UCLA Football Recruiting: 2015 Final Offensive Big Board
Jan 2, 2015; San Antonio, TX, USA; UCLA Bruins quarterback Brett Hundley (17) carries the ball on a 40-yard run against the Kansas State Wildcats in the 2015 Alamo Bowl at Alamodome. UCLA defeated Kansas State 40-35. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
With Signing Day mere days away, Go Joe Bruin is taking a final big-picture look at UCLA football recruiting down the stretch run to the end of the 2015 recruiting cycle. In this piece, we’ll look at the recruits UCLA already has committed and the ones it is still pursuing on the offensive side of the ball. You can check the final version of the Defensive Big Board out as well.
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Since our last update, UCLA has closed on some pretty big recruits, missed on others, and generally narrowed down its remaining target list to focus in on the few players it really wants to round out its class. However, UCLA’s offensive recruiting class can be considered a success no matter what transpires in the next week or so leading into Signing Day. Why? Because it has this guy signed, sealed, and 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. Having enrolled early at UCLA in order to fully participate in winter workouts and spring practice, he will in all likelihood 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 starts practice with the team in the spring, 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
After seeming so stable for so long at the running back position, UCLA has seen the past week introduce a major dose of instability and misfortune to its running back recruiting efforts.
UCLA seemed set at running back with the commitments of “Thunder and Lightning“, as they’d taken to calling themselves, Bolu Olorunfunmi (Clovis, CA/Clovis North) and TJ Simmons (Lakeland, FL/Lakeland Christian). But last week, Simmons was forced to decommit from UCLA for what he termed “personal reasons” that are thought to be academically related.
As a result, Olorunfunmi stands alone as UCLA’s single running back commitment at the moment, but RB coach Kennedy Polamalu wants to change that before Signing Day by landing the one remaining big prize at the position nationally: 5-star running back Soso Jamabo (Plano, TX/West).
At 6’3″, 210 lbs, 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 it’s that elusiveness that makes Jamabo one of the standout national running back prospects in the 2015 class. Jamabo plays with such flair and is so personable that he seems to be a perfect fit for the LA media market, and he will no doubt be an entertainer for Bruin fans should he choose UCLA as the place he wants to play his college football.
However, after being Jamabo’s perceived leader for quite a while, UCLA has now come up against an opponent it might not be able to vanquish in this recruitment: Texas. The local power and Jamabo’s childhood favorite, Texas has made a very late but very strong push for the top-rated running back in the Lone Star State.
Texas has also sweetened the pot for Jamabo by introducing a wild-card. Out of nowhere, the Longhorns have shocked recruiting observers across the nation and put themselves in the running for 5-star Texas football legend/quarterback Kyler Murray, who is currently a Texas A&M commit and a close friend of Jamabo’s from the suburbs north of Dallas.
Small aside: To emphasize what a shock Murray flipping from the Aggies to the Longhorns would be (moreso than it would already seem on its face), consider these factors: 1) Kyler Murray is an A&M legacy whose father, Kevin Murray, is an Aggie football legend from his time quarterbacking A&M in the 80s. 2) Kevin Murray has (at the moment) a popularity level at A&M not too dissimilar from the one Cade McNown has at UCLA. 3) Kevin Murray is such an A&M legend that he felt compelled to name his son after A&M’s home stadium Kyle Field (hence the name Kyler). Basically, College Station, and perhaps central Texas a whole, would implode into a crumbling heap if Texas A&M’s beloved son compelled his uber-talented, uber-legacy son to spurn the Aggies and instead play for utterly despised Longhorns.
The prevailing thought is that Murray doing the unthinkable and flipping to Texas would certainly result in Jamabo following his buddy to the 40 Acres. Should Murray remain firm with his A&M pledge though, Jamabo would be forced to make a coin-flip decision between the school that has consistently recruited him harder than any other and the local school he rooted for growing up.
24/7 Sports handicaps Texas as the ascendant favorite for Jamabo.
UPDATE (2/2/15): Horns Digest‘s Nick Castillo tweeted that Jamabo is going to choose UCLA on Signing Day. Gigantic news for UCLA if true. (H/T Burnt Orange Nation)
WIDE RECEIVER
At receiver, 4-star possession receiver LJ Reed (Lodi, CA/Tokay) and 4-star speedster Stephen Johnson III (San Leandro, CA/San Leandro) have been longtime stalwarts of the class. 3-star playmaker Octavius Spencer (Monrovia, CA/Monrovia) joined them in pledging to the Bruins in mid-December.
However, last week brought a stunning development as 4-star slot receiver Ryan Newsome (Aledo, TX/Aledo) shocked the recruiting world and chose UCLA over Texas. The Longhorns were the prohibitive favorite per 24/7 Sports, but the Bruins overcame local and family pressure to pull off the upset and grab the dynamic home-run hitter.
