The rise and fall of Syracuse's Northeast recruiting base | Page 2 | Syracusefan.com

The rise and fall of Syracuse's Northeast recruiting base

ya know though, this staff hasn't been a total bust in NY and has gotten some kids. The last class saw them go into the city and get LB Malik Matthews and DT Elijah Fuentes who's going to be a good one. Plus Trill and the LI kid Cruz this year. I think if they can be targeted without wasting huge amounts of time and resources that's a sound strategy.
 
Newhouser said:
Dominating recruiting of NY football is not going to keep us relevant in the current college football landscape.
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Needed to be said and I am a native New Yorker. So true. Thank you.
 
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djorange1989 said:
great and detailed post, if you recruit NY hard you can find some solid kids, but not many, and we just are not going to get the once in a while 4 star/5 star kid that Ohio State/Penn State/Notre Dame are going to come after. We need to continue to focus hard on Florida, as well as Jersey, PA, MD, VA, OH, MI.
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Exactly. You pick from the tree that produces the best fruit.
 
djorange1989 said:
great and detailed post, if you recruit NY hard you can find some solid kids, but not many, and we just are not going to get the once in a while 4 star/5 star kid that Ohio State/Penn State/Notre Dame are going to come after. We need to continue to focus hard on Florida, as well as Jersey, PA, MD, VA, OH, MI.
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I agree in general, but what that means is we go where other programs are established, compete for prospects with any number of programs coming in, and essentially land one or two per area. Try Montreal and Toronto and even Germany. Lots of work, no "pipelines" or consistent success.

There is no silver bullet. We also need transfers (Shrader, Bleich, Simmons, Adams, all contributing) and an occasional juco or 2 to fill a gap (Tisdale, though he is not a star). If there was some clear solution, our various staffs would have done better over the past 2 decades.
 
PhatOrange said:
ya know though, this staff hasn't been a total bust in NY and has gotten some kids. The last class saw them go into the city and get LB Malik Matthews and DT Elijah Fuentes who's going to be a good one. Plus Trill and the LI kid Cruz this year. I think if they can be targeted without wasting huge amounts of time and resources that's a sound strategy.
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I agree. I think Baber's strategy for NY recruiting is the right one and I think they've gotten good value of out the NY recruits they have brought in for the most part. You can relationship build without using a scholarship on a borderline D1 recruit.

2016 - None
2017 - Cam Jordan, Eric Coley
2018 - Trill Williams, Qadir White, Gabe Horan
2019 - None
2020 - Steven Mahar
2021 - Malik Matthews, Elijah Fuentes
2022 - Joe Cruz

Jordan and White were non-contributors for the most part, and Horan looked like he'd be a consistent 2 deep player until he got DQ'ed unfortunately. Coley, Trill, Mahar are all contributors or better, Fuentes looks legit. So pretty good value there for # of recruits.
 
IthacaBarrel said:
The problem with GROB's recruiting was there was no strength in numbers. He recruited a handful of really good kids and then a bunch of Colgate kids. One of the reasons Marrone had to chase about 20 kids off
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It's a valid point. The top 30% of his rosters were really solid, star/contributor guys who would have been on our rosters in any era. The bottom 70% was Meh. And he had some position groups that were weak top to bottom.
 
SoBristol said:
I agree in general, but what that means is we go where other programs are established, compete for prospects with any number of programs coming in, and essentially land one or two per area. Try Montreal and Toronto and even Germany. Lots of work, no "pipelines" or consistent success.

There is no silver bullet. We also need transfers (Shrader, Bleich, Simmons, Adams, all contributing) and an occasional juco or 2 to fill a gap (Tisdale, though he is not a star). If there was some clear solution, our various staffs would have done better over the past 2 decades.
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There isn't a clear solution, but there can be a clear strategy. GRob was all over the place as far as target areas, relationship building, etc. Marrone's staff was VERY targeted, imo to their own detriment in recruiting. Shafer tried to utilize the existing relationships of his staff as opposed to heavy focus on our traditional recruiting areas (Chicago/Midwest for example). I think Babers has focused both on staff strengths (Hawaii for example, So Cal/SW with White/Schmidt) and traditional recruiting areas, along with blending in our ACC footprint as well.

