re: Keon Coleman

quote:

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We signed Nabers, Bech, BTJ, Deion Smith, and Hilton. 4/5 were Louisiana guys in a strong receiver class in state

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This is the answer. The crazy thing about our decision not to take him is that it was actually completely reasonable, even with the benefit of hindsight.


At the time, BTJ and Hilton were both clearly above him as prospects, so no real gripe there. Nabers wound up being clearly better than him, so no gripe there, either.


That leaves Deion Smith and Bech.


Smith was similarly but probably a little more highly rated - and although academics have held him back up to this point, he had a great JUCO season last year and the word from ole miss is that he looks great in spring practice, so it’s not at all out of the question that he winds up in a similar day-2-pick type range. So in hindsight you’d have preferred Coleman, but it’s not some egregious whiff on evaluation.


Finally, with Bech, you’ve gottta put him in a different category from the others. The others were actual *recruits*—guys we actively pursued and had to battle other programs for. Bech was a filler type guy; he was good enough to take, but we didn’t really have to work to get him on board, so he was the guy who we brought in once we knew there was a spot and it was too late to go get a guy like Coleman. I could be mistaken, but my guess is that if the staff could’ve waved a magic wand and gotten a commitment from their choice of Coleman or bech, they’d have probably taken Coleman— it’s just that they couldn’t.


So all in all I really don’t think there’s anything at all to fuss about regarding our eval on Coleman. We took 2 guys that anyone would’ve taken over him, another guy that some may not have taken but who turned out to be the obvious correct choice, one guy for whom it was a close call and we were wrong but not disastrously wrong, and one guy we took simply because we could