As we detailed in the post-commitment piece, Newsome’s commitment was so important because of the need for speed he fills on the depth chart and the perception that UCLA finally won an out-of-state battle for a coveted kid after striking out so many times in those contests in the 2014 cycle.
One thing we did not mention in that piece, though, was the flexibility Newsome now gives this group. Since the gaping need UCLA had for a speedy, elusive slot receiver has been filled by Newsome, both Johnson and Spencer can now come to UCLA and try out both receiver and corner to see which of the two positions suits each of their talents more, rather than be pressed into action at slot receiver.
UCLA Bruins
Also, in the last few days, the UCLA staff seems to have heated things up again with 4-star Cordell Broadus (Las Vegas, NV/Bishop Gorman) after cooling on him for a while. The Bruins had expected to land 4-star Carlos Strickland (Dallas, TX/Skyline), but the 6’5″ Texan’s somewhat surprising choice to commit to Cal opened up a potential scholarship for a larger receiver like Broadus.
We shall see if things with Broadus develop to the point where Broadus takes an official visit to UCLA this weekend. If he does, then you can very reasonably call UCLA the prohibitive favorite to land him.
WR coach Eric Yarber also continues to pursue 3-star WR Tony Brown (La Mirada, CA/La Mirada), but Brown looks to be pretty firm in his Texas Tech commitment and it’s expected Brown will end up in Lubbock unless Yarber does something pretty special to sway him in the next week.
TIGHT END
As we detailed back in November, 4-star tight end Aliz’e Jones (Las Vegas, NV/Bishop Gorman) had been one of UCLA’s most secure commitments for quite a while, but things shockingly turned sour at some point along the way. His subsequently messy, turbulent, and unwieldy saga ultimately yielded the expected result earlier this month, when Jones chose to follow his good friend and 3-star Notre Dame commitment Nicco Fertitta to South Bend.
However, noticing that Jones was showing wandering eyes in the direction of the Fighting Irish, UCLA smartly began to move on a contingency plan in mid-November when it offered a scholarship to 4-star TE Chris Clark (Avon, CT/Avon Old Farms). Clark immediately reciprocated UCLA’s interest and has had a ton of interest in the Bruins ever since.
Clark isn’t the athlete that Jones is (few are), but he’s a classic, prototypical in-line tight end, which UCLA currently lacks on its roster. The 6’6″ Clark projects as a solid blocker and devastating receiver, especially in the red zone where UCLA can exploit his height to create mismatches much like it did for the similarly-sized
during the 2012 season. The more varied weapons UCLA has in its arsenal, the better its offense will be.
UCLA is locked in a see-saw battle with Michigan, the school to whom Clark was previously committed prior to the firing of Brady Hoke, to land Clark. The big tight end was reportedly quite impressed by his official visit to Ann Arbor earlier this month, but the Bruins reportedly also blew him away when they hosted him and his family in Westwood for an official visit last weekend.
24/7 Sports currently shows Michigan as a considerable favorite for Clark, but contrary to what would seem to be the popular perception, this is one recruitment that UCLA feels very good about as things stand at the moment.
OFFENSIVE LINE
And finally, we get to the foundation on which every football team is built: the big uglies. What we’ve consistently written since our first Big Board 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 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 4-star guard Josh Wariboko (Oklahoma City, OK/Casady), with 24/7 Sports listing UCLA as the current favorite for the top overall prospect in the state of Oklahoma.
Finally, Klemm has UCLA in the running to pull off a flip that would possibly stun the recruiting world even more than Newsome’s commitment did. There is a very real chance the Bruins top off an absolutely epic offensive line haul by flipping the #2 offensive guard in the country, longtime LSU commit and man-mountain Maea Teuhema (Keller, TX/Keller). Klemm has been recruiting Teuhema under-the-radar for a while and those efforts finally turned into tangible progress, with Teuhema taking in official visit to UCLA last weekend that reportedly has him very seriously considering changing his commitment from Tiger purple to Bruin blue.
LSU remains the heavy favorite for Teuhema according to 24/7 Sports, but Texas recruiting analysts Brian Perroni and Bobby Burton both have Teuhema pegged to flip to UCLA.
UPDATE (2/1/15): UCLA is out of the running for Teuhema due to obstructionist tactics by his legal guardian, who has a vested interest in seeing Teuhema end up at LSU. Teuhema will be an LSU Tiger.
Landing Wariboko would give UCLA the best group of 2015 offensive line recruits in the country. With a 4-star player coming in at every position on the line in the event of a Wariboko commitment, that would make Josh Rosen the happiest quarterback recruit in America.