Monday, October 20, 2008
Tech, UVa should have offered State’s Wilson
Who gets Tahj Boyd?
Doug Doughty
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It’s going to be interesting to follow the progress of North Carolina State redshirt freshman Russell Wilson, considered the No. 3 quarterback in Virginia in 2006 behind Tyrod Taylor and Peter Lalich.
You actually could say that Wilson was the No. 4 quarterback in that class behind West Virginia recruit Brandon Hogan, named Group AAA state player of the year as a senior at Osbourn High School, but Hogan never was going to play quarterback in college.
Some of the same things were said about Wilson, who played at Richmond’s Collegiate School. Level of competitition was one issue, as was Wilson’s size (5 foot 11, 180). He was rated the No. 25 prospect in Virginia by The Roanoke Times, attracting Division I-A offers from only Duke and North Carolina State before committing to the Wolfpack.
Rivals.com gave Wilson a two-star rating, compared to the five-star rating it awarded Taylor, who signed with Virginia Tech, and the four stars it gave Lalich, who signed with Virginia..
While there may have been some behavioral issues with Lalich even before he arrived at Virginia, it’s hard to question the Cavaliers’ decision to recruit him. If he hadn’t gone to UVa, there were dozens of programs ready to take him.
Similarly, nobody is questioning the Hokies’ decision to focus on Taylor, who has started in parts of his first two seasons for a Tech team that has gone 16-4 over his career.
N.C. State is 2-5 after its 26-17 loss Thursday night against visiting Florida State, but it’s hard to knock Wilson. Still listed at 5-11 and now up to 191 pounds, he has missed two full games and part of a third due to injury but has put up some respectable numbers.
In five games, Wilson has completed 64 of 115 passes (55.7 percent) for 713 yards and six touchdowns. He has been intercepted once and also has rushed for 96 yards (180 before sacks) and two touchdowns.
Virginia Tech’s Taylor also has played in five games and has completed 43 of 70 passes (61.4 percent) for 495 yards and one touchdown. Taylor has yielded two interceptions and has rushed for 338 yards (396 before sacks) and two touchdowns.
The Hokies wouldn’t trade Taylor for Wilson and neither would I. If they knew in 2006 what they know, the Cavaliers probably would have offered Wilson, but nobody would have suggested Lalich was a better prospect.
Where both schools would have been well-served would have been to offer Wilson as an “athlete” and considered him a hedge in case something happened to Taylor or Lalich. Of course, something did happen to Lalich, and while Taylor appears entrenched for the long haul, the Hokies no longer have once-prized quarterback recruit Ike Whitaker in reserve.
SOME MIGHT SAY it would have been presumptious of either UVa or Tech to think all it had to do was offer Wilson and he would have come, but the Wolfpack coaching situation was so shaky that Wilson took a January 2007 visit to Duke, six months after he had committed to State.
Originally, Wilson had committed to the staff of then-N.C. State head coach Chuck Amato, but new coach Tom O’Brien came to Raleigh, N.C., with a history of favoring drop-back quarterbacks in the mold of 6-foot-4, 220-pound Matt Ryan, O’Brien’s quarterback in his final season at Boston College.
“It still comes down to, [Wilson] makes plays,” O’Brien said on a recent ACC coaches’ teleconference. “At BC, we had Paul Peterson, a similar style of quarterback, and we’ve won with quarterbacks that style. It wasn’t so far out of the mold and especially when you’re coming into a program for the first time, like we were, you have to get all the good players you can get.
“He certainly was an excellent player that we knew we needed in our program. When we came here, obviously he had been on their list here and they were very high on him. The people who were on the staff who stayed with me during the time in December when we had no assistants raved about him as an individual.
“He’s a special kind of guy. He has tremendous confidence in himself. He might end up being President one day. Anywhere you’re with him, he goes up and introduces himself to everybody. He’s so positive in everything he does and I certainly think he could be mayor, maybe governor, maybe President.”
