UMass is trying to rebound from one of the worse statistical years in its football history. The Minutemen started the 2019 season in the low 50's in scholarships and ended in the high 40's. Visiting teams brought more players in their traveling squads than UMass was dressing as the home team. That number pretty much nullified any coaching gambits. Former UMass head coach Don Brown loved playing defensive "packages" in various circumstances. Last year UMass was not playing any defensive schemes because they did not have any players to scheme with.
The only way out of our misery is recruiting. I do not claim to be an "insider", but this is my take on 2020. A major consideration about thinking about evaluating this year's recruiting has to consider how we did
in relation to what.
Considering 2020 in relation to
- UMass recruiting history
- Our Group-of-Five peer group
- Number of recruits
- Our roster needs
The 2020 class is second only to Whipple's 2016 class in 247Sports rankings. That class brought us Andrew Ford, Bilal Ally, Isaiah Rogers and more. I've always contended the number of three-star recruits is a good indicator of success in the Group-of-Five. There is a strong correlation between recruiting rankings and football success. Recruit rankings can be arbitrary and wrong,
but all the teams have the same error-bars, so things even out. The number of three-stars were:
2020 --21 (most in UMass history)
2019-- 14
2018-- 7 (two left and one never made it past the clearing house)
2017--8
2016--11
Average 247Sports per recruit (to four digits is probably meaningless, two, maybe, is significant):
2020--0.8137
2019--0.8030
2018--0.7885
2017--0.7884 (Top two left)
2016--0.7959
Top Group-of-Five teams generally have three-star recruits in low twenties. Note that say, Toledo has four classes in that range and we have one. Besides the number of three stars, the 247Sports average rating was the highest in UMass FBS history.
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The current #99 ranking is representative of teams we want to emulate.
#95 Liberty (went to a bowl in 2019)
#96 Marshall (went to a bowl in 2019)
#97 Temple (went to a bowl in 2019)
#98 Texas State
#99 UMass
#100 Georgia Southern (went to a bowl in 2019)
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UMass could have used a 30+ recruiting class, but we ended up with 25 rated recruits, which was the maximum allowed by the NCAA. None of the recruits were unrated fill-ins. The Minutemen maxed out in the number of recruits allowed for 2020.
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Coach Bell stated at the recruiting event that we were a couple of years away from targeting specific positions in recruiting. UMass needed numbers above all other considerations.
I think UMass did well in recruiting for both the offensive and defensive lines. The five DL recruits can play for any Group-of-Five team. Coach Bell also said he expected most of the freshmen to play in 2020.
IMHO, the Minutemen still needs more recruiting for quarterbacks, running backs and linebackers, but that will have to be addressed next year.
My take is this year's recruits are about as good as UMass fans could have hoped for. We need more than one year like 2020, but it was an excellent start.
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Mike Traini of "Fight Massachusetts" has
what we learned from UMass' signing day.
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The Berkshire Eagle reports
UMass signed a full 25-man recruiting class.
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