commitments come in pairs

Ah, the good ol' days. Remember those days? Don Brown would roam around the Northeast, punking Notre Dame for underrated DE/DT tweeners who play against law firms on the sets of Harry Potter movies, but only after Brian Dohn and wonderful Irish reporters like Tim Prister and Kevin Sinclair left us with our fill of detailed and accurate scouting?

Those days are gone. Behind the colonial architecture and hillocks, the Smith Twins are military kids from Kentucky who've lived in Japan, and "go home" to Carolina where their Marine dad is now stationed. They also just switched from one elite boarding school in Connecticut to another. But the Notre Dame interest was real, and went on a very long time, so we've got plenty of that good Prister and Sinclair scouting. And they both think this twin's an Anchor.

GURU RATINGS

Smith and his (fraternal) twin Jacob were early national recruits who traveled to camps all over the country. When the 2024 class debuted a year ago they were rewarded with top-100 rankings. Jerod was a 90 and #55 overall to 247, his brother #72. Those early ranks are always expected to fall as the class reveals itself, and lo Jerod fell to #143 last July, and to #184 at the end of the summer. Around then Jacob started to slid ever so much over his brother, but 247 gave Jerod a bump back to #145 after the junior tape came in. That's since slipped down to what you see above in the last re-rank. Jacob is nearby at #212.

It was a similar adventure on Rivals. Adam Friedman named DL as the strongest position of the 2024 crop, and named Jerod among eight guys who could be a 5-star when the class shakes out, but he was at #210 when they debuted the class, hung around the 220s, and fell out of the top-250 in March. There's nothing written on either from a scouting perspective yet from On3 or ESPN, whose ranking dates back to an Alabama-Georgia swing last summer.

Michigan didn't offer the twins until early January of this year, by which point they had already taken over 20 visits, including three to Alabama and two to Notre Dame, who was expecting to wrap up those recruitments any day.

[AFTER THE JUMP: Prister and Sinclair go to work]

We are still playing catch-up, and hopefully I’ll have time to get through them all this week and put out a general recruiting update. Next up in the order they committed, 3* AL linebacker Tim “Deuce” Spurlock Jr. A name that Courtney Morgan suggested when he came onboard, Spurlock was invited to Michigan’s camp in June, hit it off with LBs coach George Helow, earned an offer, and seemed on the verge of committing in July before Michigan apparently told him to hold off while they pursued some A-1 targets, all but one of whom have since come off the board.

That plus an extraordinary start to his senior season—Spurlock had 21 tackles, 6 TFLs and 3 sacks in one game this season—seems to have been what shifted him into the take category. He came up for the Rutgers game, committed before kickoff, and announced that Sunday.

GURU RATINGS

I should note that 247 is in the middle of a composite update so Spurlock might be in the 1,000s by the time the time you read this. He was at 994 when I started and 999 at 4:06 PM yesterday when I put this article in the hopper.

Bottom row is a conversion of the above to a 5-star scale. Arrows show trend of recruiting rankings. An arrow is like a third of a star.

The only movement in the rankings came when ESPN added Spurlock to their database recently. They’re also the most bullish—the other two sites have him ranked down where the 2-stars used to roam before their kind were decimated by FBS over-settlement. The extra 20 pounds reported by Rivals seems significant if we consider the program pays a lot of attention to size. My program source says Spurlock was 215 when they had him up here to camp last summer, and the school roster (via MaxPreps) reads 217. If his senior season continues as it has there’s a lot of room to move up.

The Michigan recruiting comp here is exacting, if ancient (sorry coach, but we are). Roy Manning was listed at 6’2”/210 out of high school, and made the bottom of some regional lists as a “futuristic” SAM linebacker who could cover in space or blitz an edge. The more recent example is Devin Gil, who was ranked around the same spot but was also smaller and not as athletic. Michael Barrett and Dhani Jones are in range as well.

[Hit THE JUMP for scouting, video, and the rest.]

Replacing Don Brown and the Jersey Boys with Lloyd Carr’s former players was supposed to mean a break from Northeast football, fields with fewer seats than your wedding, schools with law firm names, and impressive workout tapes. Lorenzetti is from the wilderness, sure, but one with closer ties to that Carr-era tradition of recruiting Quebecois who drop French dad jokes in their interviews. This one happens to have moved to one of those law firm schools in Connecticut, and is a 3-star offensive lineman, so back to the huge person who pumps iron in front of a camera phone then sits on the children of ESPN employees salt mines we go.

GURU RATINGS

I’m experimenting with adding the listed sizes in the column headers so we don’t have to talk about them every time. I also added arrows to the ratings to show the general trend.

Lorenzetti’s ranking on ESPN is brand new—he was a non-distinct 3-star a few weeks ago and his page didn’t exist in May. 24/7 moved him up a point from an 85 this month. I don’t have a record of Rivals but I believe the “5.6” rating is new based on the fact that he’s not in their official Connecticut rankings yet even though the #3 guy has a 5.5. Clearly, Lorenzetti is prospect in the process of emerging from total obscurity.

He was also, like Mike Hart, a guy on his way to settling for Michigan State before Michigan intercepted. Lorenzetti was in East Lansing for his official on June 11, but stopped by Michigan on his way home. His workout for the Wolverines on June 14 earned an offer, and his schedule was rearranged so he could be back in Ann Arbor for Victors Weekend.

"The one thing that really stood out to me and the reason I wanted to go back and visit instead of going to Virginia Tech was coach Moore. He's just a really nice guy. I think I can do very well with him."

Plans to visit Duke and Vandy, and to work out for Ohio State and Penn State, were canceled in the aftermath. He also called everyone “nice” which is like hearing someone from my generation use the word “swell.”

[Hit THE JUMP for scouting, video, and the rest.]