Saturday, December 28, 2019

UMass Football News--December 28th, 2019


UMass currently has 27 commits listed in the 247Sports 2020 Minutemen recruiting page.

The NCAA currently allows 25 scholarships per year. A couple of the listed recruits may blue shirt and Spring arrivals can be added to the 2019 recruiting class if it did not exceed the limit (and I don't think it did). Nevertheless, it would seem the 2020 class is mostly complete.

A small number of scholarships are probably still available. The 2020 transfer portal could be one option to try to add immediate help to the 2020 class.

One area of need that has not yet received a lot of recruiting help is linebacker.

UMass did not recruit any LB's in the 2019 class. In 2018 (Whipple's last class) UMass signed three LB's of whom only DaShon Ross is still with the team. The 2020 class has two linebackers. That's effectively three linebackers in three years.

The transfer portal lists 75 linebackers (if I counted right) available. From the Northeast (where the coaching staff might be familiar with the player's history) 247Sports shows three portal linebackers from UConn, two from Pitt and one from Rutgers.

2019 Penn State transfer Jarvis Miller went 12-11 GP-GS 60 TT (fourth on the defense) 4.5 TFL and 1.0 SACKS.

It will be interesting to see if the coaching staff will try for any of the available transfer linebackers.