I'm going to share with you everything I know about Xavier Phillips that I didn't get from a subscription site of one kind or another: he likes turtles. There, now everyone is on the same page and you know just as much as I do!*
*I might have made up the part about turtles.
Anyway, Baylor received its 13th commit of the 2013 recruiting class this evening from FW All Saints OLB Xavier Phillips, who I told you about for the first time as long ago as this morning. Phillips came to Baylor's camp at Lake Highlands on the 8th, received an offer, and committed today after thinking about it. Rumor is that he will shortly receive another offer from TCU, but I don't think he needs it to make his list any more impressive. It might be the best I've ever seen if not for the reasons you may think. Let's take a look at Xavier below the jump...
Name: Xavier Phillips
Class: 2013
Position: OLB
Height: 6-2
Weight: 215/220
40 time: 4.6
Links/Ranks: Rivals(3*, 5.5), Scout (2*), 247Sports (NR), ESPN (NR)
Coverage: BearsTruth, SicEmSports
Major Offers: Baylor, Air Force, Vanderbilt, Colorado, Georgia Tech, Houston
Right off the bat, I want you to look at his full offer list. Notice something? Princeton? Yale? Harvard? Columbia? That's a seriously impressive academic list if not the best football lineup you can imagine. Duke, Cornell, and Dartmouth are no slouches, either. I can't recall ever seeing an offer list like this for a football player before with Baylor involved. I don't know what it says about his football abilities that he is so highly sought-after by the Ivies and Friends, but still, that's something else.
Now if you have a Rivals subscription, look at this, his highlight video over there. If you don't have one there, check out the video that I've embedded below. Phillips plays DE for All Saints, his HS team, and at 6' 2" already at age 17, I could see him adding another inch or two and probably 30-40 pounds and playing rush end for Baylor down the road. The camera angle isn't great on the video I embedded, but you can see him use his speed in space and get off blocks well. He's not a finished product by any means-- guys like that don't generally get into the summer before their senior year without a little more fanfare-- but give him a couple of years in Kaz's system and this kid could be a playmaker off the edge. I just wish his HUDL profile was public so that we could get another look at him from there.
With Green, Blanchard, and Davis already in the fold, Phillips is Baylor's 4th LB commit of 2013 and likely will not be the last. Blanchard is slotted for Dixon's slot at nickelback, Green is a MLB, and both Davis and Phillips might spin down to play DE once they get on campus. We still have ample spots in this class for guys like Dac Shaw and Mike Mitchell should they decide to jump on board.
Congratulations, Xavier, and welcome to Baylor!
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