Football Restart

So, at some point in the basketball season I declared a moratorium on football posts while I focused on what was emerging as a truly enjoyable basketball season.  And while that didn't end the way any of us hoped, it was still a special season, punctuated by the last 2 wins at Anderson.  Some stray football new did pile up, and I catch up on it now.

First, Diryal Briggs played on the Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers.  As you can see above, SI took a nice shot of him that ended up being featured on their website.  Diryal came back for the Kent game and received a nice welcome from the Falcon fans.  It was exciting and nice to see him back.  He has really persevered...he was undrafted, was cut a couple times, and then ended up playing in the Super Bowl.

Second, following recruiting day there were some additional reports of "preferred walk ons" coming to BG.  These were ably tracked in John Wagner's column in The Blade, here for the bulk of them and here for our new punter.

Of most interest is Brian Schmeidebusch, a punter who last played at the University of Findlay in 2009. He will be eligible to play this Fall, and the Falcons need a punter.  He averaged 42 yards per punt for the Oilers and 11 of his 38 punts were inside the 20 (a lot of punts inside the 20 can impact your average as you intentionally kick it short).  He was a second-team DII All-American.

Among the broader list of preferred walk ons, we have already written about Matt Redfield, a LB from Columbus, and Malik Stokes a prep-school QB who is making the transition to WR.

You should check out Wagner's link.  These preferred walk ons are a highly decorated group of players, many of whom were outstanding players at smaller schools in our area.  There are a number of all-district and all-state players.  The Falcons made use of a number of walk-ons this year, and, if nothing else, having guys like this around keep the pressure on the scholarship guys--internal competition.

On the less positive note, we have some departures.  Kellen Pagel (as we have written already) is heading to UMASS, and Nick Tuminello (TE) is heading to Youngstown State.

There have been others who have not been reported.  A comparison of the current roster on BGSUfalcons.com and the roster from our last game notes shows a few other players missing, including:

DB Lane Robilotto (played in a couple games).
QB Caleb Watkins (hit by numbers game, much like Pagel).
OL Preston Burrell (remained on bench while we moved guys from defense to play Oline)
OL Cody Silk (was Michigan's #47 recruit)
OL Blaec Walker (suffered career-ending injury)
DE Dylan Farrington (played in 5 games, had 3 tackles and a hurry)

Coach had hinted we would seem some attrition, and we did.  Football is tough.  You don't lose your contributors, because they are playing and stay.  You lose guys who might or might not have contributed in the future.  I think we are continuing to recruit well, so quality of players hopefully will not be an issue.  However, program depth has been an issue, and these losses could impact that.

We noted our D-Line coach moved to Vanderbilt.  He was replaced with a guy I think was a good hire. He is Larry McDaniel, who coached the D-Line at Kent for 8 seasons.  Last year, Kent had a killer defensive line, including Roosevelt Nix, who became the first freshman to be the MAC's defensive player of the year.

Kyle at Mlive.com did some nice recruiting analysis.  (Kyle is in our MAC Blogger Roundtable).  First, he looked at which teams got the most players who had other offers.  (All caveats on shadowy recruiting services and the reliability of their rankings are restated).

Here is what he found when he looked at the number of offers the Top Ten recruits at each school had:

No. 1 Toledo -- The Rockets are on top (again) as their top 10 players accumulated a total of 54 offers, or 5.4 average offers per recruit.

No. 2 Bowling Green -- The Falcons are very strong with 52 offers and a 5.2 average.

No. 3 Ohio -- The Bobcats had a plethora of nice recruits in 2011. Their top 10 players generated 37 offers.

There are 9 other teams.  I don't list them because I just wanted to show the drop off between BG at #2 and OU at #3.  CMU and Miami were last at 1.9 offers per recruits.

It is only the start of the story, but to me, it is a huge thing to be getting recruits everybody else wants.  A story appears to be emerging that would have Tim Beckman and Dave Clawson as the best two recruiters in the MAC, which could lead to some very interesting games in the future.  Recruiting is just the first step.

The other analysis Kyle did was to look at the number of recruits each team got that didn't have another D1 offer.  Here are the bottom 3 (or the best 3) on this measure.

No. 11 Tim Beckman at Toledo -- Every recruiting site, from ESPN to Scout.com, has been in total agreement that the Rockets have the best recruiting class in the MAC. You might be surprised to learn that only 30 percent of their class went unloved by other programs.

No. 12 Dave Clawson at Bowling Green -- Clawson has destroyed the majority of MAC coaches who have tried to compete with him for recruits. Despite a down season in 2010, Clawson was able to bring in the consensus No. 2 recruiting class in the MAC. Only 6 of his 24 players (25 percent) had no options outside of Bowling Green.

No. 13 Bill Cubit at Western Michigan -- Nobody closes a recruiting season faster or harder than WMU coach Bill Cubit. Going into January, Cubit traditionally has only a handful of recruits committed. By Signing Day, his stocking is loaded with more BCS caliber recruits than any other team in the MAC. Only a measly 20 percent of his players are headed to Kalamazoo because they had nowhere else to go. Top-to-bottom, this is the best class in the MAC based on the average demand of each recruit.

Note the WMU love...