MWC Recruiting Roundup 10-5-20

Another week, another recruiting roundup.

One thing you may have noticed on Twitter this weekend was recruits tweeting about official offers. August 1st is the first day schools can give written or official offers. If you follow the recruiting of your favorite team closely, you may notice some verbal offers from the spring aren’t always backed up by official written offers. It’s a good time of year to see who are the high school athletes a team is actually recruiting strongly.

Another thing you may notice is a clear emphasis on the class of 2022 or beyond. In fact, only two offers this week was handed out to a recruit in the 2021 class. One of the reasons for this is that quite a few teams have secured most of their spots in their 2021 classes, so they can focus more attention on future classes. Another potential reason is with seniors being allowed to return for an extra year of eligibility, some teams may be taking smaller recruiting classes to balance their roster out. It is something to look for when following this recruiting cycle.

This past week saw four new verbals in to the Mountain West. Air Force had two of the four, with Boise State and Fresno State rounding up the list. The Broncos landed the highest rated recruit of the week by a wide margin, one of the highest rated in the conference so far this class and they capture the banner this week.

Class of 2021 Cover Photo Total:

• Air Force: 5
• New Mexico: 5
• Boise State: 4
• Colorado State: 4
• UNLV: 3
• San Diego State: 3
• Nevada: 2
• Fresno State: 2
• Hawaii: 1
• San Jose State: 1

Recruiting Calendar:

The dead period is still alive. But based on what the NCAA is allowing, it seems more like a contact period to some degree, as coaches can have unlimited calls and video meetings during this time.

Update: The Dead Period has been extending through the end of the 2020.

Air Force Commitment Tracker:

Looks like it’s time to bring this back. Since the Air Force Academy regularly has around 100 commits in each class, it’s kind of fun to track them over the course of the year.

Number of Falcon verbal commits: 38

October Team Recruiting Rankings

Here are last month’s rankings for the sake of comparison.

1) Boise State

2) UNLV

3) San Diego State

4) Fresno State

5) Colorado State

6) New Mexico

7) Nevada

8) Hawaii

9) Air Force

10) San Jose State

11) Utah State

12) Wyoming

There wasn’t any movement in the bottom half of the rankings. UNLV and Boise State are pretty neck and neck after the Bronco’s hot few weeks. I matched them head to head with some semi-arbitrary, semi-legitimate measurements.

The Rebels have the quantity advantage 19 to 15 (one silent) commits, but that number is much closer than it used to be. In terms of quality, Boise State has 10 players with a composite rating of 84 or higher, while UNLV has 8 in the same category. UNLV has the single highest player per composite ranking, but Boise State has the highest rated player going off of just 247 rankings. Looking at top-end talent, the Broncos have 6 players rated higher than the third-highest ranked Rebel player and 5 players ranked higher than the second-highest ranked Rebel commit. It’s extremely close and really comes down to a coin flip, but that’s what went into ranking the Broncos slightly above the Rebels this month.

As many know, tiers can sometimes tell more of the story than straight rankings. If someone ranked teams in a different order but within the same tier, they would have a fair argument. Here are the current tiers:

Tier 1: Boise State, UNLV

Tier 2: San Diego State

Tier 3: Colorado State, Fresno State, New Mexico,

Tier 4: Nevada

Tier 5: Hawaii, Air Force, SJSU

Tier 6: Utah State, Wyoming

A Glance At Fresno State Recruiting:

The Bulldogs weren’t known for top-tier MWC recruiting during the Jeff Tedford era, despite highly successful seasons. In the first full recruiting cycle for Kalen DeBoer, that already seems to be changing.

Fresno State has the 75th ranked class on 247 sports, which is currently 6th in the MWC but has been higher in earlier points of the cycle. In this class are some of the top players in the entire conference. They continue to hit home-state California hard but have expanded more into other states as well.

Their running backs are perhaps the position they’ve recruited the best. Jordan Hornbeak and Johnathan Arceneaux both look like potential all-conference types. Similarly, they have one of the better quarterbacks among Mountain West teams so far with Jaylen Henderson. The offensive talent continues with offensive tackle Braylen Nelson. On defense, they tapped into some Bishop Gorman talent with Charlotin Charles and have some very promising talent on the defensive line. Specifically, Julius Lewis has great size to become a force as an interior defensive lineman.

They could use another playmaker or two at the wide receiver position, as well as another d-line player. Linebacker needs much more attention before the class is complete. Overall, they are well ahead of their pace the past few years and if they can fill the rest of the spots with players similar to the talent level mentioned above, they could see themselves towards the top of the conference.

Recruiting Updates:

Offers

• 2022 TE Jack Pedersen was offered by Boise State
• 2022 DB/WR TJ Hall was offered by Fresno State
• 2022 RB Marlon Gunn Jr was offered by New Mexico
• WR Fred Farrier was offered by SDSU
• 2022 RB Dominique McKenzie was offered by Utah State

Commits

• RB Massiah Tolen committed to Air Force
• DL Antwan Brown Jr committed to Air Force
• OL Jason White committed to Boise State
• DB Emari Pait committed to Fresno State

Follow @Mike_SBN on Twitter for all the latest recruiting news and updates.