Recruiting Football Talk VII

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#93,629
#93,629
SugarCC said:
I use to say he was, too...maybe because I got to see him play; but, a few years back, I watched a doc on Walter, then started digging and watching clips...Sweetness is the greatest football player of all time, no matter the position, imo. That dude was from another planet.

Not taking a single thing away from Sanders...he's #2 RB behind Walter.
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THE guy who made me a Bears fan! Then I read Gale Sayers autobiography in elementary school. He was the forerunner of Barry Sanders (with a similar Kansas background to boot) a weapon as a receiver…and a victim of medieval 60’s medicine when it applied to knee injuries. Walter wasn’t as naturally physically gifted as either but built himself into a force back when physical training wasn’t streamlined.
 
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#93,633
#93,633
Remember when Pruitt came to Tennessee and we were worried about what he'd do when Saban retired?

1*ttOuZP1FzzTuJlbDqdOnBA.gif
 
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#93,634
#93,634
Fun to watch the Bama exodus. Very cathartic.

I believe that the Bama boosters and fans will run their collective trove up pretty high in the next couple of months. Every top-20 program seems to have one splurge cycle in them where they cannonball into NIL. Alabama hasn't had to do it yet and I think they will.

They'll backchannel with some guys that wanted to come to Bama but never did/could, or other top players from lesser programs for the next couple of months. The new staff will also have relationships with guys that they recruited elsewhere.

I think when the spring portal opens up they'll get some decent-to-good players, but nothing like the NFL talent that is leaving. Kind of wild.
 
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#93,635
#93,635
Conspiracy theory time! The internet rumor supposedly from Bama insiders, suggests Sayin wanted to stay but was encouraged away by Deboer and Grubbs? It would make (very little) sense if they’re making a play for a 2025 QB and rolling with Will Rogers this season. Crazy, but more tempting for that player with a clear slate to early playing time.
 
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#93,637
#93,637
Great article on The Athletic about Dalton Knecht.

Some highlights:
Tennessee finished a film session on Sunday night, and Dalton Knecht was the last player in the locker room because he was heading to work out with graduate assistant Riley Collins. Before Knecht and Collins walked out the door, coach Rick Barnes screamed out, “Wait! I’ve got to show you something.”

Barnes took out his iPad and had an edit ready of Kevin Durant’s best three games at Texas — 37 points at Oklahoma State, 32 at Kansas and 37 in the 2007 Big 12 championship against the Jayhawks. Barnes narrated each play.

Look at how fast KD gets the ball up to the rim. Look at how long he is but how low he plays. Look at how he sees the game before it happens. Look at how he drives into gaps and won’t let his defender get his hand on the ball.

Knecht sat in silence, drinking in every word. He is still in awe that the guy who coached his favorite player is now his coach, and he’s reached a level where Barnes has the same confidence in him that he had in Durant.
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“The dude loves a crowd,” assistant coach Rod Clark says, noting that Knecht dropped 28 points in his debut at Michigan State in a charity exhibition, which if it counted, would lower his road average. “In these road games, there’s been a crowd everywhere we’ve been. When they’re going on a run and it feels like we need a bucket, it seems like every single time he gets it.”
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Knecht quickly latched onto Collins as his workout partner because the graduate assistant gives new meaning to “a guy who lives at the gym.” Collins actually lives at the gym, sleeping on a couch inside a dressing room at Thompson-Boling Arena this year to save money. It’s convenient for Knecht’s routine. He shows up every night between 9 and 10 p.m. for a workout, and then he and Collins watch film together. The late-night workouts started as soon as he got to college.

“When people say gym rat, that’s what he is,” Northeastern Junior College coach Eddie Trenkle says. “He loves being in the gym. I think he loves the smell of it. I think he loves the sound of it. I could totally see him someday when he builds a house, it’ll probably be the shape of a gym.”
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The next offseason, Trenkle told Knecht that he needed a go-to move when his 3-pointers weren’t falling and encouraged him to work on his 15-foot pull-up. Knecht averaged 23.9 points the next season. and Trenkle estimates he shot 70 to 80 percent on those midrange jumpers. He landed on the NJCAA All-America first team.

“He wanted to work on those things that he wasn’t great at,” Trenkle said. “And for some kids, that’s not their priority. For him, it’s always been a priority. He spent hours and hours and hours in this gym. If there was a move he couldn’t do or something he wasn’t good at, he was working on it all the time. That’s the thing I’ve always felt separated him from every other kid I’ve coached that’s been really good.”
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In Knecht, the Tennessee coaches saw the solution to their issue a year ago, when they ranked 64th in adjusted offensive efficiency. The Vols lost in the Sweet 16 to Florida Atlantic, managing just 55 points. “We were trying to win games in the 50s,” Clark says. “You can’t win a national championship like that. We needed an alpha scorer.”

Knecht got the message this summer when he was trying to blend in and play selflessly. Tennessee veterans Josiah-Jordan James and Santiago Vescovi told him to stop passing; they needed him to score.

“If we wanted you to make the extra pass,” they told him, “we’d be cool being at the same place we were last year. Go be you.”
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#93,642
#93,642
knoxvol52 said:
All these 5* and 4* recruits and players leaving Alabama was expected. These kids committed to Alabama to play for Saban not freaking Kaleb DeBoer..or is it Kalen?
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I'm guessing there's some pretty hard feelings with the new signees. You know they were lied to. I would be livid if I had just signed with them!
 
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#93,648
#93,648
butchna said:
Conspiracy theory time! The internet rumor supposedly from Bama insiders, suggests Sayin wanted to stay but was encouraged away by Deboer and Grubbs? It would make (very little) sense if they’re making a play for a 2025 QB and rolling with Will Rogers this season. Crazy, but more tempting for that player with a clear slate to early playing time.
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For a little more fuel to that, may be why Julian Lewis is reclassifying?
 
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