The CheckerBoard

Double Boom!! Congats to Malik and DeVaun. About time we start keeping our homegrown talent home!

Not gonna be out done so.....my $.38 is on the JUCO's too!

lol.........Seriously, I think very soon we will land the JUCO TE's....which we will need for sure.

Yep....Anxious to see what we end up with and how the staff utilizes the talent. I am very optimistic that we will be pleasantly surprised.

^^^This^^^

I forget which team it was about right off hand, but the team ranked 38th in recruiting and went on to win the national title... Think it was in the mid 80's. then another ranked 30th and did the same thing. So on the outside looking in I am concerned slightly. On the inside looking out, I say I like overachievers and the under dog role right now. We may not get taken seriously with the new staff and recruits etc... But that's sets up right for being a sleeper. Just a different perspective I guess. Food for thought.

Great report Ryan. Gotta love a kid that decommits from Candy so that he can wear the Orange. Welcome Mr. Foreman. GO VOLS!

Maybe Franklin realizes that with a new Coach in Knoxville, he's gonna have to fight for the best in-state talent again.

Another article said Coach wants a dozen receivers. He could be on the receiver list as an alternative until that dance card is full. We need some speed in the secondary.

I think this is well said. To piggy back what an on-air local personality (for the sake of the website, I wish not to say other media figures names) said on Friday afternoon when a caller called in to bash CBJ for what the caller said was, "recruiting below the program's expectations," the on-air personality swiftly responded by saying UT has a losing record in 4 of the past 5 seasons and have had 3 coaches in the past 5 years as well. What do you expect.

He went on to say that UT going forward, in his opinion, might continue to lose to teams much more talented then they are (Bama, Florida, Georgia, S. Carolina) for the next few years, but they wont continuously get outcoached by the teams who have around the same, or less, talent EVERY SINGLE GAME (Vandy, UK, Mizzou, Miss St.) like Dooley did. I tend to agree with that.

These are my words, I believe when they start showing promise, have a coaching staff that shows they want to be here, and start getting 100% out of their players on every play (which I guarantee will happen with this coach), we will work our way back to where most of us expect us to be in recruiting.

In the meantime, lets get excited about the little things (taking a quality football player from Vandy who isnt the same Vandy these days) with the big picture in the background.

I couldn't agree more! +1

I truly hope this kid turns out to be a gem. If that 4.37 is accurate, then that's real d-back speed that UT needs. And...

170 pounds gives up 50 pounds to a 220 pound tailback and 30 to today's WR's.

Also, many fans cheered at 3-star pickups with the previous staff and then bemoaned the lack of speed and talent this season.

And it was a big deal that UT offered to grayshirt Malik's 2-star buddy...

Truly, I hope to be surprised by the results, but I have to say what this is beginning to look like...a non-SEC staff is picking up non-SEC recruits hoping to get SEC results. This did not work for the previous staff despite the faith that Vols fans held with "I don't trust stars. I trust these coaches to evaluate talent!" types of statements. Now, are we to believe that this staff is simply better at evaluating talent than the previous staff? Why? There is no reason to believe so. Given, there is no reason to believe not either.

I want CBJ to succeed because I want the Vols to return to power. Besides CBJ's personality though, nothing seems terribly different on the recruiting front. Hope something changes.

Vols!