Joey McGuire Delivers on Early Promises With First Signing Day
A year ago I wrote an article about recruiting rankings not mattering because Texas Tech was ranked 10th in the Big 12 as a class, but ranked 6th in the average value of recruit. I made the argument because in today's landscape of college football, especially under the leadership of the previous staff, there is such a focus on bringing in Transfers instead of packing your class with high school kids.
Joey McGuire does not subscribe to that school of thought.
I still don't put a ton of stock into overall rankings, but it's undeniable that McGuire has done a pretty dang good job in just over a month on the job. The classes under Wells were small by design when it came to high school prospects, to allow for more scholarship opportunities for transfers. That's not going to be the case with McGuire who's promised to recruit Texas high schools with tenacity.
From the hiring date of McGuire to today, the recruiting staff added double-digit student-athletes and jumped the overall ranking from nearly 80th in the country to better than 40th depending on what recruiting service you're looking at. A jump of 40 spots! The average score per recruit is still about what it was last year, but the number of high school prospects jumps by six from 12 to 18.
Wells also added 10 transfers last offseason, which I don't think will happen with McGuire. Though, there are already three transfers who have signed with Texas Tech and several more in the Portal who are looking at Texas Tech as a destination.
16 of the 18 committed high school prospects signed national letters of intent today, which means everyone but Erik Gray from Amarillo and Gavin Freeman out of Heritage Hall in Oklahoma City are officially Red Raiders.
Let's take a brief look at who signed with Texas Tech today:
Those 16 high school signees show that McGuire identified some areas of need on the Red Raiders roster and is trying to rectify those weaknesses. 11 of the 16 are on the defensive side of the ball. 3 of the 5 offensive signees play offensive line. McGuire wants to be better in the trenches and on the defensive side of the ball and he certainly is executing that plan early on.
Even two of the transfers were defensive players with a DB from Texas and a former Vanderbilt Commodore LB joining the team last night, along with a former Minnesota WR.
I think today was successful for Texas Tech and the trend line is nearly vertical from where recruiting has been recently, but I think that there are still some recruits out there that the staff wanted that ended up at other schools including some West Texas kids that were too far lost from the Wells Era.
Cooper sent players to Oklahoma and Baylor. Amarillo Tascosa had a player end up at TCU, which surprised some, and Frenship sent an offensive tackle to Houston.
Expect that to change moving forward with Texas Tech pacing for the 4th overall class in the nation next year with a kid from Post, Texas leading the way.