'05 MD DB/WR Derrick Williams (Penn State signee)

[MililaniBuckeye]

Originally Posted by sears3820

Well it didn't directly help out matters either did it?

I'm very surprised to see that PSU made the final cut.

I wonder if our passing performance against Michigan will have him thinking about us again...

[bobcat84]

Mil,

I think '86's last link posted indicated he is down to Tenn/TX/Okla/PSU/FL with MD on the outside looking in. Too bad. Guess Corny wasn't much help here. What is the ass't. coach recruiting him? Hazel?

[wdg01]

I dont think we are out of it yet...

[MililaniBuckeye]

Originally Posted by bobcat84

Mil,

I think '86's last link posted indicated he is down to Tenn/TX/Okla/PSU/FL with MD on the outside looking in. Too bad. Guess Corny wasn't much help here. What is the ass't. coach recruiting him? Hazel?

Yeah, but that was on Nov 9th, almost two weeks before The Game. Like I said, maybe our passing performance in that game has him at least considering us now.

[Buckskin86]

Guys

No mention of tOSU in the last few updates. If we're in it, he is hiding it very well. Here is the latest installment of his Washington Post series on Derrick (all the other installments are in this thread) (wasn't going to post it but since the thread is bumped to the top, here goes)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Nov29.html

Despite having highly rated recruit Derrick Williams, shown playing quarterback, the Eleanor Roosevelt football team lost to C.H. Flowers in the Maryland 4A playoffs.

In Formula for a Prospect, Wins, Losses Don't Figure

By Dan Steinberg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 30, 2004; Page D01

Fourth in a series of occasional articles

Several hundred players on eight Maryland football teams will compete for state championships this week at Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium. Eleanor Roosevelt's Derrick Williams, widely regarded as one of the top football recruits in the country, won't be among them.

His high school career ended in a playoff loss to C.H. Flowers two weeks ago, his tear-stained face planted in a muddy field following a last-minute interception, his father's hand tapping lightly on his shoulder pads, every moment recorded by a closing ring of three video cameras.

So Derrick Williams's biggest football priority this week is a trip on Saturday to Magruder High School for a Capital Beltway League game featuring his 11-year-old cousin, Anthony Williams, and the rest of the P.G. Falcons, a team Derrick has helped train.

The nation's last two top-rated high school basketball players -- Dwight Howard last year and LeBron James the year before -- closed their high school careers with state championships, further enhancing their own reputations. High school baseball teams regularly ride one dominant pitcher to state titles -- right-handed phenom Homer Bailey, USA Today's 2004 high school baseball player of the year and a first-round draft pick of the Cincinnati Reds, helped La Grange High win Texas state championships his freshman and senior seasons.

"It's harder with football, it's a hell of a lot harder," said Severna Park Coach J.P. Hines, whose team knocked off Eleanor Roosevelt in the first week of the season. "You have to have talent on both ends, and you have to have some luck, too."

College coaches and recruiting analysts agreed that there are more variables on a football field, more ways for a superstar to wind up his career as Williams did, on the wrong end of a six-point loss, his team done in by three turnovers and several special teams miscues.

Last year's highest-rated football recruit, current Oklahoma freshman running back and Heisman Trophy hopeful Adrian Peterson, also could not carry his high school team past the first round of the postseason. But the wins and losses hardly matter, according to recruiting analysts and college coaches.

"If [Williams] was rated the number one prospect in the country off what he did last year, to me he's still the number one prospect in the country," said one college recruiter who asked not to be identified because of NCAA recruiting rules that prohibit college coaches from talking about high school prospects. "If he had broken his leg and didn't play at all, we'd still take him. His stats have nothing to do with it."

Football recruits, several coaches said, are judged by a different set of statistics: sprint times and weightlifting figures and leaping marks. These numbers are recorded not on torn-up grassy fields in the chaos of fall weekends but at tightly controlled offseason camps, where the 6-foot, 190-pound Williams -- who spent most of his senior season playing quarterback and cornerback -- built a reputation that eventually yielded more than 50 Division I scholarship offers.

"When you talk about recruiting, you're looking at raw numbers on his physical ability matched with what we've seen throughout his high school career, and also what his potential might be," said another recruiter. "He's probably had some of the better numbers anyone's ever had coming out of high school as far as his strength, his speed, his agility and his size, and you can't coach that. . . . I guarantee that every other school in the country that's offered him [a scholarship] feels the same way."

Few high school players would quibble with a senior season like Williams's: He rushed for more than 1,000 yards, passed for more than 800, snared two interceptions and played a part in more than 50 percent of Eleanor Roosevelt's touchdowns. Twice, Williams registered passing, rushing and receiving touchdowns in the same game.

"I think he played phenomenal," said Suitland Coach Nick Lynch, whose team's only loss came when Williams spearheaded a fourth-quarter scoring drive in the teams' regular season finale. "I wish Derrick Williams the best, and I'm just glad he's graduating so I don't have to deal with him any more."

But several Washington area players put up numbers this season that rivaled or surpassed Williams's. Of the 47 area players who have recorded 1,000 yards rushing, 22 averaged more yards per carry than Williams. In 13 games, Northwest senior quarterback Ike Whitaker, who has orally committed to Virginia Tech, has accounted for 37 touchdowns, 13 more than Williams had in 11 games. Williams himself had more touchdowns and more total yards as a junior, when Eleanor Roosevelt advanced to the 4A state semifinals.

