Cincinnati Bearcats Losing Football Commitments But There Is No Reason To Worry

In the wake of Butch Jones bolting Cincinnati for Knoxville in mid-December there has been a mass exodus of sorts with his verbal commitments to the Bearcats. This isn’t at all uncommon nowadays. For recruits they are generally more committed to the coach rather than the program, as the coach represents the reason why they want to play under the banner of the school. This happened under Brian Kelly when Luke Massa followed him to Notre Dame and the same is happening now as A.J. Branisel and Dylan Wiesman have followed Jones to Knoxville.

And even if they didn’t necessarily join Butch Jones at his new school, a number of prospects who were committed to UC on December 6th have wavered on their verbal pledge since the morning of the following day when his departure was announced. Most have outright decommitted from UC for one reason or another. Regardless, for all intents and purposes, it’s safe to assume they won’t be signing their letter of intent with Cincinnati on February 6th and right now the 2013 class has been annihilated by the recent coaching change.

Below is the full list of verbals who have dropped their commitments to UC since Jones’ departure as of the writing of this post:

• Kyle Kempt
• A.J. Branisel
• Dylan Wiesman
• Aregeros Turner
• Nik D’Avanzo
• Dakota Cox
• Isaiah Gourdine
• Marcus Levy
• Robert Davis
• Demetrius Monday
• Jaleel Canty
• Mykel Traylor-Bennett
• Anthony Green

As they watch their class get butchered from the fallout of their head coach leaving, some Bearcats fans have begun to worry about the stability of the roster with so many prospects leaving. And by the size of the list above, rightfully so. After all, they witnessed a 2010 team that was mired with depth issues limp to a 4 – 8 finish a season after Brian Kelly left and a good number of recruits from the 2010 class decommitted due to his departure.

But there’s no reason to panic, friends!

First of all, it’s rather incredible just how many starters on the Bearcats’ current team will be back in 2013. Next year’s Cincinnati team returns their starting quarterback, their entire offensive line, a good number of their receivers, most of the interior of their defensive line, all but one of their linebackers, and most of their secondary. That’s a vastly different situation than in 2010 when Cincinnati was replacing their starting quarterback, center, left tackle, half of the defensive line and linebacker corps, and their most dangerous wide receiver.

In addition, the depth issues that haunted the 2010 Bearcats squad should be nonexistent in 2013. In 2010, there were basically no warm bodies to relieve the starting linebackers and defensive tackles J.K. Schaffer, Maalik Bomar, Derek Wolfe, and John Hughes. As a result UC’s defense was manhandled game-in and game-out, giving up a slurry of points each outing, and these starting four were shadows of themselves by the end of the 2010 campaign after getting beaten up all year long.

In 2013, those two positions will be stocked with players across the two deep. The linebacker corps in particular boasts 5 players (Greg Blair, Jeff Luc, Nick Temple, Solomon Tentman, Clemente Casseus) who will assume starting or backup roles and have quite a bit of on-field experience. The secondary is the same way. Strong safety Drew Frey and both nickelbacks Chris Williams and Aaron Roberson will be gone but otherwise most of the starters and backups will remain intact. Ditto for much of the offense. Most of the runningbacks on the roster return as well as the wide receivers and offensive linemen.

Overall, depth won’t be an issue in 2013 primarily because the 2012 team was so young. 65 players were either freshman or sophomores on last year’s team and all of them will be back next year. Most importantly much of the two deep was filled with juniors, sophomores, and freshman who will again fill their roles as either starters or backups. That continuity is instrumental in maintaining Cincinnati’s success in 2013.

But what does this have to do with the upcoming recruiting class?

Well since the Cincinnati Bearcats top-to-bottom were very young in 2012 and much of the depth chart in 2013 will be made up of these players already on the roster, losing prospects in the 2013 class really won’t affect next year’s team very much, if at all. UC should easily be able to weather the storm of a coaching change from a recruiting standpoint more next year than ever before.

Furthermore, the players Tommy Tuberville is bringing in should alleviate the few issues on the roster as we approach the 2013 season. For example, losing Walter Stewart, Dan Giordano, and Brandon Mills on the edge of the defensive line will definitely be a blow to this team. Tuberville saw this and signed two JUCO defensive ends. Problem solved.

Finally, while the 2013 recruiting class is only about a dozen prospects strong right now there is still quite a bit of time to fill out the class. It doesn’t seem that way since national signing day is a little under a month away and the class will need to double in size to meet Tuberville’s specifications but trust me, we will see more commitments over the coming weeks. After all, under the time constraints of putting together his first recruiting class at UC, Butch Jones garnered commitments from half of his 2010 signees in the final three weeks leading up to the national signing day.

So my advice for Bearcat fans is to stay patient. Tommy Tuberville has not only been around the block more than a few times but he’s assembled an outstanding coaching staff who specialize in recruiting. Robert Prunty himself was named the Big XII Recruiter of the Year twice in a row during his time at Texas Tech. Cincinnati is in good hands and has the opportunity to boast an excellent class when it’s all said and done.