'26 MS WR Tristen Keys (Tennessee commit)

Everything can always improve. But just watch the film. Arkansas and Ohio State game film have popped up recently, and it isn't good from the QB perspective. It's all out there if people really care to see it.

What people don't watch are the non-throws where the WR never got the ball. The bailing out of the pocket when a QB normally resets in the pocket. Somehow people just dismiss that.
As I shared earlier, both parties own blame for the dip in the passing game. You can find film that points blame on the QB, you can find film that points blame on the WRs. In reality, it's a shared burden.

Regardless of which party you side with, the thing I think we can all agree on is that we seem to be on the right path to talent improvement in both rooms.
 
To be fair, how much better does he look if Nico hits even just 25% of the deep balls he missed last year?

He can't help the QB (Joe & Nico) not being consistent

The sad thing that really shows up when watching film is that for every time Nico overthrew a wide open WR for a TD....theres 2 or 3 plays where someone was open downfield and Nico didn't even make it through his progressions to SEE them. We should have beaten Arkansas, blown out Bama and Flarda just on 5 to 10 yard overthrows. Factor in all the wide open guys he never saw and we left a LOT of TDs on that field last year.

Old "Stonehands" Nimrod and injured Squirrel dropped plenty of balls though. Squirrel should have been benched til he could heal up. Those 2 arent the only ones who dropped passes though Brazzell dropped quite a few and Bru struggled to get open at times last year because he wasnt 100% either. As a team we were one of the worst in the SEC at dropped passes and PFF has the stats.

I have recently posted in this thread that Pope needs a raise. His recruiting has been excellent and now is dominant. We will find out this year how well he can TEACH though with 6 of our 7 scholarship WRs being either freshmen or RS freshmen. Need all of them to contribute right away. I am sure there will be some growing pains...but getting ALL the extra passes in practice and playing time in games so early in their college career should accelerate the development of these WRs too. With 4 complete badazzes coming in next year for 2026.
 
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It was always ridiculous to think that. Why wouldn't Tennessee be able to recruit at an elite level again? This program has everything you'd want...money, unsurpassed fan support, facilities, Neyland Stadium, tons of talent within a 2-4 hour radius, one of the most recognizable brands in college sports, it's in the SEC, and Knoxville is a great college town in a beautiful area. All we lacked was functional leadership. Alabama went through the same thing.

Tennessee, organically, has one of the 5-10 most attractive situations in college football. It was the non-organic stuff that caused Tennessee to falter for so long. That's been corrected. It's an uphill climb, but we're on our way back to elite status.
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That's really what the rankings should be based off of.
Rivals used to do something similar to that. It was your best 20 that counted in the rankings, whether you had 30 commits or 20. Kind of like a bass tournament, you can catch all the fish you want, but you can only bring your best 5 to the scales.
 
That's not how you look at rankings. You have to view the total points and average per recruit. Sometimes the gap between the 3rd ranked class and the 4th ranked class is larger than 4-7. And sometimes a team can have significantly more recruits than a team ranked lower than them but have a much lower average recruit rating.

You don't need to be #1 in the recruiting rankings to win the national title. You just need to consistently near the top. And we're getting to that point.
No question the overall talent is increasing. But, I’ve looked at the top and yes, those teams are signing many more 4-star. We still have 10 three star recruits. Plus, Georgia is signing a lot more players overall.
 
Keys said he tweeted his leg in practice — nothing serious — and doc told him to sit out tonight. So they were without him.

50-28 Petal. Hattiesburg had 6 turnovers (unless I forgot one). Petal is good, but I’m not they could have covered Keys. We’ll never know.
I dont understand that the first paragraph? He was tweeting pictures of his leg during practice that the team doctor was able to diagnose as a reason to sit out from a photo?
 
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I dont understand that the first paragraph? He was tweeting pictures of his leg during practice that the team doctor was able to diagnose as a reason to sit out from a photo?
Tweaked. (Autocucumber.) Sorry. He told me before the game. He is not worried, just being conservative and following conservative advise.
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No question the overall talent is increasing. But, I’ve looked at the top and yes, those teams are signing many more 4-star. We still have 10 three star recruits. Plus, Georgia is signing a lot more players overall.

The amount of players you can sign is dependant on the number of scholarships you have available. So I don't get your complaint there. The teams with bigger classes just have more turnover. Its better to have stability than huge turnover each year.

With regard to the 3-stars, our average rating per recruit is 91.43. Texas who is ahead of us at #6 is at 91.74, #5 Alabama is at 92.89, #4 A&M is at 92.07, and #1 Georgia is at 92.21. From the looks of it we're right there with all the other top teams in terms of quality.

You can complain about our recruiting most years. This year ain't one of them. This is a stellar championship caliber class in line with all the other elite teams in the country.
 
The amount of players you can sign is dependant on the number of scholarships you have available. So I don't get your complaint there. The teams with bigger classes just have more turnover. Its better to have stability than huge turnover each year.

With regard to the 3-stars, our average rating per recruit is 91.43. Texas who is ahead of us at #6 is at 91.74, #5 Alabama is at 92.89, #4 A&M is at 92.07, and #1 Georgia is at 92.21. From the looks of it we're right there with all the other top teams in terms of quality.

You can complain about our recruiting most years. This year ain't one of them. This is a stellar championship caliber class in line with all the other elite teams in the country.
And they could still add 2-3 more guys
 
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Rivals used to do something similar to that. It was your best 20 that counted in the rankings, whether you had 30 commits or 20. Kind of like a bass tournament, you can catch all the fish you want, but you can only bring your best 5 to the scales.
Honestly, though, this staff has shown the ability to evaluate and find lesser rated guys who turn out good. Sounds like Ty Redmond is going to be very good and he was a 3*, rated around the 500th best player in America. Sampson also outplayed his ranking (he was a 3* who was bumped late). Farooq will be another.

In this class, I think guys like Outlaw, Theodore, Edwards, Rivers, Combay, and Baker will outplay their rankings. All of those dudes look like studs. The only commit we have that I’m not really excited about is McClain.
 
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