I think Baber's staff strategy is the right one and imo they find a lot of undervalued talent with it. But similar to GRob, there have been a few position groups they've historically struggled with at the HS level and it looks like now the answer to that is the Portal (OL, QB). Those position groups are chicken or egg, and generally I think they're the two that tend to look most at past production of successful players in order to land blue chip prospects out of HS at those positions. There's a reason why, for the most part, the blue chip OL every year go to the same 6-8 programs.
 
syracuse needs to build and franchise the US/CANADA pipeline. both in hoops and football.
 
Newhouser said:
Dominating recruiting of NY football is not going to keep us relevant in the current college football landscape.
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The simple fact is that NY HS football is not close to what it was even in the 1990s, much less back in the 1960s. Long Island native Don McCauley was recruited by most schools as a DB rather than as RB. NY state produced several RBs more heavily recruited than McCauley. He went to UNC and broke OJ Simpson's season rushing record and then had a sound NFL career.

And the decline has been region wide. PA used to produce more talent than MD, VA, and NC. When Maryland had many top teams from the 1940s through the 1960s, PA players were all over the rosters, and NJ and NY players were common.

That decline means that even if a team located in the northeast were to dominate all of northeastern recruiting, it could not amass enough talent to be in the hunt to make the playoffs. However, if you cannot recruit your own region well, you are handicapped going into any other region. That means that Syracuse need a coach who knows the importance of recruiting the northeast and builds a staff to do that well.

And ACC membership means that kids from Chicago over to Baltimore and down to Miami will see Syracuse as being in a league that is near them. So the right staff at Syracuse will be able to assemble enough talent to, first, make bowls a regular feature and then to aim higher.

Would Marrone come home? Or is he the type who either wants more NFL or a 'top' college program?
 
WoadBlue said:
The simple fact is that NY HS football is not close to what it was even in the 1990s, much less back in the 1960s. Long Island native Don McCauley was recruited by most schools as a DB rather than as RB. NY state produced several RBs more heavily recruited than McCauley. He went to UNC and broke OJ Simpson's season rushing record and then had a sound NFL career.

And the decline has been region wide. PA used to produce more talent than MD, VA, and NC. When Maryland had many top teams from the 1940s through the 1960s, PA players were all over the rosters, and NJ and NY players were common.

That decline means that even if a team located in the northeast were to dominate all of northeastern recruiting, it could not amass enough talent to be in the hunt to make the playoffs. However, if you cannot recruit your own region well, you are handicapped going into any other region. That means that Syracuse need a coach who knows the importance of recruiting the northeast and builds a staff to do that well.

And ACC membership means that kids from Chicago over to Baltimore and down to Miami will see Syracuse as being in a league that is near them. So the right staff at Syracuse will be able to assemble enough talent to, first, make bowls a regular feature and then to aim higher.

Would Marrone come home? Or is he the type who either wants more NFL or a 'top' college program?
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Neither Duke nor Wake dominate recruiting in NC, yet there is Wake undefeated in the ACC...so far this year. Times have changed for recruiting. Recruiting has become international. It is no longer about a geographic region. Just recruit the best available players, wherever they come from.
 
WoadBlue said:
That decline means that even if a team located in the northeast were to dominate all of northeastern recruiting, it could not amass enough talent to be in the hunt to make the playoffs. However, if you cannot recruit your own region well, you are handicapped going into any other region. That means that Syracuse need a coach who knows the importance of recruiting the northeast and builds a staff to do that well.

And ACC membership means that kids from Chicago over to Baltimore and down to Miami will see Syracuse as being in a league that is near them. So the right staff at Syracuse will be able to assemble enough talent to, first, make bowls a regular feature and then to aim higher.

Would Marrone come home? Or is he the type who either wants more NFL or a 'top' college program?
Expand...

Unfortunately the NY/NE area isn't on par with the Carolinas as far as a recruiting backyard, we can't make it a prioritized focus. It has to be situational simply because there are far too many factory programs that try to cherry pick the top talent. ND, Ohio State, Michigan, Clemson and the SEC Schools are notorious for that. Marrone's staff was built to recruit NYS and NE and really struggled in producing output to sustain the program vs the effort they were putting in to build up a recruiting base in NYS/NE. At any given time we had 15-20 NY kids on the roster and maybe half were contributors.

