and even though that team has a crowded backfield, Davis still found his way into some late-game carries as a freshman, including a touchdown. Could also be described as my Chase Litton 2.0, but I don't think he comes with the sort of character concerns that Litton has. This kid has a 3.8 GPA and hasn't been in any kind of trouble. The book isn't closed on Litton himself either as he's still scheduled to go to Marshall next year. **** shame that Marshall lost today. They'll still win the CUSA Championship though and end up in a good bowl. And Litton should do well in that system.

I'm not going to be right every time. But equating this to the Ironside thing isn't fair. I believe I've earned more than that.

He has. And I was never onto that Ironside kid. Don't equate me with that.

Some more info about Brandon Ziarno: He was 1st team All State in 2013, led his team to the FHSAA playoffs in 2012 & 2013, All Florida East Coast Player of the Year in 2013, is the All Time Brevard County passing leader, I'm told his 140.0 passer rating (NFL) is currently the highest in the state of Florida, and he's got a 3.8 GPA. He has also recently been chosen to play QB in the Central Florida All Star Game. He was previously a participant in the Golden Arm Challenge which is a participation only camp for the top 40 quarterback recruits in the country. QBHITList.com just debuted him in their Top 50 pro style quarterback recruits in the country. They have him at 47th overall with a 3 star ranking. His dad is a coach. That is not surprising to me. He plays like he's been learning how to beat a cover two since he was 10 years old. I notice that in his SPARQ scores they have him with 4.65 speed and a 31.5 inch vertical. That's pretty **** good in its own right. They have his powerball at 36. I'm not that familiar with it but I looked at the national SPARQ leaderboard with the top 100 SPARQ ratings in the country, and I notice 36 is as good or better than about half of them. His overall SPARQ rating of 86.46 seems pretty high. I know Tim Tebow's was 96.92. I believe the record was set by Mike Mitchell at around 150.

He has also recently been chosen to play QB in the Central Florida All Star Game. He was previously a participant in the Golden Arm Challenge which is a participation only camp for the top 40 quarterback recruits in the country. QBHITList.com just debuted him in their Top 50 pro style quarterback recruits in the country. They have him at 47th overall with a 3 star ranking. His dad is a coach. That is not surprising to me. He plays like he's been learning how to beat a cover two since he was 10 years old. I notice that in his SPARQ scores they have him with 4.65 speed and a 31.5 inch vertical. That's pretty **** good in its own right. They have his powerball at 36. I'm not that familiar with it but I looked at the national SPARQ leaderboard with the top 100 SPARQ ratings in the country, and I notice 36 is as good or better than about half of them. His overall SPARQ rating of 86.46 seems pretty high. I know Tim Tebow's was 96.92.

Obviously from a statistical standpoint Damarcus Smith is going to stand out. And athletically, he has a good arm capable of throwing deep and he's got speed in the 4.5's. But two things make me nervous about him. 1. Obviously the circuitous route he took to get to this point with rumors that his recruiting was a mess, him having to leave WKU to go to JUCO for year, etc. 2. The film doesn't match the quality of the statistics. At least, not from the standpoint of his decision-making, timing, mechanics, and the quality of his throws. The film I saw contained a whole lot of big pass plays deep down the field. But his yardage per completion stands at about 14 yards and his yardage per attempt stands at about 8 yards with a 59% completion. What it suggests to me is that when he's not completing this huge throws, he's completing the ball for very small gains. This is suggestive that his timing is not good and defenses find it easy to close on the receiver after they catch the football. That is consistent with what I see on tape with his timing and decision-making on nearly all of these big highlight plays being off. You get the feeling on tape he's basically just making this up as he goes. And considering the background, history of commitments, de-commitments, transfers, etc...red flag. Then again South Florida is certainly desperate enough, so I suppose it can't hurt. My preference is on Brandon Ziarno. His tape matches up completely with his statistical quality. He was 1st team All State in 2013, led his team to the FHSAA playoffs in 2012 & 2013, All Florida East Coast Player of the Year in 2013, is the All Time Brevard County passing leader, I'm told his 140.0 passer rating (NFL) is currently the highest in the state of Florida, and he's got a 3.8 GPA.

Blech. I just got a look at quite a bit of Damarcus Smith's highlights from Butler this year. I will be very surprised if he can make a positive impact in 2015.

Kean is not the best quarterback recruit they have on the line right now. Brandon Ziarno is the better quarterback recruit. I'm told that he has an FBS offer (not from USF) but he really loves USF. That doesn't mean he'd for sure go there if they offered, but it's a pretty strong likelihood. With this coaching staff, if they pull in Ziarno (they should) then you'll probably see him by mid-year. Unfortunately he'll probably be pulled within two quarters, then put back in the game two games later, pulled after a quarter, put back in next week, pulled again, etc.

The whole fight thing was overblown. I'm more impressed than anything else. Here's this 6'7" basketball player talking trash about Robert Davis' girlfriend and the diminutive Davis knocked that tall tree down. It ain't the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.