Andre Turrentine -
Importantly he has 4 years of eligibility remaining. I had heard that we preferred all of the transfers we take this year to have at least 3 years of eligibility remaining, sort of backfilling prior recruiting classes.
A lot of the Ohio State fans liked this kid but he was buried on the depth chart and the reason for that is there are older more talented guys ahead of him. Their 2-deep is not like our 2-deep at safety. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are better than him, more like maybe they are ahead of him in their development. jmo.
Evidently when we were recruiting him he was also being pursued by Alabama (pretty heavily from reports) in addition to Ohio State and others. The elite schools tell these kids we’re going to win championships and you’re going to be a part of that. Then they get on campus and wonder if given all the elite talent ahead of them if they’ll ever get on the field all that much. jmo.
I don’t know that he will contribute for us this year but the odds with our lack of depth are a lot better than what he would have at Ohio State. jmo.
It is said that his major assets are his instincts and playmaking ability, both of which are said to be elite. He’s also said to be very versatile. His film suggests that he is a great run stopper. Ohio State has a 3 safety defense and from what I understand he was slated for the boundary cover side (short side). He played 106 snaps in their spring game this year, the most of anyone on the Buckeye roster. If he'd been here we probably could have said the same thing given all the absentees we have in the backend. jmo.
He wasn’t an EE so he got to campus in June of last year but between then and this spring he’s put on 20 pounds so apparently he’s working pretty hard. He also has the advantage of already being acclimated to a big time college experience.
While he’s not a true freshman in that he’s been training with an elite program for a year he’ll still need to learn our defense. One of the advantage we’re hoping to exploit this year is the ability to play faster due to it being our 2nd year in this system. I don’t know how fast he’ll be able to come up to speed but given our culture I have no doubt that his teammates here will be pushing and encouraging him to get there fast. jmo..
I sort of thought watching his film he could play either strong safety or star, and actually I was thinking star might be best. jmo.
I know some people are looking for immediate contributors and this kid might do that but the simple fact is that there are a lot of kids riding the pine on elite rosters that would almost certainly be an instant upgrade for our roster. I think this kid could definitely be one of those. jmo.