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Jeff Thomas’ recruitment

People thought he would end up at Michigan, Oregon and I think even Texas a&m, Richt was probably integral seeing he wanted more speed
 

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We basically went after Jeff once we realized Jeudy wasn’t coming. We didn’t put the full court press on him until late.
 
JMG said:
We basically went after Jeff once we realized Jeudy wasn’t coming. We didn’t put the full court press on him until late.
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Agreed. Jeudy had to double down on his pledge to Bama in mid December of 2016 since he was enrolling early. That opened up the door for Thomas and Miami to focus more on him since they knew Harley was eventually going to flip from WV.
 
Zbrod95 said:
Do I count for bringing him in lol? I would drop his name now and then in 2017.

He had an offer since May I believe but for some reason we had him on the back burner(academia stuff maybe). Bama was in on him initially but they cooled which left him with Illinois, Mizzou, Louisville, and Oregon. I personally think that we had Devonta Smith but Bama surged and killed it then we went to him.
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It was pretty well documented that we wanted him but he was ******* up. We told him, you want in, get your **** together and we will talk.

He did. We did. All good.
 
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Martycane said:
Who gets the credit for finding and bringing this guy in?
Was it Kul with his Midwest connections from his Missouri days?
JT committed late in the process, if I recall...Who’d we beat out?
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Illinois fan who also follows Miami here.
Mizzou used to have a pipeline at ESL but Odom ****ed off the ESL staff so they were out. Illinois was indeed asked to take on 3 players without p5 offers if they wanted to get Jeff. Estes the QB followed Fleck to Minnesota. Oregon was never really in there. It was honestly super surprising to see Jeff qualify at Miami due to the sheer number of days he missed of school. His academic problems never had to do with test scores. Even Baga thought he wouldn't qualify. Great to see Jeff have success at Miami!
 
Mklein13 said:
The top 4 guys to come out of ESL in the last decade were Hawthorne, Thomas, Terry Beckner, and Kraig Appleton. Appleton left Wisconsin after his first or second year, Hawthorne should have played WR, Beckner has been injured most of his career and Jeff is doing great here.

Hawthorne was absolutely ridiculous but I honestly think Jeff was better coming out of high school.
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Black Cat definitely should have played WR. Dude was ELITE!
 
Plzwork4 said:
Bama was on him early, but they're interest faded as they moved onto other targets. It seemed to have to do with a combination of grades and some issues with his high school team. I remember Louisville being up there as one of his other top teams..
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This
Bama led for him big in the summer before his SR year, but they backed off. That opened up the door and we kinda got in there “late”. What a fortunate series of events.
 
Good things come from bad things. Once i saw him shaking people at the all star game i was like this boy is legit. I don't think if he stays healthy he stays after next year. Hopefully he helps us win a title. No one can cover him. LSU has one of the best secondary, FSU has good athletes and he make them look silly. I wanna see him and Perry get a better connection. He needs to be on the field more. They probably should take him off kickoffs. We have enough fast players. Put Lingard back there
 
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JMG said:
We basically went after Jeff once we realized Jeudy wasn’t coming. We didn’t put the full court press on him until late.
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Nope we was one of his top schools on his list in the summer too
 
Louisville was in the mix.

Little known fact that they also were quietly close to flipping Hall.
 
Mklein13 said:
Sorry guys if I’m overly passionate about the East St Louis program. Being from Chicago, I’ve always been intrigued by them since 2007. They’d come up north to play schools near my neighborhood so I’ve followed them closely since then.
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No need to apologize at all. It's interesting stuff as we don't typically get a whole lot of insight on the recruiting game in that area all the way up through Chicago and Detroit.
 
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Mklein13 said:
He pulled Terry Beckner who was a top 5 player in the country coming out of high school.
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Also think he got Sheldon Richardson (or some similar name?) a highly ranked DT prospect at the time that was also considering us.
 
JMG said:
We basically went after Jeff once we realized Jeudy wasn’t coming. We didn’t put the full court press on him until late.
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Interesting. My recollection is people were questioning Dugans recruiting ability at the time, but then we got Jeff Thomas and Mike Harley and WR recruiting has been in an upward trend since then.
 
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Don’t remember exactly who gets credit but i do remember the bigger schools stopped recruiting him due to grades issues. Kid wasn’t going to class at one point.
 
Sean00 said:
Black Cat definitely should have played WR. Dude was ELITE!
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Yea man Terry was cold. Created some of the most improbable, electrifying offensive plays I've ever seen. The playoff game against Glenbard West their senior year, amazing!! Appleton was balling his freshman year at Wisconsin the year we played them in the bowl game. All went down hill from there and last I heard, he was back in the city down bad.
 
Cane47 said:
Also think he got Sheldon Richardson (or some similar name?) a highly ranked DT prospect at the time that was also considering us.
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Sheldon was never seriously interested in us in 2009, plus he had grade problems, and you knew at that time Shalala wasn't going to give much wiggle room.
 
[]_[]nique said:
Sheldon was never seriously interested in us in 2009, plus he had grade problems, and you knew at that time Shalala wasn't going to give much wiggle room.
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Yes he was. He took a visit here. We recruited him really hard. We just didn’t grt him
 
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