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Texas Recruiting Notes 2023: Strippers, Monkeys, and 5-Stars


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10 minutes ago, Codaxx said:

Epps was never a high end athlete. His 5+ 40 time at a Nike event will attest to that. He struggled to put on weight and strength. Most of the programs misses at TE have been guys that looked solid flexed out in HS, but never developed the skills to play in-line. It is the reason TE is one of the harder positions to evaluate. You have freaks like Duce, that can still be high end players flexed out. Finding guys that can block and be receiving threats is not easy. 

And most HS coaches don't have the overall talent on hand to 'waste' an athletic 6'4"+ player at TE.

They either play defense or get flexed out too much for a good eval.

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39 minutes ago, BigHorn'13 said:

SIAP-- What's the deal on this guy and why haven't I seen him as a possibility? Running a 10.28 100m at 6'5 and 225lbs just seems unfair. 

https://247sports.com/Player/Nyckoles-Harbor-46114050/

Edited 34 minutes ago by BigHorn'13
Got distracted and forgot to post link to who I was referring to lol
 

Also, I'm pretty sure everybody on this board knew exactly who you were referring to, without the link. His combination of size and speed is unprecedented as a recruit, and he's been discussed fairly regularly over the past year.

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51 minutes ago, BigHorn'13 said:

SIAP-- What's the deal on this guy and why haven't I seen him as a possibility? Running a 10.28 100m at 6'5 and 225lbs just seems unfair. 

https://247sports.com/Player/Nyckoles-Harbor-46114050/

Not sure if anyone has answered you yet, but I'm going to say it's because he's not interested in us. I hope you finally have the answer you were looking for. 

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1 hour ago, Hiphopopotamos said:

Maybe Epps is who Pimpton ends up as.  They are certainly very similar physically,  but Epps issue was never athleticism or talent - it was desire.  You hope that Pimpton has a better mental eval.

Lol wut. Just because he was soft doesn’t mean he was otherwise gifted athletically. Epps ran a 5 second 40 at 225 lbs. Lack of athleticism and physical talent was absolutely a huge part of the problem with him. 

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42 minutes ago, Hornlover said:

Also, I'm pretty sure everybody on this board knew exactly who you were referring to, without the link. His combination of size and speed is unprecedented as a recruit, and he's been discussed fairly regularly over the past year.

 

32 minutes ago, UncleBuck said:

Not sure if anyone has answered you yet, but I'm going to say it's because he's not interested in us. I hope you finally have the answer you were looking for. 

Lol yes, mea culpa and all that. 

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22 minutes ago, Burt Macklin said:

Lol wut. Just because he was soft doesn’t mean he was otherwise gifted athletically. Epps ran a 5 second 40 at 225 lbs. Lack of athleticism and physical talent was absolutely a huge part of the problem with him. 

I'm not talking about an NFL TE.  I'm talking about an effective starting college TE.  Someone who doesn't get embarrassed by a 5'6" DB.  A 5 second 40 is fine for a college TE.  Epps problem wasn't that he just wasn't athletic enough - his problem was that he couldn't or wouldn't put in the work in the weight room and didn't play with any effort on the field.

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5 minutes ago, Hiphopopotamos said:

I'm not talking about an NFL TE.  I'm talking about an effective starting college TE.  Someone who doesn't get embarrassed by a 5'6" DB.  A 5 second 40 is fine for a college TE.  Epps problem wasn't that he just wasn't athletic enough - his problem was that he couldn't or wouldn't put in the work in the weight room and didn't play with any effort on the field.

A lot of decent college TEs who run around the 4.8 or lower. 

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3 minutes ago, JBJ said:

A decent amount of NFL TEs run 5.0s.  But not at 225 lbs.  And they don't run 4.7 shuttles at any weight.

And if he can still run a 5.0 at 250ish by the time he's in your program for a while, then that's not terrible for a TE, and also not indicative of overall athleticism. But I think I'm kinda going away from the discussion, so I'll tap out. 

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17 minutes ago, UncleBuck said:

And if he can still run a 5.0 at 250ish by the time he's in your program for a while, then that's not terrible for a TE, and also not indicative of overall athleticism. But I think I'm kinda going away from the discussion, so I'll tap out. 

I'm not really disagreeing with anyone.  40s are a poor measure of athleticism.  5.0 isn't terrible for a TE.  It's not great for a guy in a WR body, but if he can add weight AND doesn't slow down it's not terrible at all.  The shuttle time is a better indicator of athleticism, and his was not good at all.