RECRUITING CAN BE an entangled web. In the summer of 2007, N.C. State took a commitment from Westfield (Va.) High School quarterback Mike Glennon, who had Virginia on his list and was at least somewhat concerned that another well-known Northern Virginia quarterback, Lalich, already was in the Cavaliers’ program.
Of course, it might have been awkward for Glennon to pick a school, UVa, that was the archrival of Virginia Tech, where his brother, Sean, was the quarterback. So, Glennon went to N.C. State, where he might have to compete with Wilson for three years, while Lalich and likely 2008 starter Jameel Sewell are both out of the way at Virginia, although Sewell is eligible to return in 2009.
Of course, now Marc Verica has emerged as a possible quarterback of the future at Virginia, just as Wilson has emerged at N.C. State. It makes for an interesting question and one for which there will never be an answer.
If Virginia had recruited Wilson in 2006 or if Mike Glennon had committed to the Cavaliers in the summer of 2007, as once was speculated, would Verica be the quarterback now?
RUBY’S CABOOSE in the Norwich section of Roanoke city became the 60th different destination of the SEC Roundtable, which today focused on several issues, including the atmosphere for Virginia Tech’s football game Saturday night at Boston College.
Just how many fans will BC lose because the Boston Red Sox overcame a 7-0 deficit to force a sixth game of the American League Championship Series on Saturday in Tampa, Fla.?
Another topic was the sudden availability of Phoebus High School quarterback Tahj Boyd, rated the No. 1 prospect in Virginia by The Roanoke Times. Beefy talk-show host Greg Roberts suggested that Virginia Tech will be playing with fire if it attempts to recruit Boyd and Hargrave Academy’s Kevin Newsome, both now decommitted.
“It’s like [Michael] Vick and [Ronald] Curry,” Roberts said. “You can’t recruit both. You’ve got to choose one or the other.”
I agreed with him. Maybe I thought of it first, or at least that’s what I should tell him.
In last week’s poll, Boston was the choice as the team most likely to win the World Series, an indication that most of the 374 voters cast their ballots before Tampa Bay pulled away to a 3-1 lead. Boston got 36.1 percent of the votes, followed by 27.8 for Philadelphia and 26.7 for Tampa Bay. Los Angeles, the first team eliminated, was last at 10.4
This week's poll question:
You actually could say that Wilson was the No. 4 quarterback in that class behind West Virginia recruit Brandon Hogan, named Group AAA state player of the year as a senior at Osbourn High School, but Hogan never was going to play quarterback in college.
Some of the same things were said about Wilson, who played at Richmond’s Collegiate School. Level of competitition was one issue, as was Wilson’s size (5 foot 11, 180). He was rated the No. 25 prospect in Virginia by The Roanoke Times, attracting Division I-A offers from only Duke and North Carolina State before committing to the Wolfpack.
Rivals.com gave Wilson a two-star rating, compared to the five-star rating it awarded Taylor, who signed with Virginia Tech, and the four stars it gave Lalich, who signed with Virginia..
While there may have been some behavioral issues with Lalich even before he arrived at Virginia, it’s hard to question the Cavaliers’ decision to recruit him. If he hadn’t gone to UVa, there were dozens of programs ready to take him.
Similarly, nobody is questioning the Hokies’ decision to focus on Taylor, who has started in parts of his first two seasons for a Tech team that has gone 16-4 over his career.
N.C. State is 2-5 after its 26-17 loss Thursday night against visiting Florida State, but it’s hard to knock Wilson. Still listed at 5-11 and now up to 191 pounds, he has missed two full games and part of a third due to injury but has put up some respectable numbers.
In five games, Wilson has completed 64 of 115 passes (55.7 percent) for 713 yards and six touchdowns. He has been intercepted once and also has rushed for 96 yards (180 before sacks) and two touchdowns.
Virginia Tech’s Taylor also has played in five games and has completed 43 of 70 passes (61.4 percent) for 495 yards and one touchdown. Taylor has yielded two interceptions and has rushed for 338 yards (396 before sacks) and two touchdowns.