We need to focus our effort situationally in NY/NE, and put much heavier focus in PA/NJ and the Mid Atlantic. I'm sure in Virginia alone there is better talent on an annual basis than in NY/NE combined. And that's not counting PA, NJ, MD, DC, and then the Carolinas/GA/FL which the ACC footprint has only helped us to develop, even though Syracuse had a pretty good presences in FL going back to the Big East days. That's where the athletes are, that's where we need to recruit.
 
tep624 said:
There isn't a clear solution, but there can be a clear strategy. GRob was all over the place as far as target areas, relationship building, etc. Marrone's staff was VERY targeted, imo to their own detriment in recruiting. Shafer tried to utilize the existing relationships of his staff as opposed to heavy focus on our traditional recruiting areas (Chicago/Midwest for example). I think Babers has focused both on staff strengths (Hawaii for example, So Cal/SW with White/Schmidt) and traditional recruiting areas, along with blending in our ACC footprint as well.

I think Baber's staff strategy is the right one and imo they find a lot of undervalued talent with it. But similar to GRob, there have been a few position groups they've historically struggled with at the HS level and it looks like now the answer to that is the Portal (OL, QB). Those position groups are chicken or egg, and generally I think they're the two that tend to look most at past production of successful players in order to land blue chip prospects out of HS at those positions. There's a reason why, for the most part, the blue chip OL every year go to the same 6-8 programs.
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I am not sure there is a clear strategy, or has been, as much as an effort to throw a wide net, use contacts (such as Monroe has built or reaching to Hawaii where Dino knows people). GROB came here from the West, with little or no connections to eastern recruiting.

Marrone’s strategy for his rebuild was to supplement normal recruiting with juco connections that Anselmo had downstate and Adkins had with far west jucos. It worked to an extent. Dino’s original staff had connections in the mid-west (Ohio to Wisconsin). And then you have the one-offs, such as chasing Dungey in Oregon. And each year, it seems to be a different combination — throwing a wide net and trying to generate a visit. We tend to make many more offers than others in the ACC because we need to. Hard work — maybe not a strategy.
 
tep624 said:
It's a valid point. The top 30% of his rosters were really solid, star/contributor guys who would have been on our rosters in any era. The bottom 70% was Meh. And he had some position groups that were weak top to bottom.
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Yeah and he was also such a horrible coach with bad staff it did not matter but honestly he wasn't bad a as recruiter. He was just god god awful everywhere else. Coach Mac was very fortunate to find a great staff, it's staggering really when you think about finding P&D, O'Leary, Fears, etc for his staff.
 
SoBristol said:
I am not sure there is a clear strategy, or has been, as much as an effort to throw a wide net, use contacts (such as Monroe has built or reaching to Hawaii where Dino knows people). GROB came here from the West, with little or no connections to eastern recruiting.

Marrone’s strategy for his rebuild was to supplement normal recruiting with juco connections that Anselmo had downstate and Adkins had with far west jucos. It worked to an extent. Dino’s original staff had connections in the mid-west (Ohio to Wisconsin). And then you have the one-offs, such as chasing Dungey in Oregon. And each year, it seems to be a different combination — throwing a wide net and trying to generate a visit. We tend to make many more offers than others in the ACC because we need to. Hard work — maybe not a strategy.
Expand...


Marrone had by far the best plan with what would be successful at Syracuse. It's not even close, IMO. he had a staff that could develop talent. He understood that it's a developmental program The recruiting at Syracuse is only going to go so far and never overwhelm from a star rating perspective. He made some tweaks but he had a plan and implemented it

The guys on D. Shafer, Henderson etc were all good COACHES. I thought Henderson was great. Marrone with Adkins did a nice job developing a tough gritty O line. He had some good assistants and Hackett was really coming into his own. Rob Moore, hated recruiting but a good coach. I think the wide receiver in 2012 were the smartest best coached receivers we had in a long time. I think Hackett would be a very good college coach at this point, not saying a great fit for SU but he's got the resume/ cache at this point to be HC somewhere if he wanted to go that route. The hiring of Anselmo was solid too
 
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orangencpolice said:
Jay Bromley is a great example of this. A NYC kid that I don’t believe had any other D1 offers other than Syracuse. He was a great player and got much better with coaching throughout his college career. I believe HCDB also excels at developing players (Mang), but also needs to do better recruiting in general. If Schiano can get four star players there is no excuse why Babers can get some as well.
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Jay bromley was a complete diamond in the rough. Trying to build a team around guys nobody has identified might take more $ and resources then recruiting any other way. Nobody knew Bromley existed until he crushed everyone in the downstate game. Again, trying to find players like that and building a team around them would be impossible.

