Keith Heitzman Offered - UPDATE

Submitted by BKFinest on

Good to see y'all again. 3 star DE/TE from right outside Columbus.

**He's deciding tomorrow**

From Allen Trieu: Keith Heitzman from Hilliard-Davidson, a Vanderbilt commitment. I saw it posted elsewhere that he was committed. That is not the case yet according to my sources. He has been offered though and is interested. He could play tight end or a defensive end. I tend to think with the new offense, getting a TE commit is important so my guess would be there.

Kal

January 21st, 2011 at 5:45 PM ^

Is this more of a "has the size, but not the ability" kind of of pickup? I don't mind picking up physically sound kids without technique for the DL, because Hoke and Mattison should be able to coach them up pretty well.

Kal

January 21st, 2011 at 6:03 PM ^

He always seems to know where the QB is relative to him, based on that reel he played the pass twice a couple times and got his hands up for some good deflections. Not sure of the quality of his competition though, so hopefully someone who knows more about HS football divisions in Columbus can elaborate.

dennisblundon

January 21st, 2011 at 5:50 PM ^

After seeing a little film, this kid uses his hands quite well and has a pretty nice spin move to go with it. He looks pretty polished for a high school kid.

Edit.       Bk you better hope TomVH confirms or it's off with your head.

Phoenix

January 21st, 2011 at 6:23 PM ^

ESPN article talking about Westerman flipping from Texas to Auburn has quotes from the man himself:

After the season, my position coach left the program and then [six] other coaches left. It just all changed. There was no more relationship to hang my hat on, and my position coach is [who] I will spend about 90 percent of my time [with]. It was just too little too late. Auburn had it all and I was very close to my position coach there over the last 8-10 months.

As has been reiterated around these parts, the late coaching change has hurt Hoke's chances of landing elite talent this year. That being said, I think so far he's doing well in getting good players interested, and some good players are going to sign with us this year. But let's not (completely) freak out this Feb 2nd if we aren't where we all want to be with recruiting, mmmmkay? Let's wait until 2012 to get a good assessment of were Hoke is with recruiting. (Unless, of course, he exceeds expectations in which case party hard and forget sanity.)

/preemptive plea for Feb 2nd sanity

EDIT: This is not saying Keith Heitzman is not an elite player. I don't know anything about him, and for all I know he will be the next Vernon Davis/Dallas Clark/Dwight Freeney/whoever depending on what position he will play, and is not a comment about any of our other current commits. Just a comment in general highlighting what we all know - that late coaching change = difficult to estabish ties to new coaching staff in such a short amount of time.

randyfloyd

January 21st, 2011 at 10:48 PM ^

For what it's worth, i'm not certain.  His parents are indicating that there is a "decision" coming Saturday.  By "decision", I think that means either a switch to UM, or a solid commit for Vandy. 

Also, Hilliard Davidson (the H.S. this kid is from) is a major power here in central ohio.  They won the division 1 (Big School) state championship two or three years ago, and always seem to go far in the playoffs.  It would probably be a good school to get a commit from...

Russ48239

January 22nd, 2011 at 4:46 PM ^

Chill out on the 3 star criticism guys, we aren't going to get a great class given the timing of our coaching hire. Gotta fill it out with depth at positions of need. Hope for 3-4 4 stars and take our pick of the 3 stars that are left.

Hopefully Heitzman is a blocking TE, I don't think he's what we need at DE really, though I'd live if that were the case. We don't have any blocking TEs really and they are needed in Hoke's offense. Miller is moving to TE most likely and should be a stud, but he's more Antonio Gates type than anything else.