Your weekly serving of college football roster acquisition thoughts — recruiting, transfer portal, you name it — from 247Sports Director of Scouting Andrew Ivins. We’re back after a two-week hiatus tending to matters of Hurricane Milton and updated Top247 rankings for the class of 2025, which you should check out.
Why walk-on safeties are a college football curiosity
As the college football season has crossed the halfway point and bona fide playoff contenders have emerged, I have been searching for trends that tie together some of the nation’s top teams.
Blue-chip talent, competent quarterback play, and high-end coaching are by far the biggest commonalities when examining the top of the rankings, but this past weekend I couldn’t help but notice that a few national title hopefuls are leaning on former walk-on safeties to help shore up the back end of their defenses.
In Georgia’s win at Texas, it was fifth-year senior Dan Jackson filling the alley with authority for the Bulldogs before he was disqualified in the second half for targeting. He still finished the night with six tackles, while junior Michael Taaffe paced the Longhorns with a team-high nine stops in a losing effort. Over in Knoxville, a last-minute interception from redshirt senior Will Brooks ignited a wave of cigar smoke as Tennessee took down Alabama.
Most would assume that Jackson, Taaffe, and Brooks were highly ranked recruits coming out of high school, given their prime-time contributions, but not a single one of them was ranked by any major recruiting service. They are zero-star recruits who have emerged as unlikely veteran heroes on multimillion-dollar rosters.
My initial thought after watching Jackson, Taaffe, and Brooks shine in Week 8 was that they might be the last of a dying breed, with NCAA scholarship limits set to increase from 85 players to 105 players in the coming years. But after picking the brains of various college personnel departments around the country the past few days, I’m beginning to believe that those three represent what everyone is going to want in the new-look NIL era: bargain-bin gems.
With revenue sharing on its way and schools preparing to manage what essentially will be a full-fledged salary cap, roster construction and management are going to be as important as ever. And while it sounds good in theory to try and grab as many high-profile recruits and transfers as possible every cycle, the books still have to balance out. If coaching staffs can get hard-nosed football players like Jackson, Taaffe, and Brooks at an initial discount, then it’s going to be much easier to make the numbers work.
The question then becomes: How do you find players like Jackson, Taaffe, and Brooks? A deep dive into the trio’s backgrounds reveals pretty much the same thing. All three were productive players at the prep level with high football IQs who never got the big-time scholarship offers, but were wired the right way.
–Jackson accounted for 1,465 yards of offense and 26 total touchdowns as a senior at Gainesville (Ga.) North Hall, adding 76 tackles and two interceptions on defense. A state qualifier in the 110-meter hurdles, he scored four different ways in one of the final games of his high school career.
–Taaffe was named defensive MVP of the Texas 2020 Class 6A Division I title game after he picked off now-teammate Quinn Ewers twice. He did a little bit of everything at Austin Westlake and was credited with eight interceptions across his junior and senior seasons.
–Brooks initially thought he was going to play lacrosse in college. He tested exceptionally well the spring before his senior year at Birmingham (Ala.) Vestavia Hills with a laser-timed 4.19-second effort in the short shuttle and went on to earn second-team all-state honors as a defensive back.
Trying to predict who might be the next Jackson, Taaffe, or Brooks would be an extremely difficult exercise, but as college football moves more and more toward the NFL model, the stories of walk-ons breaking through likely aren’t going away. They might just soon be viewed in the same light as undrafted free agent victories for front offices fostered by sharp evaluations and sound player development.
Oregon’s possibly ironic Dillon Gabriel succession plan
Dillon Gabriel will all but surely drive most of the conversation when Oregon kicks off against Illinois on Saturday (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS), but tucked somewhere inside the shadows of Autzen Stadium might be the next great Hawaiian passer, as the Ducks are set to bring four-star Cal quarterback commit Jaron Keawa Sagapolutele in on an official visit, as first reported by 247Sports’ Brandon Huffman.
One of the biggest risers in our most recent Top247 ranking update, Keawa Sagapolutele has made major strides over the past six months. When my colleague Blair Angulo wrote in the lead-up to this summer’s Elite 11 Finals that Keawa Sagapolutele was the next great lefty to come out of the nation’s 50th state, I’ll be the first to admit that I was a little skeptical. But that’s why we call it an evaluation process. Opinions can change.
