We have arrived at the last 2023 commit that never got a Hello, and coincidentally, it was the first kid to commit to the class. He's also a kicker! And a local kid! That would be 2023 Huron HS (Ann Arbor) kicker Adam Samaha. The specialist Hello posts are always a little funky, and light on scouting, but we will do our best: 

GURU RATINGS 

Different sites because specialists are a different category of scouting. For the record, the 24/7 composite has Samaha listed as the #1 kicker in the 2023 class, but they are the only site of the usual ones we call upon to offer a rating. As a result, we turn to these two sites, with the links to them provided in the table [NOTE: Sailer, another specialist site, doesn't have a ranking for Samaha]. So..... this is odd. One site has Samaha as the #1 kicker, and the other one has him #25?

One source of the possible divide here is that the Kohl's player descriptions do not seem to be updated recently, with Samaha's description concluding: "his kick- offs are outstanding and the summer of 2021 will be big for Samaha!" The summer of 2021 was a long time ago. Seriously, we all wanted Jim Harbaugh fired back then. The Kornblue rankings appear updated, but the writeup was posted in August of 2020, so we're still not necessarily dealing with the newest of information here. 

I guess the way to summarize this section is that Samaha is highly regarded, but the rankings are not terribly recent nor coherent, and there's not much information out there. Would it be inaccurate to call him the top kicking prospect in the 2023 class? No, not really. Would I say that with certainty? No. But it's definitely more fun to say it like we're certain. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: HE'S THE #1 KICKER IN AMERICA]

SCOUTING  

Sooooooooooo, there's very little out here. Samaha appears to have blown up back in the summer of 2020 on Kornblue when he visited the FAB 50 camp on August 2, 2020. After wowing the crowd, he became the youngest kicker in the site's history of running camps (10+ years) to earn a 5* rating, being just 15 at the time. That's a pretty good sign! The video from that camp is linked later on in this piece. 

Otherwise he's been very stellar at Huron HS, which is not a talent hotbed and also the big sites don't bother giving scouting reports on kickers. And among the three sites we typically use for specialists, Sailer has never heard of him, and of the two we put in the table in the guru section, only Kohl's gives us any kind of scouting. That would be that report I quoted earlier about the summer of 2021. Here it is in full: 

Samaha recently attended a Kohl's Spring 2021 Showcase. At the 2020 Kohl's National Scholarship Camp he had a dominant performance. He was excellent on his field goals and ended up charting one of the best sessions out of all campers at the event. He scored 29 points and was smooth and focused under pressure. Samaha does need to continue to develop on field goals off the ground. His kick-offs are outstanding and the summer of 2021 will be big for Samaha! 

Ok then. Needing to improve on field goals seems like a pretty big thing when you're a KICKER, but it bears repeating that that report is outdated by at least ~9 months. Outside of that report, I got nothin'. The top result on Google when you plug in "Adam Samaha" is a law professor of the same name at the NYU School of Law. The commitment posts at the newspapers for Samaha were no different than the commitment post at our site, just a stub quoting his height, the Kornblue ranking (absent scouting), and then maybe stats if you're lucky. That's it. 

So this is all I've got for you, but scouting for kicking isn't super detailed anyway. They either make it or they don't. We'll look at that briefly in the stats section. 

OFFERS 

Interestingly, 247 lists Michigan as the only team to have offered Samaha. They offered in August and he committed in November, just before The Game. I'd assume that it was a "he's from Ann Arbor, his father is a Michigan grad, and Michigan values special teams highly, so we all know he's going to Michigan" thing because it's rather peculiar that a well-regarded kicker would have just one offer. 

HIGH SCHOOL 

Attends Huron HS in Ann Arbor. He would be the first River Rat to sign with Michigan since 2010, when WR Jeremy Jackson inked a scholarship with the Wolverines. Huron is not a power program statewide being from Ann Arbor, but they were still one of the best teams in Washtenaw County in 2021, finishing 2nd in division at 6-1 (8-2 overall), with the lone loss coming to first place Saline. That said, this is a kicking prospect, so HS competition is basically irrelevant as long as the goalposts are the same size and the field measures yards correctly. 

STATS 

Couldn't find primary source documents from Huron on their statistics for the season, but we've got some from a pay-walled 247 article: as a junior, Samaha went 34/34 on XPs, 7/9 on FGs (long 42, both misses from 53+), 50/56 on kickoffs going for touchbacks. 

FAKE 40 TIME 

Is a kicker, so 40 times are also irrelevant. None listed on his Hudl page or 247 so I will assume no one has timed him because there is no reason to. He is supposed to kick, not run. 

VIDEO 

Here's the closest thing Samaha has to a junior year reel. He calls it "Pioneer High School" but there are clips from multiple games here: 

And here he is at that kicking camp where he blew up: 

ETC 

As you may have noticed, he's a lefty kicker. Also plays basketball, something I learned about in humiliating fashion and then tweeted about. His father, Waleed, is the coach. Profile. 

PREDICTION BASED ON FLIMSY EVIDENCE 

Idk man. He's a kicker. He'll show up in fall 2023 and then he'll either kick the balls through the uprights or he won't. Michigan got the best kicking prospect in the 2016 class in Nordin and then he was very up-and-down during a frustrating career. Meanwhile, the non-scholarship local kid is the national kicker of the year. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Jake Moody is returning for the 2022 season, which is big, and then you have to think it's an open competition in the summer of '23 between two-way guy Tommy Doman Jr. (who is probably penciled in as the punter by then) and Samaha. Maybe Samaha wins it right away, maybe he doesn't. Good to recruit touted kickers even if you can't count on them reliably. 

UPSHOT FOR THE REST OF THE CLASS 

Michigan didn't take any specialists in the 2022 class after taking Doman in the 2021 class. I don't see any reason why they'd need to take a scholarship punter in this class, and I certainly can't imagine you take a second kicker. So this is probably it for specialists in the class. In which case, it seems like Samaha is a good take, even if we don't have much scouting and kickers are very unpredictable.