National Signing Day 2018: Top 10 diamonds in the rough
We look beyond the hype of National Signing Day to find 10 underrated prospects from the 2018 college football recruiting class.
Everybody loves an underdog, and every talent evaluator loves to find something in a player everyone else missed. So, while we typically notice the hoopla surrounding five- and four-star signees on National Signing Day, there is also an interest in players who were underrated in the recruiting process.
Many players are simply more talented than their recruiting rankings would indicate. We see this often in college football, and we don’t have to look farther than recent Heisman Trophy results. Baker Mayfield and Lamar Jackson were three-star recruits from Texas and Florida, respectively. In such prominent high school recruiting areas, it is possible for highly talented players to fly under the radar, allowing smart coaches to pluck them up.
But every story is different. A recruit might also be overlooked if he hails from a state or region with a lower level of high school talent. College coaches from all over the country often flock to Florida, Texas, California and Georgia because those states offer opportunities to see several potential college football recruits on the same field, and they’re relatively easy to get to and from. That simply isn’t true in Montana, Wisconsin, Iowa or Nebraska. However, coaches who search far and wide in less densely populated areas can often unearth diamonds in the rough.
Other players may not have the ability to travel the camp circuit, and therefore have a more difficult time catching the eyes of recruiters. Some are late physical or intellectual bloomers that blossom only after they’ve put pen to paper.
Whatever the reasons, every year dozens, if not hundreds, of FBS-bound players are underrated each year. It would be impossible to point them all out, and this is far from a complete list, but we take a look at 10 players who jumped out as potential diamonds in the rough in the 2018 college football recruiting class.
South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp is a terrific recruiter with a great eye for talent. He helped pull in big classes at Auburn and Texas as an assistant and oversaw Florida’s most successful recruiting period of the decade when he landed the No. 3 ranked class nationally in both 2012 and 2013 and followed with the ninth-best class in the country in 2014.
Those three seasons included high profile signees like Dante Fowler, Vernon Hargreaves III and Teez Tabor, as well as under-the-radar prospects such as Bryan Cox, Jr., Jarrad Davis Brandon Powell and Quincy Wilson. He then returned to Auburn to help land Byron Cowart, the No. 1 player in the nation in the 2015 class, as well as cornerback Carlton Davis, who just left the Tigers for the NFL Draft after a successful three years.
It might not have worked out from a wins and losses standpoint, but Muschamp and his staff proved capable of landing five-stars and also finding three-star diamonds in the rough. He recruits Florida very well but is also capable of plucking players from other areas.
Given Muschamp’s history, several names on the 2018 South Carolina recruiting list jump out as potential sleepers, including Israel Mukuamu. Mukuamu is listed at 6-foot-5 (!) and 187 pounds and hails from Louisiana (though he earlier attended school in South Carolina). Ranked No. 653 overall in the 247Sports Composite, and 47th among high school safety prospects (though he is athletic enough to play corner and is vocal about his desire to do so), Mukuamu signed with the Gamecocks after backing out of an earlier Florida State commitment.
The rangy defensive back will benefit from South Carolina’s weight room and dining halls, and he’ll have a head start putting on weight. Mukuamu was one of 13 players that enrolled early in Columbia.