The Athletic with an Outstanding Mississippi Recruiting Confidential piece...

[Maroon Eagle]

Inside recruiting in Mississippi: Kiffin, Leach, Deion and ‘the last place in America where kids can actually hide’ https://t.co/1wqTiiFfGk— The Athletic Wisconsin (@TheAthleticWISC) November 18, 2021

 

[Maroon Eagle]

Lots of good questions for current and retired high school coaches & a former FBS staffer. Here's one:

Ole Miss and Mississippi State heavily prioritized in-state recruiting under previous staffs (Mullen, Freeze, Joe Moorhead and Matt Luke). How much has that changed since Leach and Kiffin took over their respective programs?
Coach 2: It’s changed quite a bit, especially for Mississippi State. They were more about getting a diamond in the rough and developing kids. Not necessarily five-star kids, and they were relying heavily on some juco kids and some high school kids who were like the Fletcher Cox type who were 6-3, 6-4, 225 pounds and they would redshirt him, put weight on him and, you know, three or four years, they would have something really dominant. Leach is not from here. I don’t think he kept many coaches on staff from here (associate head coach Tony Hughes is the only Mississippian on the on-field staff) so they don’t know the lay of the land. We don’t have some of the facilities that Texas high schools have. Kids here are a year or two away. But you have to be able to see that. You recruit what you know. So they recruit Texas a lot. And they are becoming more of a national deal.

Ole Miss has kind of always been halfway national and they’d get some kids in-state. They still have that same philosophy, really. And that’s because they still have some coaches who are from here. So I think to me, there’s a personality deal where you recruit what you know. The previous staffs did a great job of understanding Mississippi and the raw kids who are just scratching the service here who, a year or two from now, you’re asking where did this come from. They are out there. You just have to dig a little bit. And once you get them, you have to work on them.

Coach 4: A lot. Mississippi is a development state. There are some, but as a whole, you get athletes who need to be developed once they get to college. A lot of top-tier programs want to recruit ready-made kids, in my opinion. This is not something new, this has been going on for years. So you see a lot of people leave the state and turn into great players, better than how many stars they got or how good you thought they were going to be because kids developed. This is probably one of the most underdeveloped or untapped states that there is out there.

Coach 8: I think it’s changed tremendously, just look at the rosters. Those coaches, they’re getting more recruits from where they’re originally from or where they recruit most in the past. And there are not a lot of Mississippi ties on those staffs. There are a few, I’m not saying there aren’t any, but there are not as many Mississippi ties as there used to be.

Coaches 2 & 8 are high school coaches. Coach 4 is a former FBS staffer.

 

[dawgstudent]

This is a great article already.

 

[Ralph Cramden]

Umm....how many Mississippi kids do we sign every year ? Seems like a lot to me esp if you add in the ones that jump to Bama or some other big program. But if we can get some players from Texas or Florida I'm good with that. I wish we could get all the top Ms kids but we need what we need

 

[Maroon Eagle]

Having Antonio Morales and Will Sammon - the writers of this piece - who both had been at the Clarion-Ledger *and* good helps a lot here.

 

[Smoked Toag]

Umm....how many Mississippi kids do we sign every year ? Seems like a lot to me esp if you add in the ones that jump to Bama or some other big program. But if we can get some players from Texas or Florida I'm good with that. I wish we could get all the top Ms kids but we need what we need

Yeah. I can only see what Maroon Eagle quoted because of the paywall, but without further context I'd say they are wrong, at least about MSU. So many hot-takes, and obviously I recognize that those coaches are rambling in the interview. Our class looks the exact same as it always does except better QBs and WRs.

 

[Uncle Ruckus]

I think that's kind of bs. We're going to recruit MS hard and get guys like we always have. We just won't take as many risks on MS kids. MS doesn't produce top QBs and OL year-in-and-year-out. So, we're going to dip into Texas and other states to fill those spots. MS doesn't always produce WRs also, and when they do, we have to fight many other programs for them seeing as we don't have a track record of putting WR into the NFL.

 

[IPMdawg]

“high school kids who were like the Fletcher Cox type who were 6-3, 6-4, 225 pounds and they would redshirt him, put weight on him and, you know, three or four years, they would have something really dominant.”

Fletcher and the kid like him, Jeffrey Simmons, didn’t redshirt and were only at State for three years. I do agree that we are probably going to miss some diamonds in the rough, but that’s not our loss. It’s just going to be Southern Miss/Memphis’s gain.

 

[Smoked Toag]

“high school kids who were like the Fletcher Cox type who were 6-3, 6-4, 225 pounds and they would redshirt him, put weight on him and, you know, three or four years, they would have something really dominant.”

Fletcher and the kid like him, Jeffrey Simmons, didn’t redshirt and were only at State for three years. I do agree that we are probably going to miss some diamonds in the rough, but that’s not our loss. It’s just going to be Southern Miss/Memphis’s gain.

Yeah, Fletcher Cox was a high 4 star recruited by everyone. We had to fend off Bama at the end.

