BYU is Embracing Battles on the Recruiting Trail
Earlier this week, BYU wrapped up the 2024 class with the February signing day. By the numbers, the 2024 class was best class of the Sitake era no matter how you slice it. It was a definitive step in the right direction for BYU, who is in need of more talent and more depth to compete for Big 12 championships. In his signing day press conference, BYU head coach Kalani Sitake said that BYU's coaching staff, especially on defense, embraced the battles on the recruiting trail in this class.
"You have to be ready to get into some battles with recruiting," Sitake said. "We want guys that want to be here, but sometimes you have to fight for those guys too. You have to get in the recruiting battles and you have to show them what this place is, how this place can really help them and, and then, and how they can become their best self when they're here at BYU."
Sitake continued, "We know that we've had to make some improvements on the football field in a lot of different ways. And part of that is getting into recruiting battles and not being afraid of recruiting because the guy has a lot of offers and maybe may not be familiar with BYU. That's our job is, is to get them familiar with BYU, understand where they're at, and not be intimidated by other recruiters. Jay's been awesome at that and it's been infectious to everybody else on the staff and it's been really cool...I'm excited that our coaches are bought into just going after the best guys and not being shy on who they had to recruit against."
On the surface, Sitake's comments might not mean much to the average college football fan. His comments are not ground breaking. Since the beginning of time, recruiting has been the lifeblood of college football. To get the best recruits, you have to beat out other schools who also want those high-level recruits. It seems obvious, but that was not the strategy of the prior defensive staff.
Just two years ago during a signing day press conference, then BYU defensive ends coach Preston Hadley said the opposite. Hadley explained that BYU prioritized measurables on the recruiting trail over stars or players with a lot of offers. You can listen to his full comments from that day in the video at the top of this article.
"Everyone wants to make a big deal about stars and everything," Hadley said when asked if BYU would need to go after more stars to compete in the Big 12. "We have a lot of players who are making a lot of plays for us and really impacting the games for us who didn't have the stars, but they did have the measurables the length, the speed, the athleticism and the things that we look for...our track record, I think we're, we're able to develop more NFL players than BYU's had in recent years past."
"I think it's about just trusting in your own evaluation. If stars mattered...I'm not going to name any specific schools, but you would see [those schools that recruit at a high level] in the playoffs each year, but you don't. We just take a lot of pride in trusting our own evaluation and even if we're the only team to, to offer them, I mean, that's, we know what we're looking for and we know how to develop them and we have a proven track record. It's been tested now and it's proven just based off the result from last season. You know, five of those guys got drafted, there's a handful of them. We are still on NFL rosters who went undrafted. And so the program is moving in the right direction just following this model and just the fact that we're going to the Big 12...we're not going to go chasing stars, you know. So I know everyone gets all worked up about recruiting class and everything. But, you know, those don't always correlate, and at least not with us."
That strategy was the eventual Achilles heel of the prior defensive class. They brought in too many projects that didn't pan out. They shied away from recruiting battles. BYU's defense eventually had to rely on too many walk-ons and developmental projects that hadn't developed. BYU had a scheme problem, sure, but they had a severe, severe talent and depth issue. The recruiting deficiencies compounded and eventually led to the 2022 season when BYU fielded one of the worst defenses in college football.
Take the 2020 class, for example. The 2020 class relied on too many developmental players that weren't recruited by other schools. Only 30% of the signees in that class held at least one competing Power Five offer and 53% held at least one competing FBS offer.
BYU signed 29 players in that class. Four years later, only seven out of those 29 signees have started a game for BYU. Only two out of 29 have become full-time starters, meaning they have started five or more games for BYU. While that number could grow over the next few years since a handful of those players are still in the program, that's simply not a high enough hit rate to build a deep roster. It's no coincidence that the two players that became full-time starters (Kody Epps and Micah Harper) were two of the players that held competing P5 offers. The other five players that started at least one game (Hinckley Ropati, Ace Kaufusi, Miles Davis, Chris Jackson, Sol-Jay Maiava-Peters) for BYU, all five of them held at least one competing FBS offer.
The more coveted a recruit is on the recruiting trail, the more likely it is that they will become a starter for BYU.
While it was already pretty clear at that time, now we have the benefit of hindsight: Preston Hadley was completely wrong. None of the developmental players they signed based off measurables have become Power Five starters.
Clearly there was an awareness of the issues happening on the recruiting trail. Kalani made changes and BYU has pivoted away from that strategy. Sitake replaced the prior defensive staff with a staff fully of dynamic recruits. It paid immediate dividends with the 2024 class.
In the same press conference, Sitake noted that the 2024 signees are more developed and ready to make an impact right away. BYU will field a very young defense in 2024. By 2025 and 2026, BYU will field a much more talented, a much deeper, and a much better defense.
It all starts with recruiting, and BYU is headed in the right direction with the 2024 class.
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