The casual fan may not delve into recruiting conversations too often, but recruiting is what makes a college football team. While coaching and in-game execution is crucial, the coaching staff needs to be able to recruit the right players.
Chris Karpman, who has worked for Rivals.com for eight years, covers recruiting and talked to The State Press about some of ASU’s newest recruits.
The State Press: What are some of the differences in style and approach that this staff has taken with recruiting in comparison to the last staff?
CK: The big thing that has jumped out at me is how relentless this staff is, and that’s not just comparing this staff to the previous staff, but to what I’ve seen compared to any other staff or year at ASU going back at least 10 years. It’s important for context to understand that the process has really sped up a lot and become more advanced over what it used to be. Even taking that into consideration, this staff is far, far and away much more aggressive.
A great example of that is they’ve already offered seven or eight kids in Arizona that are part of the 2014 class. Those kids still have two years of high school left and they already have scholarship offers from ASU. About five of those kids have already been to visit ASU and at this time last year, there was no recruit that had a scholarship offer in the equivalent class, the 2013 class at that point in time.
SP: Everyone knows about D.J. Foster, but who else in this year’s class will have an impact in the fall?
CK: Assuming that he is eligible and qualifies, Mike Pennel, who is a Scottsdale Community College defensive tackle, will be extremely important to the class. (ASU) does not have a true nose tackle on the roster coming out of the spring. Corey Adams is an undersized guy who lost a lot of weight to try to get faster, but now doesn’t have the heft to command double teams and things like that. Mike Pennel is 350 pounds and if you can imagine he’s a lean 350, so he is really important. We saw in the spring that ASU struggled defensively up the middle to stop runs and that was because of their lack of a big body there and also at inside linebacker as Brandon Magee wasn’t participating and they didn’t have another guy there, but they will in the (fall) in the form of Steffon Martin.
Steffon Martin is physically strong, athletic and an explosive type of linebacker. He is going to come in and probably start right away. Chris Young is a junior college kid. He was the Western States Football League Defensive Player of the Year at Arizona Western. He can play that rover position which they call spur linebacker. He will probably battle Anthony Jones there.
On offense you don’t have as many guys competing for starting sports, but there is junior college receiver Alonzo Agwuenu. He visited for a week in the spring, so he was able to watch a lot of what they were doing … I would expect that there is a really good chance that he could play, along with Foster.
Other than that, there is really nobody, with the maybe exception of (Evan) Goodman who is the type of player that will be playing earlier rather than later in his career.
SP: Running back is a deep position, but you didn’t mention Marion Grice. What are your thoughts on him?
CK: My guess is they are going to use two backs and that will be Cameron Marshall and probably Marion Grice. It’s going to be between James Morrison and Grice at the end of the day … Grice is so explosive. I asked (running backs coach) Larry Porter if Grice was the type of back he would recruit to LSU because he was the running backs coach, and he said he thought so. From an expectations standpoint, we are talking about the No. 1 rater junior college running back on Rivals.
SP: Recently Raul Lara, the Poly coach, compared Richard Smith to DeSean Jackson in high school. What have you seen not only from Smith, but also from the other Poly kids?
CK: That’s such a high comparison. If you look at the NFL level, there are maybe two guys or three guys at receiver who have that level of explosiveness at receiver. Obviously I haven’t worked with Smith or watched him in person all the time, so you have to defer to the coach to a certain extent, but on film I don’t think he’s quite that explosive. He’s obviously a tremendous athlete. He’s a jitterbug sort of a guy. He has really quick feet.
Josiah Blandin is more of a possession type receiver. The linebackers I actually like quite a bit. I think Todd Graham said in February on that Salamo Fiso could end up being the steal of the class. I definitely think that’s possible on defense ... I don’t think Matthew Rowe (is as athletic as his brother), but he’s a guy who at least is a middle-of-the-road caliber athlete as a Pac-12 linebacker. He plays very physically. (He) will put his helmet right in there.
SP: Back to the team that’s already there. There is a lot of excitement because of the new coach and new era, but you’re in the middle of position evaluations and a lot of the grades have been fairly low. What are realistic expectations for this team?
CK: I think that it’s difficult to say at this point because when you have a new staff and they are installing new concepts both offense and defense. The offense is wholly different from last year. You’re going to have about a half dozen guys who are going to be impact additions and that is really going to change the look of your units in the fall.
I think ultimately to be successful in this conference you need a quarterback who is at least moderately good. Unless you have a defense that is fantastic, you need a quarterback who is good. The truth of the matter is ASU does not have that right now and won’t have that this year. They have some guys that can become that good, that have potential and are nowhere near reaching their ceiling, but it’s going to be a work in progress.
The schedule is not easy. Missouri and Illinois — that’s not easy. The conference schedule could be harder, but it’s not a cakewalk. I think anybody that is looking at this team and expecting more than a six or seven win type season, I would say that is way too speculative at this juncture. I would say this team would be right around .500 give or take a game at the very most.
Reach the reporter at william.boor@asu.edu