As a senior, the big-framed Keawa Sagapolutele has completed 74.1 percent of his passes, throwing for 2,524 yards with 39 touchdowns against just two interceptions at James Campbell High School in Honolulu. He’s got one of the best deep balls in the class, as he can touch all different corners of the field with ease. But more importantly, he has showcased the ability to avoid sacks this year, which he struggled to do at times as a junior.
Oregon already has a four-star quarterback committed this cycle in Akili Smith Jr. and a pair of promising second-year signal callers on the roster in Dante Moore and Austin Novosad, but Dan Lanning appears to be fully invested in building out one of the nation’s top quarterback rooms as he charges toward signing another top-five-ranked recruiting class.
Keawa Sagapolutele also picked up an offer this week from Georgia. The last quarterback out of Hawaii to sign with an SEC power was Tua Tagovailoa when Lane Kiffin was calling plays for Nick Saban. That should give you an idea of how the top of the food chain views Keawa Sagapolutele’s tape.
“We know he can play, but college coaches just have to see him,” Darren Campbell, Keawa Sagapolutele’s high school coach, told CBS Sports in May, back when the offer list was much less prestigious. “He is going to have more offers. We know that will happen because he will turn heads.”
As for the actual game, keep an eye on the potential matchup between Oregon wide receiver Evan Stewart and Illinois cornerback Torrie Cox Jr., if the Illini elect to man up with the Ducks. Stewart gave Ohio State’s secondary fits two weeks ago, but having scouted Cox years ago when he was a three-star recruit committed to Ohio, I think the NFL legacy has the chops to run with the former five-star.
Sunshine State blues extend to talent pipeline
I might be hiding under my desk in Orlando after this publishes, but what is going on in Florida?
Miami is in the hunt to make the College Football Playoff with Heisman Trophy hopeful Cam Ward lighting up scoreboards, but the Sunshine State’s six other FBS programs are a combined 15-28 this season, and it hasn’t exactly been pretty.
It could certainly just be a down year for one of the country’s most talent-rich regions, but there’s also a chance that the state’s high schools won’t produce a first-round pick in the upcoming NFL Draft as Georgia quarterback Carson Beck, a Jacksonville native, continues to slide and was not tabbed in the latest 2025 NFL Mock Draft from my guy Blake Brockermeyer.
Speaking with various college contacts who are familiar with the state, it sounds like two issues might be contributing to the downward spiral.
- The first is Florida’s unlimited high school transfer rule, which went into effect a few years ago and allows players to bounce from school to school and remain eligible.
- The second is a lack of true offseason development across the state.
As one source noted, it’s hard to hold athletes accountable when they have been able to bail without consequence at the first sign of adversity. It’s even harder to establish a winning culture when the weight room isn’t prioritized from a young age like it is in other football-crazed states such as Texas and Georgia. Making matters worse is the fact that Florida high school coaches are underpaid.
Florida, FSU, UCF, USF, FAU, and FIU don’t exclusively roster local players (neither does Miami), but each program invests a ton of time each year recruiting within the state’s borders. Loading up on players who lack a foundational baseline and aren’t afraid to enter the transfer portal when things get tough is proving to be a difficult practice to navigate.
Sneaky-good commit of the week:
TE Marshall Pritchett to Alabama
NFL Draft trends continue to show that tight end is a late-blooming position. Most of the tight ends that everyone streams week to week in their fantasy football lineups didn’t start playing the position until much later in their careers. That’s why we’re bullish on Prichett.
A former quarterback who made the transition to wide receiver before earning some in-line work this fall, Prichett is a new-age F-tight end projection who has what it takes to be more than just a check-down option in the passing game with his ball skills and body control. Before flipping his commitment from North Carolina to Alabama this past weekend, Prichett had caught 35 passes in eight games for Georgia’s Rabun Gap-Nacoochee, which is playing a national schedule.
Freak of the week:
Michigan OT commit Andrew Babalola
It has been a rough few weeks of results for Sherrone Moore, but the first-year head coach at Michigan got the recruit he had to get this cycle as the Wolverines beat out plenty on Tuesday night and secured a pledge from five-star offensive tackle Andrew Babalola, who now ranks as the best commit for the Wolverines in the 2025 cycle.
A basketball-focused athlete throughout his youth, Babalola is a green corner protector with one of the highest ceilings in the entire class. Not only does he have a prototypical frame (over 6-foot-5 with a near 7-foot wingspan), but he’s a rare athlete for someone his size who has started to find a mean streak during his senior campaign at Blue Valley Northwest in Kansas. Babalola is going to need a few semesters to soak up coaching, but he’s the type of specimen who could have NFL scouts drooling one day.
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