Let’s See How It Turns Out In 3-4 Years, Jamie Newberg

'09 Football Football Recruiting Tom O'Brien64

Google’s news snoop sent me a link a little while ago where a roundtable of Rivals.com national analysts talked about the college football signing classes that they ranked as the ‘most disappointing’ for the year.

Jamie Newberg’s answer: I think what North Carolina State did was a little disappointing, especially with the way they finished the season on the field. You would have thought they would have had a ton of momentum after they crushed archrival North Carolina and rallied for a bowl bid. But the Tar Heels dominated recruiting in-state, to the extent that the Wolfpack didn’t sign any of the state’s top 10 players and only three of the top 35. NC State finished No. 52 nationally, a big drop-off from last year (No. 31), and the biggest reason is they didn’t get their in-state share.

My first reaction (after rolling my eyes) was to mutter “come back in three or four years and re-rate this class then, Jamie” and my second was that these experts never seem to get Tom O’Brien: he doesn’t recruit stars, he recruits players that will fit into his system.  Matt Ryan was a three-star QB and ranked #44 coming into college.  He didn’t graduate that way, and was one of the two best rookie QBs in the NFL last year.  Just for example.  Dan Koppen, a Pro Bowl center with the New England Patriots was not blessed by the Jamie Newbergs of the world, but he’s good enough to have started three years for Tom O’Brien and goood enough after college to be rated as an all-star by his peers.   On the other side of the ball, Jeremy Trueblood was another lowly rated recruit that ended up as an All Big-East player by the time O’Brien was done teaching him and is now starting for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

In Raleigh, Scout.com two-star Russel Wilson certainly seems to be working out under center.  Four-star Mike Paulus over at UNC?  Not so much.  Maybe there is something O’Brien’s ability to recognize good skills when he sees them after all.

I will also add that on the field, O’Brien managed to recruit players into Boston College that were tough on the field and that by the time he left he had built a championship-caliber squad that former head coach Jeff Jagodzinski rode to two ACC Title game appearances.  Jagodzinski couldn’t replicate O’Brien’s success in recruiting and got out while the getting was good once O’Brien’s players started exiting the BC program.

In other words, Tom O’Brien has probably forgotten more about recognizing coachable talent in prep players than so-called experts like Jamie Newberg will ever know.

'09 Football Football Recruiting Tom O'Brien

64 Responses to Let’s See How It Turns Out In 3-4 Years, Jamie Newberg

  1. BJD95 02/11/2009 at 10:29 AM #

    A football player is farther away from his physical peak (as a recruit) than is a basketball player. Thus, recruiting rankings are far less predictive.

  2. Classof89 02/11/2009 at 10:31 AM #

    I’m not saying theyare quicker stronger and more athletic at every position…but if we get shut out of the top 10 players in NC the next three years the way we were this year, then that will pretty much describe the talent disparity that will exist.

    As we discussed in antother thread last week, that is precisely what happened with Mack Brown and Dick Sheridan/MOC.

    Here’s another factor we all probably don’t want to talk about: TOB’s background (Irish Catholic, Marine) matched PERFECTLY with where BC was trying to recruit (Catholic schools in the Northeast/MidAtlantic area). I’m thinking TOB doesn’t do so well trying to go and schmooze the redneck head coach of, say, Richmond County High School. Or West Craven. Or Wallace-Rose Hill. Or (insert traditional NC High School football power of your choice located in remote rural area). Anyone think that’s some of what’s going on? the “he ain’t one of us” factor?

    Then again, Dick Crum at UNC wasn’t exactly a good old boy, and he put together some pretty talented teams…Amos Lawrence, Lawrence Taylor, et al.

  3. BJD95 02/11/2009 at 10:40 AM #

    The local coaches apparently do really like TOB and staff. I think NC recruiting will even out more going forward.

    We all saw how “great on paper” classes can pan out when Chuckles was here.

  4. Classof89 02/11/2009 at 10:43 AM #

    BTW, everytime one of you refer to Amato as “Chuckles” I have to suppress the urge to giggle. Has there ever been a more evocative nickname for a bad former coach? Well done!

