'18 DE/OLB Trumane L Bell II - Lake Highlands, Dallas

GMG_Dallas · July 31, 2017

You can probably pencil him going to UTSA. They received 2 commits today, granted one has no 247 page and the other has no offers per 247, and he's been involved in a lot of conversations regarding UTSA on Twitter. Fans have been bringing up their all American linebacker who's also from DFW and he's been retweeting those tweets a bunch...

Hope I'm wrong.

Edited July 31, 2017 by GMG_Dallas

TheReal_jayD · July 31, 2017

13 minutes ago, GMG_Dallas said:

You can probably pencil him going to UTSA. They received 2 commits today, granted one has no 247 page and the other has no offers per 247, and he's been involved in a lot of conversations regarding UTSA on Twitter. Fans have been bringing up their all American linebacker who's also from DFW and he's been retweeting those tweets a bunch...

Hope I'm wrong.

I would say you are money on this prediction

MGNation92 · July 31, 2017

29 minutes ago, TheReal_jayD said:

I would say you are money on this prediction

Kinda sad when our recruiting guru knows we're f***ed on a recruit as soon as UTSA offers but Littrell has this right?

Ben Gooding · July 31, 2017

1 hour ago, MGNation92 said:

Kinda sad when our recruiting guru knows we're f***ed on a recruit as soon as UTSA offers but Littrell has this right?

But it's all about getting "our guys" that fit "our system". Whatever tf that means.

UNTLifer · July 31, 2017

So, what is UTSA's selling point? A sophomore LB. Why in the world are we not repaonding with the names of Brad Kassel, Cody Spencer, Craig Robertson and Zachary Orr who were/are all NFLers

MeanGreenTexan · July 31, 2017

7 hours ago, UNTLifer said:

So, what is UTSA's selling point? A sophomore LB. Why in the world are we not repaonding with the names of Brad Kassel, Cody Spencer, Craig Robertson and Zachary Orr who were/are all NFLers

Do we want to get laughed at? "Who?"
We love those guys. Any high-school Senior now was 5-6 years old when the Dickey run ended... just keep that in mind.

BTG_Fan1 · July 31, 2017

kid has not even committed yet and we have written him and this staff off... LOL

MeanGreenMailbox aka TFLF · July 31, 2017

11 hours ago, UNTLifer said:

So, what is UTSA's selling point? A sophomore LB. Why in the world are we not repaonding with the names of Brad Kassel, Cody Spencer, Craig Robertson and Zachary Orr who were/are all NFLers

Because the coaches who recruited and coached those guys are no longer on campus.

Plus...Littrell and his coaching staff. They are what they are on the recruiting trail: Simon/Dickey/Dodge/McCarney equivalents. So far, with very few exceptions, unimpressive.

Edited July 31, 2017 by MeanGreenMailbox

DeepGreen · July 31, 2017

32 minutes ago, MeanGreenMailbox said:

Because the coaches who recruited and coached those guys are no longer on campus.

Plus...Littrell and his coaching staff. They are what they are on the recruiting trail: Simon/Dickey/Dodge/McCarney equivalents. So far, with very few exceptions, unimpressive.

So five UNT head coaches, including Littrell, are bad recruiters? I find that very hard to believe. Are we sure it isn't UNT itself? You know, we have met the enemy and it is us.

MeanGreenMailbox aka TFLF · July 31, 2017

12 minutes ago, DeepGreen said:

So five UNT head coaches, including Littrell, are bad recruiters? I find that very hard to believe. Are we sure it isn't UNT itself? You know, we have met the enemy and it is us.

I partially agree. However, as stated before, you don't hire guys in who say, "We're going to do the same job as the guys before us did."

When you make a new hire - following a fired, losing coach and coaching staff - you are expecting better, not the same. If we were winning, and a coach and his assistants were hired away? Yes, then it would be fine to hire a guy who say, "We can do the same as the guys who were here."

At some point, I suppose (because it hasn't happened with us), you get a coach and coaching staff in who dramatically change the direction of the program. These guys are not it. It's not that they are bad coaches. It's just that they have shown themselves to be no different than the prior coaches regarding recruiting.

And, recruiting is the most integral piece of the puzzle. Whether you believe it's the Xs and Os or the Johnnys and Joes that make you successful, you do have to have the Johnnys and Joes in order to execute the Xs and Os. So...

...again. Because it's not a vacuum, you have to pay attention to what everyone else is doing. If more schools than not in your conference are getting more FBS-ready recruits year in and year out, it's not good for your school. And, that's what is still happening to us.

