Recruiting Radar: Miami misses on another WR

A while back, I wrote this piece about Miami’s WR recruiting board.

Let’s get caught up on what’s happened since I wrote that piece:

• 3-star Kevaughn Dingle was dropped. He finally decommitted after not having heard from Miami’s coaches for nearly 3 months.
• 5-star Jerry Jeudy stuck with Alabama despite Miami’s best effort to flip him
• In the latest development, 3-star Mike Harley stuck with West Virginia and won’t take visits.

This is very surprising to me. Everything I’d heard led me to believe that Harley was all but committed to Miami.

So, now, Miami has but 1 WR commit — 3-star WR Evidence Njoku — and a whole bunch of nothing.

Miami is in the running for 5-star WR Devonta Smith (Amite, LA), but the consensus is and has been that he’ll sign with Alabama. Miami is scheduled to get an OV from Smith in January, but nothing is set in stone.

Miami also recently offered 3-star WR Jordan Pouncey, a Notre Dame commit. Payton has decent size and speed, but even if Miami were to flip him, that wouldn’t be a big get.

Speaking of Notre Dame, Miami is a preferred destination for departing grad-transfer WR Corey Holmes. A South Florida Native who attended St. Thomas Aquinas for HS, Holmes has elite speed, which could help the roster. He didn’t play much at ND, a team with average-at-best WRs, so he’s not the savior by any means.

Other than those 3 guys, Miami has nothing on the board at WR. That is a massive, massive failure by this staff this cycle, unless things change in a big way in the next 36 days between now and National Signing Day.

Now, Miami has 4-star ATH DeeJay Dallas in this class, and he could play WR full-time. I don’t think that’s the best use of his skills (he should be a DB mostly and part-time offensive player in my opinion), but that might become necessary with the continued misses at WR this year.

At every turn, Miami Coach Mark Richt has gone out of his way to make it known that Miami needs WRs on this team. That was the case before NSD 2016, and continues to be the case now. It is incredible to me that this staff has been unable to lock in WRs in this class. No, 2017 in SoFLA isn’t super duper loaded at WR like it is in 2018, but a WR class with only Evidence Njoku — as good as he is and has the potential to become — simply isn’t good enough for Miami. Period.

I don’t know if it’s evaluation, or recruiting choices, but Miami should never struggle THIS BAD to get skill guys.

I don’t know what needs to change, but my goodness it needs to change now. This is getting BAD, and I don’t like it.