UCLA Football Recruiting: 2015 Offensive Big Board Update

Sep 26, 2014; Las Vegas, NV, USA; St. John Bosco quarterback Josh Rosen (3) looks to pass against the Bishop Gorman Gaels at Fertitta Field. Mandatory Credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports

With the regular season winding down for UCLA football, this seems like as good a time as any to take a look at where things stand for UCLA football recruiting with the 2015 class. Today, we’re releasing the Big Board for offense, with the Defensive Big Board coming out later this week.

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In truth, recruiting efforts on the offensive side of the ball have been pretty stagnant since our last recruiting update back in July. Before JUCO offensive tackle Zach Bateman‘s (Costa Mesa, CA/Orange Coast College) commitment to UCLA this past Sunday, there hadn’t been any real movement with recruiting efforts on the offensive side of the ball outside of maintaining relationships with many of the high-end skill recruits due to decide right before Signing Day.

However, UCLA’s offensive recruiting class can be considered a success no matter what transpires in the next couple of months leading into Signing Day. Why? Because it has this guy signed, sealed, and soon-to-be delivered:

For those of you who haven’t been following recruiting too closely and don’t know what you’re seeing in that video, let’s spell it out very clearly: that, right there, is the future of UCLA football. And it’s pretty clear that the future, which is spelled J-O-S-H R-O-S-E-N, is very bright for Jim Mora‘s team.

QUARTERBACK

Josh Rosen, the consensus top quarterback prospect in the country who we’ve already gushed about at length on Go Joe Bruin, is a flat-out phenom. In all likelihood, he will be the leader of Noel Mazzone‘s offense as a true freshman in 2015 and in all honesty, the drop-off from Brett Hundley to Rosen might not be all that great even during Rosen’s true freshman season. Rosen is just that good, that smart, and that advanced. For a detailed breakdown of what Bruin fans have to look forward to when Rosen steps foot on campus in Westwood this upcoming January, we’ll link one more time to our Rosen piece so that you can allow yourself to dream about the possibilities for at least the next three years with this kid taking snaps in the true blue-and-gold.

RUNNING BACK

As we said back in July, UCLA seems set at running back with the commitments of “Thunder and Lightning“, as they’ve taken to calling themselves, Bolu Olorunfunmi (Clovis, CA/Clovis North) and TJ Simmons (Lakeland, FL/Lakeland Christian). The Bruins are also in the picture for other running backs, with RB coach Kennedy Polamalu wanting to re-stock the depth chart with a diverse array of complementary talents.

UCLA is recruiting 3-star power back Cameron Scarlett (Portland, OR/Central Catholic), but Scarlett is considered a heavy Stanford lean. However, the true uncommitted apple of Coach Polamalu’s eye is elite Texas all-purpose back Soso Jamabo (Plano, TX/East), who is privately thought to be a solid lean to the Bruins at the moment despite publicly stating that Notre Dame is a co-leader for him alongside UCLA.

At 6’3″, 210, Jamabo has the frame of a power back, but the lithe, fluid movement and agility of a scatback. The best way to describe him is as a contortionist. Men that size simply shouldn’t be able to move the way Jamabo does and its that elusiveness that makes Jamabo one of the standout national running back prospects in the 2015 class. Jamabo plays with such flash and flair that he seems to be a perfect personality fit for the LA media market and he will no doubt be an entertainer for Bruin fans should he choose UCLA over Notre Dame as the place he wants to play his college football.

WIDE RECEIVER

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Not much has changed since July on the commitment front for UCLA’s wide receiver recruiting. The current class remains comprised of 4-star possession receiver LJ Reed (Lodi, CA/Tokay) and 4-star speedster Stephen Johnson III (San Leandro, CA/San Leandro). The Bruins also continue to do well with home run-hitting 4-star slot receiver Ryan Newsome (Aledo, TX/Aledo) and doggedly pursue 5-star standout Christian Kirk (Scottsdale, AZ/Saguaro). Newsome’s recruitment will be a tug-of-war between Texas and UCLA until the end, but UCLA is in a good spot here at the moment. Kirk, on the other hand, is unlikely to end up in Westwood, with Texas A&M, Arizona State, and USC all thought to be ahead of UCLA in Kirk’s pecking order, but Kirk is such a dynamic and transformational talent that the Bruins will stay on him until Kirk tells them “no”.

In a slight change though, the UCLA staff seems to have cooled a bit on 4-star Cordell Broadus (Las Vegas, NV/Bishop Gorman) because of the glut of possession receivers with similar attributes to Broadus already on the roster. Instead, WR coach Eric Yarber has identified new targets at wide receiver who would add different types of skillsets to the depth chart: 3-star WR Tony Brown (La Mirada, CA/La Mirada) and 3-star ATH Octavius Spencer (Monrovia, CA/Monrovia).

