12/10/2016 Recruiting Update — Baylor’s Active Saturday

I was thinking today about needing to get the Monthly Recruiting Threads up and running again since those had (understandably) fallen somewhat by the wayside due to overall recruiting inactivity. Then I realized that while those will likely be an important resource for tracking overall activity, with the number of offers likely to go out in the coming days/weeks, and the commitments we’ll need to pull to have any chance at salvaging the 2017 class, we’ll probably need daily threads, too. So that’s what this is.

Today’s news starts with our new head coach making his way through central Texas alongside David Wetzel to fly the flag at high school playoff games in Austin and San Antonio. That was after he took in Gilmer/Sweetwater last night at McLane Stadium.

As near as I can tell from the reports emerging from the Twitterverse about his activities, it appears Coach Rhule’s first stop today was in Austin for Allen/The Woodlands at DKR, then he spent the rest of the day in San Antonio for Lake Travis/Atascocita and Steele/Cinco Ranch. The strategy here appears to be visibility for Coach Rhule in areas (Central Texas) where Wetzel probably carries the most weight.

At the same time, more offers were going out across the state. First up there was A&M QB/OLB commit Devodrick Johnson from Kimball HS in Dallas, who is now the first in-state offer of Coach Rhule’s Baylor tenure. He tweeted about his offer this morning:

All indications are that Johnson, a 3* recruit according to 247Sports’ composite rankings, will play OLB, rather than QB, in college. That’s where he’s evaluated by the recruiting services, anyway. We’ll see what, if any, reaction we get to the offer.

Next up was current Houston OL commit Dennis Bardwell. He also tweeted about his offer:

Houston’s official hiring of past-OC Major Applewhite as their new head coach could put the kibosh on Baylor’s attempts to squeeze our way in, but there’s no way to know right now.

Baylor continued its in-state recruiting by renewing (basically just confirming) the offer of the prior staff to DT Joshua Rogers from Houston. Rogers is not currently committed anywhere, but the Crystal Ball is 100% Oklahoma at this time.

Finally, Baylor continued its string of offers in the state of Florida with CB Marco Wilson, a 4* commit to the University of Florida. He hasn’t personally tweeted about it, but he did retweet one of the announcements about the offer:

In offer-related news, a potential Baylor recruit previously committed to USC opened things back up again today. James Lynch is a 3* DT from Round Rock that Crystal Ball projects to pick TCU now that things are open again, but that, immediately after his decommitment, followed our new head coach, our Director of Player Personnel, and our incoming Director of Recruiting (Barthel), and Amy Pagitt on Twitter. Rhule has since reciprocated with a follow of his own.

It’s still somewhat early in the evening and time is of the essence at this point, so we may see more offers/renewals of prior offers go out tonight. If so, I’ll update the thread with new information as it becomes available!