That is why we have excuse threads with one of these themes:
(1) "They were overlooked, and our coaches are smart for offering them first"...as though no other coach in America sees game film or holds camps.
(2) "We're taking the Gary Patterson approach"...using an obvious outlier as an example while ignoring dozens upon dozens of other coaches who failed when they couldn't recruit to the proper playing level.
(3) "We're recruiting the guys that fit our schemes"...because, of course, no one rated higher would be able to "fit our scheme," right? It's only the low or unrated guys who are ever called, "fit our scheme" guys.

If you have one or two of these "overlooked/Gary Patterson/fit our scheme" guys per class, that would be one thing. But, when you get year after year where that's the majority...you are digging a hole for yourself at this level, because you are constantly waiting on guys to develop while your opponents are plugging guys in who were ready to play when they signed.

I'm just at that point, 28 years this year, of watching it happen over and over again to us.

Ben Gooding · July 31, 2017

5 hours ago, BTG_Fan1 said:

kid has not even committed yet and we have written him and this staff off... LOL

No. We have not. History has. Trend patterns. Recruiting resume vs. resume has. If we land him, fantastic. But I wouldn't put a penny on it.

Ben Gooding · July 31, 2017

2 hours ago, DeepGreen said:

So five UNT head coaches, including Littrell, are bad recruiters? I find that very hard to believe. Are we sure it isn't UNT itself? You know, we have met the enemy and it is us.

I completely disagree.

Every program had to have a springboard coach at some point in time.

And it all starts with a significant uptick in recruiting to get these programs on the path of consistency. The upticks happen when coaching changes happen and in the following years, breakout season happens and the snowball is formed.

People clamor our snowball as 2013. No, not even close. A large portion of the domino effect is consistent recruiting. Dan McCarney could not recruit. He came in and took over a solid nucleus of players. Developed average to above average players and won 9 games with them. The crumbling of the program was written on the wall with the 2 or 3 recruiting classes leading up to that year, the same writing that is starting to be written with the current regime.

Our real snowball was formed under Darrell Dickey. But we had the epitome of incompetence running the AD. Those years could have been monumental to where we want to be as a program in 2017. It was dreadfully wasted. We can get back to where we need to be. But it starts at recruiting. It starts at having a pitch man as the HBC. I can say for certain we don't have that guy. We have a guy who will have to coach himself to better recruits. To that I say good luck. The pro of having this kind of HBC is that if he does coach himself to recruits, it will take years for someone to hire him away, and a very solid foundation could be built. It's obviously a more difficult road to take.

Cr1028 · July 31, 2017

Once again we turn a player thread into a complaint thread about the program's recruiting ability.

AustinFromUNT · July 31, 2017

Of note: UTSA picked up 2 D-Line players today.

Withers940 · August 2, 2017

MGNation92 · August 17, 2017

I'm assuming he's no longer being recruited by us? JD had mentioned we were done taking linebackers for this class. Would be a huge miss IMO

Has his UTSA offer pinned and been retweeting a lot from them.

UNTLifer · August 17, 2017

14 minutes ago, MGNation92 said:

I'm assuming he's no longer being recruited by us? JD had mentioned we were done taking linebackers for this class. Would be a huge miss IMO

Has his UTSA offer pinned and been retweeting a lot from them.

I hope this is wrong. I took him more as a DE than a LB.

Withers940 · August 17, 2017

18 minutes ago, UNTLifer said:

I hope this is wrong. I took him more as a DE than a LB.

Agreed. Are we in the situation to turn away talent? I feel that we need to be soaking in as much talent as possible right now until we are over saturated with talent and winning titles

MeanGreenTexan · August 17, 2017

Hopefully Jay_D is either talking about the ILB/OLB, and not the JACK, which I would think Bell would play... or he has no idea what he's talking about, just guessing.
I don't bet on the latter. Hopefully the staff are still in on Bell.

BillySee58 · August 17, 2017

7 hours ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

Hopefully Jay_D is either talking about the ILB/OLB, and not the JACK, which I would think Bell would play... or he has no idea what he's talking about, just guessing.
I don't bet on the latter. Hopefully the staff are still in on Bell.

Maybe it's because people are so use to 4-3 defenses here, but there needs to be a much better job delineating between a Jack and a second level linebacker in this scheme when discussing linebackers on this board. It's about as different as a corner and safety, if not more different. Yet still a lot of people on here have been referring to all linebackers as if they're all second-level guys.