Spencer, in particular, has come from totally off-the-radar to emerge as one of the hottest prospects in Southern California. His only scholarship offer before Sunday was from FCS Sacramento State, but after the release of his senior season highlight film in which he looked like an explosive athlete and playmaker, both UCLA and Oregon threw their hats into the ring with offers to Spencer.

TIGHT END

In one of the shocks of the recruiting season, the seemingly locked-in commitment of 4-star Aliz’e Jones (Las Vegas, NV/Bishop Gorman) has turned into one of UCLA’s biggest question marks heading into the stretch run before Signing Day. Back in July, we wrote this laudatory summary of Jones’s recruitment: “[Jones has been] a dream recruit for UCLA in regards to how low-maintenance he’s been and he is tied with Rosen as the most rock-solid pledge in the current group of commits. The way Jones makes it sound in media interviews and social media interactions, Heaven and Earth would literally have to collapse in order for him to begin to consider opening up the mail other schools send him, much less think about visiting or committing to another school besides UCLA.”

Although that was an accurate statement to make at the time, Jones has since become one of UCLA’s flimsiest commitments, if not the single flimsiest. Jones is now torn between honoring his verbal pledge to UCLA and flipping to Notre Dame, which has relentlessly negative recruited against the Bruins for the past year while using the carrots of Notre Dame’s recent success putting tight ends into the NFL and Jones’s friendship with Notre Dame commit Nicco Fertitta (the 3-star Bishop Gorman safety who is also the son of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s billionaire co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta) to make Jones seriously consider the Fighting Irish.

It would be a shame if Jones, a confessed lifelong fan of the Bruins who has been committed to Jim Mora for over a year, ultimately spurned UCLA, but it’s currently a coin flip whether he does so or not. UCLA could really use Jones’s rare blend of athleticism and physicality to solidify the tight end position for the foreseeable future and the staff will be scrapping until the end to bring Jones to Westwood come Signing Day.

In the event of a Jones decommitment, which would doubly sting for the Bruins because the staff thought the position was secure with Jones and thus didn’t keep backup options very warm, look for UCLA to scramble by picking up its recruitment of 4-star ATH Tyrone Wheatley Jr. (Manlius, NY/Canisius), the son of former NFL running back Tyrone Wheatley Sr. The younger Wheatley is a Michigan legacy, though, and if he chooses to spurn the Wolverines and head west, he is likely to opt for USC over UCLA due his father’s connection to USC tight ends coach (and former UCLA staffer) Marques Tuiasosopo, with whom Tyrone Sr. played on the Oakland Raiders about a decade ago.

UPDATE (9:25 am, 11/18/2014): In what can only be considered a sign that an Aliz’e Jones decommitment and flip to Notre Dame is soon to come, UCLA made a scholarship offer to 4-star TE Chris Clark (Avon, CT/Old Farms) last night and Clark tweeted this morning that he will be making an official visit to UCLA in the near future.

The heat in this recruitment has turned up from room temperature to scalding in a matter of 12 hours and will be one to watch going forward, especially in light of the fact that Clark is a top target for cross-town rival USC as well. Clark’s official visit list now consists of UCLA, USC, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Texas.

OFFENSIVE LINE

And finally, we get to the foundation on which every football team is built: the big uglies. What we wrote back in July remains true: the offensive line group that UCLA looks poised to bring in for the 2015 class should rival the banner 2013 crop for numbers and quality. In addition to 4-star guard Tevita Halalilo (Moreno Valley, CA/Rancho Verde), 4-star tackle Andre James (Herriman, UT/Herriman), and 4-star center Fred Ulu-Perry (Honolulu, HI/St. Louis), UCLA’s offensive line guru and recruiter par excellence Adrian Klemm recently secured the commitment of one of the top junior college offensive linemen in the country in Orange Coast College’s 3-star tackle Zach Bateman.

Klemm also has the Bruins in a strong position to land two more 4-star guard recruits in Josh Wariboko (Oklahoma City, OK/Casady) and Semisi Uluave (Honolulu, HI/Punahou). With the likely additions of Wariboko and Uluave in the near future, UCLA is expecting to bring in a class of six blue-chip offensive linemen, which should make Josh Rosen the happiest quarterback recruit in America.

3-star tackle Dru Samia (Danville, CA/San Ramon Valley), who shocked the recruiting world by picking Oklahoma over long-time favorite UCLA back in late August, also remains somewhat in play and, especially if Bob Stoops pulls off his own surprise by taking the Florida head coaching job, could become UCLA’s seventh offensive line commitment by the time Signing Day rolls around.