    And BJD, as for the comment that the local HS coaches really like him, I’m glad to hear it, but I’m a little skeptical. Not because I don’t believe what you say, but because I remember hearing the precise same thing about, er, Chuckles. How MOC had been distant, and his staff hadn’t interacted with them, how Amato was going and visiting every single high school in the state, blah, blah, blah.

    I think there is some tendency to say these sorts of things every time there is a coaching transition, particularly when the last one was fired.

  5. BJD95 02/11/2009 at 10:57 AM #

    I’m talking about hearing that from others, not what gets into the MSM. The same people who hated Chuck really like TOB. Hell, we recruited NC great the previous year.

    But it’s a process. O’Brien and company are building relationships from Ground Zero.

  6. anti-smurf 02/11/2009 at 11:39 AM #

    “I don’t care how many stars they have when they get here, but they better have 5 stars when they leave!”

    To me that says it all!

    One thing about this year’s class. I think it’s more of a depth class (at least for now). Why did we hae a subpar year in state? here is my theory:

    The first part of the season, unc was the sexy thing. All the media praised how they were going to compete, and possibly win the ACC championship. They got a bunch of early wins, and shot up the rankings. During this time, we couldn’t seem to do anything right on the field. Injuries left us with less than stellar play, and we got blown out. All while this is going on, the recruiting machine that is Davis and Blake were pounding this home. Lots of the main guys in the state had already committed to unc by the time we righted the ship. by then it was too late.

    That’s my theory – and I’m sticking to it.

    I think we’re in great position for 2010 (at least based on what I’ve read on Wolfpacker and Pack Pride). With a solid season (7-8 wins), I can see us having a VERY solid class!

    We know the staff can coach, and when he gets big time talent in here, lookout!

  7. Scooter 02/11/2009 at 11:44 AM #

    Its kind of moot to get hung up on National Signing Day rankings, etc. Half of the kids in just about every class around the country won’t end up on the field for the teams that recruited them due to injury, academics, coaching changes, etc. etc. All we can focus on at this point is keeping the kids we’ve got around and building them into the players that fit our program.

    Personally, I am happy with our recruiting class. Nothing makes me smile like the sound of more offensive linemen committing. We have always had a problem with depth at the offensive line and hopefully after next years class, we will have the o-line factory running that O’Brien had at BC. As Amato proved, we can have all the skill players we want, but if we don’t have a line to block for them…

  8. Sam92 02/11/2009 at 12:26 PM #

    all of this leaves the early game against South Carolina looming large — win there and we make a huge statement

  9. ChiefJoJo 02/11/2009 at 2:13 PM #

    Alpha, check out the programs Mr. Wizard used in his analysis: Bama, Notre Dame, FSU, Miami, UCLA, etc. He cherry picked the schools that have been in a historic downturn (compared to their history) during the period 2002-2008 and concludes that recruiting doesn’t matter. I can give you a list of programs that shows it does: UF, LSU, Georgia, USC, Oklahoma, Texas, Cal, Auburn, VT, etc.

    I agree with 89. They aren’t much more athletic now, but we cannot allow them to do what they did this year and still stay even. We have been down that road, and I don’t want to go there again. I don’t want to be the program that says ‘this class may not have any 5 stars, but we like what we have assembled & we’ll coach em up so they will be 5 stars when they leave.’ The vast majority of the coaches who say that in Feb, do not win big in December.

    FWIW, I think any issues TOB might (if any) have relating to the coaches and kids of rural NC can likely be made up by the fact that he is an ex-marine. What coach wouldn’t respect him for that? In any case, the assistants do most of the direct recruiting contact anyway.

  10. Classof89 02/11/2009 at 2:34 PM #

    ^
    true, assistants do most of the recruiting, but most of those guys are also from “up Nawth”. Who is our designated redneck a la Robbie Caldwell on the staff?

  11. Noah 02/11/2009 at 2:56 PM #

    But I do think BSIE has a good point–we CANNOT year in and year out be out-recruited in NC the way we were this year.

    True. But we did really well last year and I think you’ll be pleased with next year’s class.

    Also, BJD is right about the perception of O’Brien by high school coaches. He repaired a lot of broken relationships. I don’t think people really grasp how badly Amato had screwed things up on a whole bunch of different fronts.

  12. redfred2 02/11/2009 at 4:39 PM #

    “But it’s a process. O’Brien and company are building relationships from Ground Zero.”