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19 minutes ago, Ricky's one-hitter said:

Doesn't matter what you run if you can't get off the line. No amount of measurable athleticism would have overcome this level of bitchassedness

 

 

We were all over Epps when that one HS highlight reel was posted of him making an incredible catch over the middle.  After that we go nothing from him at the next level.  Suppose you could say that about a lot of guys, but man I thought he was the next Finley.

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6 minutes ago, jdhorn92 said:

We were all over Epps when that one HS highlight reel was posted of him making an incredible catch over the middle.  After that we go nothing from him at the next level.  Suppose you could say that about a lot of guys, but man I thought he was the next Finley.

That is what makes TE evaluations so tough. You see these big kids "Mossing" HS DBs, because they are not getting separation. That is great, but if you are a TE that runs around the 5.0 mark, you will likely need to be a solid blocker to see the field.  Most of them are split out in HS, so making a projection on how they will fair on the LOS is pretty tough.

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21 minutes ago, jdhorn92 said:

We were all over Epps when that one HS highlight reel was posted of him making an incredible catch over the middle.  After that we go nothing from him at the next level.  Suppose you could say that about a lot of guys, but man I thought he was the next Finley.

He is like a poor man's Finley. Well, maybe really poor, like homeless and living under a 183 bridge. But really, more like the hospice care's version of Finley.

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42 minutes ago, Ricky's one-hitter said:

Doesn't matter what you run if you can't get off the line. No amount of measurable athleticism would have overcome this level of bitchassedness

 

 

A somehow worse version of Dan Buckner, who was so bad we just stopped using the flex WR his final year.

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57 minutes ago, Ricky's one-hitter said:

Doesn't matter what you run if you can't get off the line. No amount of measurable athleticism would have overcome this level of bitchassedness

 

 

Was this the time that our WR coach was just telling them “use your athletic ability to beat them off the line” …and that was it… that was the coaching. 

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1 hour ago, jdhorn92 said:

We were all over Epps when that one HS highlight reel was posted of him making an incredible catch over the middle.  After that we go nothing from him at the next level.  Suppose you could say that about a lot of guys, but man I thought he was the next Finley.

What kind of revisionist history is this? There were plenty of people on this board that thought Epps was an underwhelming take while he was a recruit. I always hated the take because he was going to have to become an extremely good blocker to pan out at TE, and there was nothing  that indicated he would become a blocker. He always viewed himself as a receiver/receiving TE, despite lacking the athleticism to create any separation. 

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1 hour ago, Hiphopopotamos said:

5 of the 12 TE's who ran at this years NFL combine ran 4.8 or slower.  Last year 7 of the 21 that ran were 4.8 or above including 3 that ran 5+.

I think this is confusing the discussion. Here are the top 10 TEs in the NFL (https://www.nfl.com/news/2022-nfl-season-s-top-10-tight-ends-travis-kelce-mark-andrews-and-david-njoku-he). These are guys that are generally receiving threats. This is what they run:

Kelce 4.61
Andrews 4.67
Njoku 4.64
Goedert 4.67
Ertz 4.76
Dissly  4.87
Freiermuth 4.77
Hockenson 4.7
Higbee  4.62
Conklin 4.8

I have long said that blocking TEs can have a long career in the NFL. There is a big difference, between receiving TEs and blocking TEs. When we look at highlights on this board, it is mostly of TEs split out catching the football. We are not discussing their blocking ability. My comment on Pimpton was that I did not see the athleticism to be a big time receiving threat and his success would be tied to his ability to adjust to playing with his hand in the ground, which makes his projection kind of tough. 

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1 hour ago, Burt Macklin said:

What kind of revisionist history is this? There were plenty of people on this board that thought Epps was an underwhelming take while he was a recruit. I always hated the take because he was going to have to become an extremely good blocker to pan out at TE, and there was nothing  that indicated he would become a blocker. He always viewed himself as a receiver/receiving TE, despite lacking the athleticism to create any separation. 

Fair enough.  Looked like Tarzan, played like Jane

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1 hour ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

I really appreciate Inside Texas posting that free article, which is literally just a recap of his Instagram post including quoting the post.  That's some solid $9.95-ing there.

And the best part is that it gives a deserved break to surly's 9.95er copy-pasters, who then have a precious moment to snort some lines and scratch their butt with a shrimp fork.

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1 hour ago, NWAustinDude said:

 

 

1 hour ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

I really appreciate Inside Texas posting that free article, which is literally just a recap of his Instagram post including quoting the post.  That's some solid $9.95-ing there

Than I gotta assume the article is from Joe Cook. If the article was from Nahlin, Wells, or Hamilton, they would've reported some inside info.

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