If you remember from my 2023 recruiting class breakdown, we talked about how Matt Rhule went with a very unique approach for a few of his recruits in the fact that he went after guys with freakish high school marks in track and field while not being heavily recruited on the football field. We are going to leave Malachi Coleman out of this, because he was a national football recruit, but has excellent track marks as well. Let’s go over the guys we were talking about:
First up and probably most well-known in Nebraska is Jaylen Lloyd, who spent 3 years at Omaha Central before transferring to Omaha Westside for his senior year of school. Lloyd had limited football opportunities, but every national track program under the sun was after him as he was a premier horizontal jumper going 24’6″ in the long jump and over 50 feet in the triple jump. But many of you remember Matt Rhule saying when Coach Cooper was officially hired at Nebraska, his first comment was “offer Jaylen Lloyd”. High praise, and Lloyd saw the most action of any of the 3 we are going to be going over in this section.
Secondly we have Jeremiah Charles, who is much like Lloyd in the fact that his main track events are horizontal jumps where he goes over 50 feet in the triple jump. Charles was a 2 star recruit essentially heading to North Texas before picking up an offer from Matt Rhule and the Cornhuskers.
Brice Turner is by far my most curious one as he was basically heading to Prairie View A&M if he played football, as that was his only offer. However, he may have one of the more impressive track resumes of these 3, as he has gone 10.25 in the 100m dash and 21.04 in the 200m dash in high school. Those times are flying.
As many of you know, I am a huge believer in not specializing in a sport like many coaches steer their high school players to do. I believe the broader your athletic base is, the higher your ceiling can get. I was ecstatic to hear about how these kids would be allowed to run track in the spring, as the track teams goal would be to get them running faster and jumping farther, that can only help on a football field.
This weekend was supposed to be the collegiate debut for those 3, and 2 of them competed in the triple jump (Turner did not start). Charles ended up 2nd in the triple jump where he was 3/4 of an inch from a 50 foot triple jump in his first collegiate meet. Lloyd ended up 6th with a jump of 48’4″. No doubt Lloyd is a little upset, as he and Charles will have some friendly competition going, but very good starts for guys that are just doing this as a second sport.
I do have concerns, and the reason for this post… again leaving out Malachi who was a top 100 recruit as a football player, we have 3 guys that we essentially took flyers on due to their track numbers. I have told the story many times, but doing that can be a dangerous game to play. A guy like Zajicek from Beatrice was one that Solich was all over due to his testing numbers, but it turns out he may not have had the passion for football. A guy like Dusty Stamer from Grand Island was an unbelievable talent on the football field for the Islanders and destroyed people on the track in Nebraska. He went to South Dakota as a RB where he was the conference freshman of the year, and ended up transferring to Nebraska. Imagine if that happened in the message board and social media days, fans would be drooling saying how we just found our starting RB and we are set for a few years there. However, it didn’t work out as Solich told him his speed wasn’t translating to the football field and he focused solely on track where he became an All-American and school record holder.
My point is, track times and camp testing are great to see what you are working with, but many times it’s not a great indicator of how they will be on a Power 5 football field. To a lesser degree, it’s why a lot of coaches don’t like how big 7 v 7 is getting. Some kids are great at catching a football when they know they aren’t going to get hit, QBs are unreal when they don’t have to navigate a pocket or aren’t experiencing a rush.
I said in the 2019 Nebraska class that the OL that Frost put together that was full of 6’7″ skinny athletic guys they were going to put through Husker Power and bulk up would define his tenure here. Well… Benhardt and Piper were the only true linemen in that class that actually had offers from other big time schools to play line for them, and they did well. But Anderson, Lynn, Fritzsche, and Banks all were flyers taken on tall bodies that our strength program would develop (yes I know everyone thought Fritzsche had a Clemson offer, but he didn’t). All 4 of those guys transferred out while never playing significant snaps for us. The only guys that played well in that OL class were actually good OL that other teams wanted.
I see more of the same gamble with Rhule and his track & field recruiting approach. I love the thought process behind it, and I love the dual-spot athlete. But if I had to make a prediction right now, only 1 of these 3 guys is going to make an impact on the football field. While Lloyd had what I would call a good freshman campaign, Bell plays roughly the same spot as him, so let’s see what happens when Bell is eligible to play. Charles and Turner both redshirted. I have a feeling that 2/3 of these guys will end up concentrating on the track side of things, which is completely fine. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, I just think when you are that fast in high school it is much easier to use that to your advantage than it is in college. And if they weren’t able to do that when players were worse in high school, it will be even tougher now.
I think it’s a great strategy by Rhule, if he can just hit on 1 of these 3 it’s a success. We have plenty of WRs and DBs we are bringing in so it’s not exactly like the OL class in 2019 that doomed us in 2023 and 2024 where we had to bring in so many recruits in Rhule’s first two years. But I always throw caution to people who say “with that kind of speed you have to offer them!” because it doesn’t always translate. While I don’t think any of these 3 guys considered themselves “track first”, they were definitely a more national recruit from a track perspective. If we can somehow get one of them to transition into a beast on the football field, that is going to give me major positive vibes on one of Rhule’s methods for recruiting and development. The long and short of it is i’ll take a dual-sport guy all day long as a recruit. I am going to see what happens these next couple years to see if this recruiting strategy pays off for the Big Red. I’m hoping it does.
Join us on Thursday when we go over what exactly we do now that our #1 QB target committed to Iowa State, next Monday we will go over what we do once DC White moves on.
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