Connor Lanfear flips to aggy

Mesohorny

Mesohorny

1,000+ Posts
"The environment at A&M fits me so perfectly."

"When I’m in College Station I get this feeling in my gut that says, ‘This is the place."

"The coaches at Texas are going to have a lot of success. They’re good men, they’re honorable men of high character, and it was nothing personal against them. I just felt A&M was going to be a better fit for me.”
 
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I know what he means. I visited Aggy, then Longhorn my senior season. My gut tod me Texas was the right fit for me.

Don't worry bout a flp to Aggy. He would not have been happy here if Aggy is his cup of tea.
 
^^ Yes, he didn't say anything unnecessary, and did the switch calmly. What was a bit puzzling is that over the last month or so, there has been constant reports that the Texas staff was just not trying hard to keep him - unlike in Alaka's case, when our staff went hard at it and lost out to A&M. Lanfear on the other hand was simply not being pursued much. That was odd, considering that he is pretty much a consensus national top-250 player that nobody seems to have much doubts on. I am just guessing that Wickline looks for a certain type of OL and Lanfear himself felt that it is not how he wants to play. It doesn't look like Texas upset him in any way either. Looks more like a mutually understood parting of ways.

Good pickup for A&M, but at the same time, I don't feel Wickline will have a problem finding about as good an OL from somewhere (the OL position recruiting is what I worry least about - because of Wickline's reputation).
 
Since I heard about them, I have had a slight concern about CS' Gestapo-like tactics as they apply to discipline, player housing, etc. Let me add that my concerns are certainly premature. We won't know anything for a year or two. And, yes, the culture needed to change.

The Mike Singletary experience with the 49ers is my basis for concern. Singletary was a tightly wound disciplinarian. His approach failed in SFO. Harbaugh comes in and, while he is certainly no pushover, apparently the culture changed. The result was a quick Super Bowl appearance with basically the same team...

If CS pushes too hard and players see a more comfortable environment in College Station, that could be a problem for us. But again, only time will tell.
 
We need to sign the 4 and 5 stars to win big. We can argue the exceptions to the rule on 2 & 3 stars and the "coaching em up" blather ad nauseum, but if we cant land the 4 & 5 stars (top ten classes) we are not going to compete at the level expected at UT. We will know if the HC did his job recruiting when the signatures are on the dotted line next February.
 
^^Well, the 2015 offers so far (some from the previous coaches but not pulled, but most from this staff) are for about 9 five-stars, 4 or so near-five-stars, some 40 four-stars and only about ten 3-stars. No two-stars offered yet. How many of those 50 odd four and five stars will commit is anybody's guess, as a good number of them are from out of state too.

It will take hard work during the year, and good results in fall, to pull some 3 to 5 guys from the national top-150 though. I am not expecting more than 3 or so there. But getting 10 to 15 next-level four-stars in the end would not be too difficult, looking at how the staff is doing things and the feedback we are hearing so far from the recruits. That is, 4 star players from national top-300 or 400 would not be a problem (there are enough of them quite excited) but the upper half of it is what looks tough so far. May change if we do well on the field this year.

Not a single top-15 Texas player of 2015 (except perhaps Ketchum who falls at the bottom end of that) has so far placed Texas as their #1 choice. Those are the national top-125 type players. Not sure if we will manage to change the minds of a couple of them, but we may need to. Or we may manage to land 2 or 3 from out of state like that - and that looks more likely as of now.

But we aren't focusing on 2 stars and 3 stars. Let us not have any confusion on that. The staff has only picked a few 3-stars (very few actually) so far to offer. Naturally those guys would commit first. The staff hasn't taken chances and tried to lock down some fifteen 4-stars by this time, too early (using a bit of pressure on spots filling up at UT, like we used to do).

But that means we may not have too many 4 stars getting signed early who end up becoming 3 stars at the end of the senior year like used to happen. If we have to add some 10 three stars at the end because we could get no more than 12 or so four-star players, we will at least be looking at well-evaluated 3-stars (rather than end with a bunch of earlier 4-stars who prove to be 2 stars by the end of the senior year and get the courtesy 3-star as they were once 4-stars
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)

It is quite a different way of recruiting than what Mack used to do. we need to get used to it. But we would remain concerned too, till we have some (any) national top-150 players saying that we lead on them. Not just yet, but the staff is working on a fair number of them and it will take time.

[2016 is going possibly gangbusters so far, but too early to say, and we don't want to look like aggy
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... We need a top-5 or top-10 class for 2015 first]
 
Being one of the old timers (yeah, I actually saw Earl running in Memorial stadium : ) ) one thing is clear historically: A&M does not handle success on the football field very well. I'm not wishing this on them in the least way, just an observation.

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