 

[Maroon Eagle]

Goat-- Here's a TLDR for you (in addition to the question and responses I copied and pasted earlier):

1. The top blue chip high schoolers are going out of state because of coaching turnover within Mississippi.
2. They liked Moorhead and thought he understood Mississippi. They also think Leach is an introvert but Kiffin doesn't interact with high school coaches either.
3. The coaches love Deion. Yeah, he's an entertainer but he's given Jackson State what they needed and has a great coaching staff.
4. Coaches think Southern Miss fans have to be patient with Will Hall who's going to have to go after 2 and 3 star players as well as developmental guys.
5. On assistant coaches and recruiting: They like Steve Spurrier Jr. and Tony Hughes. They also like Ole Miss's Derrick Nix and Terrell Buckley.
6. Out of state recruiters. Basically guys with Mississippi connections. Tim Brewster is among those mentioned.
7. The coaches think the national recruiting rankers are lazy and often have terrible evaluations-- relying on who offers players. Mostly blamed on Mississippi being a developmental state largely because of low income families with poor nutrition.

Really simplistic summary, I know.

 

[Maroon Eagle]

Bernardrick McKinney might be closer to what that coach meant.

 

[diggidydog]

McKinney is a Perfect example...

Bernardrick McKinney might be closer to what that coach meant.

Guys like him and Elgton Jenkins, Tyre Phillips, Taveze Calhoun, or a Gabe Jackson for Mississippi guys and a Dak or Preston Smith for out of state. For every one of those guys there are 4-5 who didn't develop into a contributor at the collegiate level. We have hit on a lot of developmental guys (low 3-star) but missed on way more of them. That is an important part of our program just like the juco system though, cause it has to be.

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

How many High Schools in Mississippi run the air raid? How many in Texas run the air raid? Also, I think a lot of times these HS coaches in Mississippi like to $teer kid$ in the crootin proce$$ more than coaches from other states.

 

[Smoked Toag]

Goat-- Here's a TLDR for you (in addition to the question and responses I copied and pasted earlier):

1. The top blue chip high schoolers are going out of state because of coaching turnover within Mississippi.
2. They liked Moorhead and thought he understood Mississippi. They also think Leach is an introvert but Kiffin doesn't interact with high school coaches either.
3. The coaches love Deion. Yeah, he's an entertainer but he's given Jackson State what they needed and has a great coaching staff.
4. Coaches think Southern Miss fans have to be patient with Will Hall who's going to have to go after 2 and 3 star players as well as developmental guys.
5. On assistant coaches and recruiting: They like Steve Spurrier Jr. and Tony Hughes. They also like Ole Miss's Derrick Nix and Terrell Buckley.
6. Out of state recruiters. Basically guys with Mississippi connections. Tim Brewster is among those mentioned.
7. The coaches think the national recruiting rankers are lazy and often have terrible evaluations-- relying on who offers players. Mostly blamed on Mississippi being a developmental state largely because of low income families with poor nutrition.

Really simplistic summary, I know.

Agree with most except the first 2. Sloppy let a lot of good players get away, although in general I do think he stop-gapped a lot of Mullen's short-comings and avoided that horrific drop off. Remember, he was there for that 2019 class that saw Dean, Hall, etc. get away. Who has Leach/Kiffin really lost?

 

[IBleedMaroonDawg]

How many High Schools in Mississippi run the air raid? How many in Texas run the air raid? Also, I think a lot of times these HS coaches in Mississippi like to $teer kid$ in the crootin proce$$ more than coaches from other states.

Explained in two sentences. I have no idea if it will continue because Kiffin is probably going to leave but the current two coaches have somewhat paused the caustic atmosphere that threw gas on the fire of recruiting the state that had been amping up ever since the days of the "habitual liar" time through TSUN phase. It will probably never ever end but sometimes it has bordered on the ridiculous.

 

[Maroon Eagle]

The number 1 player in each year from 2019 to the present has gone to or committed to an out-of-state school:

Nakobe Dean - Georgia
McKinley Jackson - aTm
Deion Smith - LSU
Branson Robinson - UGA

Three of the top 4 players in the state from 2020 to 2022 have gone to or are committed to out of state schools including all the Number 1s.

Five of the nine coaches interviewed reported no interaction with either head coach.

 

[Smoked Toag]

The number 1 player in each year from 2019 to the present has gone to or committed to an out-of-state school:

Nakobe Dean - Georgia
McKinley Jackson - aTm
Deion Smith - LSU
Branson Robinson - UGA

Three of the top 4 players in the state from 2020 to 2022 have gone to or are committed to out of state schools including all the Number 1s.

Five of the nine coaches interviewed reported no interaction with either head coach.

Not exactly uncommon is it?

 

[Ralph Cramden]

Dean, Jackson and Smith were pursued by State and OM. They wanted to leave

 

[Maroon Eagle]

Actually it is unusual.

247 started state rankings in 2002 and at least half of the top 4 -- and most often 3 -- went to in-state schools until 2020 which is the first year where three of the top four went out-of-state.

 

[Maroon Eagle]

One thing Will Sammon mentioned in the comments to the article is that they wished that they could have gotten some input from JUCO coaches. They did ask people but the logistics didn't work out.

 

[Ralph Cramden]

They go out of state to a school they feel has a better chance of winning a championship and has a higher profile. Only way to beat Georgia,, Bama or LSU out for the best players is beat them on the field and make sure we continue putting players in the league

 

[olblue.sixpack]

Outstanding read.

Sounds like Mullen and Freeze both worked it hard. In Mullen's case, the talent that he sent to the NFL would confirm that.