    Uh, well, um…and how many years has TOB been coaching FB on the collegiate level now?

    Oh yeah, that’s right, no more comparisons to BB, those are just silly.

  13. redfred2 02/11/2009 at 8:09 PM #

    Alpha, PLEASE let me get this off of my chest. I know what you said earlier, but please oblige me this statement to get it all out.

    I think what happened is that the situation involving the two programs, both FB and BB, were much more similar than most people were/are willing to admit. I’m not here trying to pat myself on the back, but I had warned about something like this for years and on too many different occasions in the past.

    Look, I AM THRILLED THAT TOB IS IN RALEIGH, he is going to give us a football program that we can all be very proud of, as well as one that will be an honor to inherit when the time comes for someone else to take the reigns. With that said in all sincerity, TOB’s record while at NC State, and this recent report on recruiting in-state, as well as overall, does not, or rather would not, warrant this level of confidence IF he did not ALREADY have a history to back him up. But with that history though, it does, and it is absolutely warranted to believe that TOB will do great things at NC State. PLUS, and this is a HUGE factor as far as my thinking in this WHOLE scenario, TOB came in and took over a program where the prior coach had EARNED a perpetual target on his back because of his HUGE ego and his cartoonish personna. That last point may sound almost trivial, but in my mind it is a very important factor in how the condition of both the FB and BB programs are/were perceived at time when both of the new coaches took over their new positions.

    I’m not going to into depth about the BB program, nor am I trying defending Sidney Lowe or any of his performances to date. ALL I am saying is that the BB program may have SEEMED to most people, to have been in better hands than the FB program was at the time, but it was simply a misconception that was brought on by the differences in the two sports, as well as the completely opposite outward appearances of those two Head Coaches who were heading up those programs up before their replacements arrived.

    Lowe has NOT performed to my, or anyone else’s, liking thus far. While In most people’s minds TOB has. Why is that? Especially considering that he has a less that 500% winning percentage in the ACC over two seasons, and while in reality he has only finished above only two other ACC programs in both of those same two seasons. Why is that again? Well besides the cartoon being there before him, it’s simply because TOB has had and EARNED a college coaching carreer that affords him that kind of latitude.

    Then there’s the twisted tale of Sidney Lowe’s arrival, the outward *appearances* of the former coach and his upright and stalward program, mixed with the thought that a newbie, a rookie coach for all intents and purposes, could just walk in here and take over an ACC caliber program, and make it fly when it didn’t have any wings.

    My entire point is that the BB program was not any better off under it’s past coach, in fact, as I have said forever, because of many things, and many of those being intangibles, the BB program was much WORSE off than the FB program in all reality. And whether it’s Sidney Lowe at the helm or not, that BB coach had/now has a much harder row to hoe than whoever is running the show on the gridiron for NCSU.

    All of the perceptions/problems are only compounded because the BB coach at NC State University, is not, and has not ever been, a collegiate BB coach. He did not know how it all works in this day and time, he did not have the neccessary connections to rapidly make any overnight changes for the better, he was invited into a pressure cooker without having time to properly learn the recipes to survive from day one, and, he will have to learn those recipes at a much faster pace from here on out if he doesn’t want to be boiled over with the soup.

    BJD couldn’t have said it any better himself earlier, when he was speaking about a very experienced coach and a long time veteran to the college coaching ranks…

    “But it’s a process. “__________” and company are building relationships from Ground Zero.”

    I’d have to say that whether it all works out or not, that the facts are that the “process” that BJD spoke of when refering to TOB, involves much more than just “building relationships from Ground Zero”. For Sidney Lowe it involves everything, and building a entire college BB coaching career, from exactly that same “ground zero”.

    Now I ask all of you, in reality, whose fault is all of that? And is the OUTRIGHT NASTINESS towards this NC State alum who came because he was the administration’s quick fix answer to their own embarrassment, really justified?

    Thanks Alpha.

  14. gopack4eva 03/17/2009 at 7:31 AM #

    Dear Jamie,

    I have quoted multiple times it doesn’t matter what there status is coming in, but that they leave 5 star recruits. That being said, why wait 3-4 years when we are going 9-3 this year. You are not on our level. The end.

    Thomas O’Brien

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