Q & A's : National Signing Day Thoughts

How many redshirt candidates from this class? Key RS candidates are?

Demetrius Jackson immediately comes to my mind as the type of kid Miami needs to be red shirting in order to maximize what he can become. That said, Grace was of that same mold last year and he played.

Some of the WR's like Brady, Langham, and maybe Berrios could grab a shirt. Ryan Mayes seems like a prime candidate as well. The TE kids (Herndon and Njoku) as well as one of the OL (likely Linder) are all candidates. I think you'll see most of the pass rushers and LBs play immediately.

Demetrius Jackson. Chad Thomas. Who's better In 3 years? Are they better than what's on roster with aqm and McCord?

Chad Thomas. And it's not even close. Nothing wrong with Jackson but Chad is just on a whole other level. He needs polish but he's potentially the next elite Cane NFL DE.

Ranking them in order for next season:

1a.) McCord

1b.) Muhammed

2.) Chad Thomas

10.) Demetrius Jackson

That's the sort of gap I think we are looking at as far as potential impact for the 2014 season.

12 seniors on next year's team. That obviously means the 2015 class will be far smaller than 2014, correct?

Correct. I think we still have a tiny bit of attrition coming this year and we are sure to have more next year.

There's also some flexibility in how we can allocate the NCAA scholarship losses.

It's not going to be a huge class, but there should be some wiggle room to push it to the low 20's if they found the right guys.

Overall, your thoughts on 2014 class? Good or Great?

I think it's splitting hairs. Could this class have ended a little better? Sure. It would've been nice to hang into a Reilly Gibbons or a Brandon Powell. But as it stands, you cannot look at any single spot of this class and say they totally whiffed.

They landed an elite QB, some of the best offensive linemen in the country and the most natural and diversified set of pass rushers that we have seen here in a long, long time.

This isn't a class that had much (if any) dead weight at all. It's got talent and skill from top to bottom.

This is the 1st time is a long while that I feel like I can sit back and say "this is what a Miami caliber class looks like."

Will braxton be ready in the fall?? And is D jackson playing outside LB in our 3-4 and chad a DE in a 3-4

I haven't heard anything to suggest that Braxton won't be ready in the fall. But as long as the WR group stays healthy, they shouldn't need him unless he just sets the world on fire in camp.

Jackson will likely play a stand up edge rusher role. Remember when you saw Shayon Green covering TEs out in space. Well eventually you'll see that go to a kid like Jackson that is much more suited to that role. He can play standing up or with his hand down and allow us to give different looks out of both our 3-4 and 4-3 fronts.

Chad is a more traditional DE. He's not your typical 3-4 DE but that's not truthfully a role we would like ask him to play much of anyways. He'd likely be asked to fill a role similar to the one that Chickillo has been filling here for the last few years.

Looking back a year from now, who will you say we dropped the ball on?

This might surprise some but I'll say they made a miscalculation on Chris Lammons.

I know most immediately go straight to the big names. Cook, Valentine, Dixon, Jackson, etc get brought up often. I think the staff did everything they could to land those players and just lost out. It happens. Same way it happens with just about any program. You think UF was thrilled to lose Valentine, Lane, and Cook? All 3 were committed to them at one point in the process.

That said, I felt like Lammons was a little better than this staff gave him credit for. He was committed to both Florida and South Carolina, two programs that have a pretty good recent track record with CBs. While that spot wasn't a massive need for this class, I think Lammons would've been a worthwhile take as a 2nd CB this class and we are deep enough to allow him to RS and come along slowly at that spot.

The staff never seemed to make a real effort with him but I can't help but wonder if they would've have had a really good shot to land him once it started becoming clear that he wouldn't stick with UF.

Why do fans rely on recruiting sites rankings over the coaching staffs evaluations?

Because they are fans and the sites are built for easy consumption. Truth is that coaches and analysts are human and this is a very in exact science. The best way to go about this is to study the game and watch the tape for yourself. Form your own opinion of the player regardless of what others think.