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UCLA Football Recruiting: Defense Dominating, Offense Not So Much
When it comes to recruiting for the UCLA Football team, the defensive side of the ball has been dominating where as the other side is performing as good as the offense did last year.
When it comes to recruiting for the UCLA Football team, as the kids say, the Bruins are “killing it “. At least that’s true for the defensive side of the ball.
Last week, the Bruins landed three huge commitments from four-star players LB Rahyme Johnson and DT Martin Andrus and 5-star CB Darnay Holmes.
With the addition of these three players, the Bruins now have two 5-star recruits, four 4-star recruits and one 3-star recruit for the defense. If teams were ranked based on offense or defense alone, the Bruin defense could have a top 10 recruiting class.
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Unfortunately, the overall class is taken into consideration when developing rankings. Though UCLA has risen in the rankings with these last three commits, they are still nowhere near where they need to be due to the offensive recruiting struggles.
Currently, the Bruins offensive recruits include only four commitments: one 3-star and three 3-star recruits (2 OL, 1 QB, 1 TE).
So what is going on here? To try and find answers, I asked Go Joe Bruin writer and recruiting specialist, Michael Hanna about the imbalance in recruiting.
“It comes down to two things: recruiting vigor of our defensive coaches and their success rates putting guys in the NFL as opposed to our offense. Angus McClure, Scott White, and Demetrice Martin are absolutely relentless recruiters. And with McClure and White especially, they can say “look at all this highly drafted talent to come out of UCLA while we’ve been here”.”
Though the offense can say they put Brett Hundley, Paul Perkins and Caleb Benenoch in the League, going forward there is not much else to brag about, especially after the offensive performance of last season.
Another factor that did not help was Head Coach Jim Mora taking a month to hire a new offensive coordinator. Jedd Fisch, who is finally in Westwood, is the third OC the Bruins have had in three years. That is a month without stability to the offense, what recruit is attracted to that?
What has also limited the Bruins is the lack of effective recruiting by UCLA’s offensive coaches. The biggest issue is OL Coach Adrian Klemm and his recruiting violations which caused him to miss significant time recruiting last season.
Because of that, UCLA has had trouble landing big time OL recruits in the last two years.
Additionally, the Bruins do not have a single wide receiver committed for 2017 and this position group is one that particularly needs some attention, though when it comes to performing, that’s going to be squarely on coaching.
Still, the Bruins have issues they need to resolve quickly as National Signing Day is fast approaching. Unless they have a few tricks up their sleeve, this could be a bad recruiting cycle for the offense.