The Hokies wouldn’t trade Taylor for Wilson and neither would I. If they knew in 2006 what they know, the Cavaliers probably would have offered Wilson, but nobody would have suggested Lalich was a better prospect.
Where both schools would have been well-served would have been to offer Wilson as an “athlete” and considered him a hedge in case something happened to Taylor or Lalich. Of course, something did happen to Lalich, and while Taylor appears entrenched for the long haul, the Hokies no longer have once-prized quarterback recruit Ike Whitaker in reserve.
SOME MIGHT SAY it would have been presumptious of either UVa or Tech to think all it had to do was offer Wilson and he would have come, but the Wolfpack coaching situation was so shaky that Wilson took a January 2007 visit to Duke, six months after he had committed to State.
Originally, Wilson had committed to the staff of then-N.C. State head coach Chuck Amato, but new coach Tom O’Brien came to Raleigh, N.C., with a history of favoring drop-back quarterbacks in the mold of 6-foot-4, 220-pound Matt Ryan, O’Brien’s quarterback in his final season at Boston College.
“It still comes down to, [Wilson] makes plays,” O’Brien said on a recent ACC coaches’ teleconference. “At BC, we had Paul Peterson, a similar style of quarterback, and we’ve won with quarterbacks that style. It wasn’t so far out of the mold and especially when you’re coming into a program for the first time, like we were, you have to get all the good players you can get.
“He certainly was an excellent player that we knew we needed in our program. When we came here, obviously he had been on their list here and they were very high on him. The people who were on the staff who stayed with me during the time in December when we had no assistants raved about him as an individual.
“He’s a special kind of guy. He has tremendous confidence in himself. He might end up being President one day. Anywhere you’re with him, he goes up and introduces himself to everybody. He’s so positive in everything he does and I certainly think he could be mayor, maybe governor, maybe President.”
RECRUITING CAN BE an entangled web. In the summer of 2007, N.C. State took a commitment from Westfield (Va.) High School quarterback Mike Glennon, who had Virginia on his list and was at least somewhat concerned that another well-known Northern Virginia quarterback, Lalich, already was in the Cavaliers’ program.
Of course, it might have been awkward for Glennon to pick a school, UVa, that was the archrival of Virginia Tech, where his brother, Sean, was the quarterback. So, Glennon went to N.C. State, where he might have to compete with Wilson for three years, while Lalich and likely 2008 starter Jameel Sewell are both out of the way at Virginia, although Sewell is eligible to return in 2009.
Of course, now Marc Verica has emerged as a possible quarterback of the future at Virginia, just as Wilson has emerged at N.C. State. It makes for an interesting question and one for which there will never be an answer.
If Virginia had recruited Wilson in 2006 or if Mike Glennon had committed to the Cavaliers in the summer of 2007, as once was speculated, would Verica be the quarterback now?
RUBY’S CABOOSE in the Norwich section of Roanoke city became the 60th different destination of the SEC Roundtable, which today focused on several issues, including the atmosphere for Virginia Tech’s football game Saturday night at Boston College.
Just how many fans will BC lose because the Boston Red Sox overcame a 7-0 deficit to force a sixth game of the American League Championship Series on Saturday in Tampa, Fla.?
Another topic was the sudden availability of Phoebus High School quarterback Tahj Boyd, rated the No. 1 prospect in Virginia by The Roanoke Times. Beefy talk-show host Greg Roberts suggested that Virginia Tech will be playing with fire if it attempts to recruit Boyd and Hargrave Academy’s Kevin Newsome, both now decommitted.
“It’s like [Michael] Vick and [Ronald] Curry,” Roberts said. “You can’t recruit both. You’ve got to choose one or the other.”
I agreed with him. Maybe I thought of it first, or at least that’s what I should tell him.
In last week’s poll, Boston was the choice as the team most likely to win the World Series, an indication that most of the 374 voters cast their ballots before Tampa Bay pulled away to a 3-1 lead. Boston got 36.1 percent of the votes, followed by 27.8 for Philadelphia and 26.7 for Tampa Bay. Los Angeles, the first team eliminated, was last at 10.4
This week's poll question:
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