I also don’t know that Babers excels at developing players. I think that’s been one of the knocks on him since he’s been here. Our offense has largely been pretty poor, which is his expertise. We’ve recruited how many WR’s in 6 years and I would argue the % of WR commits to payoff has been pretty low overall.
 
dollarbill44 said:
Is your description of CNY athletic facilities based on current knowledge or just a guess? Because in my experience, albeit limited in CNY, but more than a couple of schools, most public schools have decent fitness facilities. Even the small high schools in Vermont have decent weight rooms and pretty nice gyms.
The fall of football in the NE is not because of lack of athletic facilities.
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Correct. The facilities most NY schools are fairly decent. I work in one of the poorest rural districts in the state, without football but we have decent facilities. It’s not like these schools have facilities resembling a high security prison in Alabama
 
IthacaBarrel said:
Marrone had by far the best plan with what would be successful at Syracuse. It's not even close, IMO. he had a staff that could develop talent. He understood that it's a developmental program The recruiting at Syracuse is only going to go so far and never overwhelm from a star rating perspective

The guys on D Shafer, Henderson etc were all good COACHES. I thought Henderson was great. Marrone with Adkins did a nice job developing a tough gritty O line. He had some good assistants and Hackett was really coming into his own. Rob Moore, hated recruiting but a good coach. I think Hackett would be a very good college coach at this point, not saying a great fit for SU but he's got the resume/ cache at this point to be HC somewhere if he wanted to go that route. The hiring of Anselmo was solid too
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The D players he brought in were pretty good. He also did a good job with RBs, OL, and look at the TEs. The problem was a complete lack of QBs and WRs. Part of that was being in the New Big East and old facilities. But part of that IMO was also what he was looking for.

The pro style QB isn't the way to go here. He did bring in Hunt but I don't think we see Hunt at QB under Marrone. WRs with NFL measurables aren't coming here. He turned down some college sized WRs because of that. On D he was willing to bring in smaller guys whose ceiling was All Big East. On O he wasn't.

Would be interesting to see if he would change his recruiting at all if he came back.
 
Kids in the Northeast aren't as developed as football players in many other parts of the country because football and conditioning are not year round. That said, in many parts of the Northeast, develop is getting better, especially with all of the 7on7s going on. If you are going to recruit Northeast players, you have to redshirt and develop them and be a development program. Marrone understood this, but I don't think Babers does.

It seems like Syracuse has lost it's way in many of the traditional recruiting areas: New York, New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. In 2010 and 2011, Marrone pulled in 19 and 16 players from the traditional recruiting area. Babers in 2020 and 2021 pulled in 7 and 6. In 2020, there were ~149 FBS players from the traditional recruiting area and ~140 FBS players in 2021.

Look at QBs that have come out of Connecticut over the past few years that are FBS starters or contributors: Drew Pyne at Notre Dame, Will Levis at Kentucky, Tyler Van Dyke at Miami, Taisun Phommachanh at Clemson, Tyler Phommachanh at UConn. And Syracuse had David Summers which didn't work out.

In my opinion, the recipe for success for Syracuse football is to recruit a bunch of developmental players from the Northeast and add in players from the mid-Atlantic, Georgia, and Florida, especially for speed. And, use to the portal to fill some holes that develop.
 
We don’t recruit well in the Rochester and Western NY areas, and have not for years. Pitt on the other hand punches above its weight there.
 
pasqualone owned connecticut. konrad , the macintoshes . i know ND was hard after one.
 
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Goin' Deep said:
If the MAJORITY of players wanted to stay in the NE or go to SYracuse, we might have a chance at owning the NE. Given that the regional talent is 3 to 4 hours away, Gross's lack of commitment to the football program, there was/is little attraction to come to CNY and play at Syracuse. Look at the "legacy recruits" that don't even consider CUSE.
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There’s also a ton of schools period in the Northeast. It’s probably hard to decide which to visit/scout.

Im not saying Florida has no schools just that it’s likely somewhat obvious where to go and who to see.
 
FRANKIEFAN said:
There’s also a ton of schools period in the Northeast. It’s probably hard to decide which to visit/scout.

Im not saying Florida has no schools just that it’s likely somewhat obvious where to go and who to see.
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Heck we know them by name on this board
 
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