UCLA Football Recruiting: 4-Star Running Back Craig Lee Commits, Because UCLA

The UCLA football coaching staff is at it again. This time, four-star running back Craig Lee out of Redlands, CA.

The vitals? He’s six feet tall, even, and weighs 188 pounds, so he’s definitely got the build to be an every down back and even has a bit of a size advantage over his counterparts.

Let’s check out some tape, via YouTube:

Close your mouth, running backs can fly in there.

Obviously, the dude is versatile as hell. A total-package kind of guy, really, that has breakout speed to go along with physicality and balance to take a hit and stay on his feet. He doesn’t catch too many passes out of screens or anything, and I don’t see too much patience when running between the tackles, but that’s because the tape doesn’t show all of these things.

So what do the scouting reports say?

They agree with our assessment of the highlights. Lee does a lot of things well and they particularly note his incredible speed and ability to burst in the open field. Furthermore, they do think he does a good job of running between the tackles, stating that he can be difficult to get to in the tightest of spaces.

They knock on his overall power, though, and they shy away from calling Lee a pile-pusher since he doesn’t have that sort of strength yet, but they also note that this is a result of him not reaching full maturation than anything else.

Overall, this is a damn good pick-up for UCLA because he’ll have the potential of becoming an every-down back.

This commitment comes not too long after the decommitment of three-star running back Keyante Green. Green apparently wasn’t given enough attention by the coaching staff and he defected. All this makes you wonder if Jim Mora’s staff’s strategy is to alienate recruits to save scholarships — since they did over-recruit last recruiting season — and focus on much bigger commits.

Or maybe they didn’t feel Green had as good of a shot at playing time as Lee would, since Lee is most definitely an every-down back, where as there are questions about Green.

Who knows? Who cares? We got Craig Lee.

GO BRUINS!!!