Breaking: Four-star in-state tight end commits to Colorado
The Colorado Buffaloes picked up their fifth commit for the 2021 class on the fourth of July.
Four-star tight end Erik Olsen gave the Buffaloes his verbal pledge.
The Buffs joined Olsen's recruitment late for an in-state prospect but right when tight ends coach Taylor Embree identified him, he hit the ground running. The two have built a solid relationship over the last couple of months.
Olsen is a big 6-foot-5, 230-pounder that can pretty much do it all. He plays a lot with his hand in the dirt for Heritage High School and he isn't afraid to stick his nose in and block.
But he's also a pretty good pass-catcher as well. During his junior season, he caught 28 balls totaling 533 yards and eight touchdowns. He played alongside one of the top tight ends in the nation in Terrance Ferguson.
Embree tells him he sees a lot of George Kittle in him, somebody that Embree coached for a few years while with the San Francisco 49ers.
"In terms of football stuff, he sees me playing a lot like Kittle with the 49ers," Olsen said. "And he just wants me to be used in a lot of similar ways to him and he sees that happening while I'm at Colorado."
Olsen narrowed his double-digit options down to Washington, Stanford, Notre Dame, UCLA and Colorado before making his final decision.
He takes a lot of pride in being from the box state.
"If I were to sign there, hopefully my career could look somewhat similar to Philip Lindsay's while he was at Colorado," Olsen told BuffsCountry earlier this week. "And I feel like if that happened to me, that'd be great."
He wants to major in engineering in college and Colorado's engineering program stood out even while holding offers from prestigious academic schools like Stanford and Notre Dame.
"I think I read somewhere that Colorado has the eighth-best engineering program with, obviously, schools like Harvard and MIT and schools like that in that ranking," Olsen said. "But I feel like I'm able to get as good of an engineering degree from them as anywhere in the country."
Olsen wanted to take some official visits but wasn't able to due to the dead period that has been extended through August 31.
"I just don't see a point waiting even longer for the visits because I doubt they're gonna be happening anytime soon," Olsen said. "So I figured why wait? I might as well pull the trigger now while I still have all my spots at the schools."
Embree has already started to prove his recruiting chops.