On the other hand, Williams played through his first significant leg injury this fall and spent most of the season out of position on offense; he will almost certainly play wide receiver in college. He played his senior season with five new offensive linemen on a team that lost several future college football players from its 2003 roster, including Maryland's Trey Covington, Virginia's Theirrien "Bud" Davis and Florida's Derrick Harvey. The Raiders were 12-1 in 2003, 8-3 this fall.

"It's different every year -- different players on your team, and you have to adjust to the people on your team," said Eleanor Roosevelt running back Jeff Harrison. "He can't do everything by himself, it's a team thing. . . . There's not a chance of him being overrated."

Williams's No. 1 ranking attracted the attention of opponents. Lynch told his team that Williams's celebrity could help their own scholarship opportunities, and Severna Park's players celebrated their victory by screaming, "Number one all-American, I don't think so, baby," and, "Who's number one now?"

Still, moments later, the same Severna Park players happily predicted that they would one day watch Williams play in the NFL, and he continued to collect good wishes from opponents throughout the season. Before joining his celebrating teammates after their playoff victory over Roosevelt, C.H. Flowers running back Ramond Dixon grabbed Williams and told him, "You did your thing, D, you did your thing."

The recruiting Web site Rivals.com continues to rate Williams the No. 1 prospect in the country. He climbed from No. 9 to No. 7 on analyst Tom Lemming's list as the season went on, and dropped from No. 1 to No. 3 in Scout.com's latest national rankings, which were released on Sunday.

But the local media members who selected the Washington area's offensive and defensive MVP for the Quarterback Club did not choose Williams; those awards were claimed by Whitaker and DeMatha's Kenny Jefferson, respectively.

"I don't want to sound cocky, but I'm determined to do good in college," Williams said. "If everything goes right, if I do good in college and the Lord blesses me and I'm a first-round pick in the NFL draft, we can look back at the people who doubted me and say, 'Thank you very much.' "

Williams is, however, one of 14 nominees for a national player of the year award given out in conjunction with the U.S. Army All-American Bowl, and he is one of five finalists for a national strength-and-speed award. And the fact that he'll spend this weekend watching youth football does little to damper the enthusiasm of local coaches.

"There are kids [in the Washington area] who had better years offensively, and there are kids who had better defensive years," Lackey Coach Scott Chadwick said. "If you ask me one guy to start my team with in the Washington area, I'm still probably picking Derrick Williams."

[Buckskin86]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Dec9.html

Taking Coaches At Face Value
Williams Seeks Stability With His School of Choice

By Dan Steinberg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 10, 2004; Page D01

Shortly before Steve Spurrier appeared at Derrick Williams's Upper Marlboro home on Monday night, the phone rang. It was Ron Zook.

Zook, fired as head football coach at Florida and newly hired at Illinois, wanted Williams -- a senior at Eleanor Roosevelt High and one of the top recruits in the country -- to consider playing football for his new university. Soon, Spurrier -- not yet two weeks into his tenure as South Carolina's head coach -- arrived, bringing son Steve Spurrier Jr. and more than 90 minutes worth of reasons why his new school might be a good fit for Williams.

From the beginning, Williams and his parents have made coaching stability a centerpiece of their college search. But with less than two weeks remaining until Williams is scheduled to stand before the ESPN cameras and announce his decision, that quest has been disrupted by the NCAA's annual square dance, with coaches careening from one partner to the next.

Of the nine schools Williams is still seriously considering, three -- Florida, Illinois and South Carolina -- have hired new coaches in the past month. Three more -- Louisville, Penn State and Texas -- have dealt with off-and-on rumors of change. The other three schools on Williams's list are Tennessee, Florida State and Oklahoma.

Williams's older brother, Domonique, had seen his collegiate football career sidetracked by the departure of then-North Carolina coach Mack Brown, a scenario no one in the family wants to live through again. And with Williams's parents determined to find both a familial atmosphere and a coach willing to get the ball to their 6-foot, 190-pound play-making son who likely will play wide receiver in college, they came to a definite conclusion.

"Everyone says you should go to a school for the university, but that's not the case -- the main thing for these kids is the head coach," said Derrick's father, Dwight Williams.

"It's not the school you're looking at, really; it's just that football program," agreed Derrick Williams, who plans to graduate high school this month and enroll in college soon after the new year to get a head start on his training for next season. "All the schools offer the same education, the same degrees. It's just where you feel comfortable, and the coaching staff."

But as Williams's list was trimmed from the more than 50 Division I-A schools offering him athletic scholarships to an evolving list of about nine finalists, wisps of instability clung to several of his choices.

Penn State, one of Williams's most dedicated suitors and the site of his second official visit, has been beset by rumors of Joe Paterno's retirement. Brown, now at Texas, where Williams plans to visit next week, is dogged by dissatisfaction over the Longhorns' annual failure to beat Oklahoma.

Louisville's offense has been consistently impressive, but Coach Bobby Petrino is himself a sought-after recruit and was at first evasive when Dwight Williams asked about the chances Petrino would leave for a higher-profile job. Petrino issued a statement this week restating his commitment to Louisville and his lack of interest in other jobs.

South Carolina entered the picture late last month, with Spurrier making his first phone contact less than an hour before the family headed for an official visit to the University of Tennessee.

"Man, we really liked that offensive approach you had. . . . That's something we're very, very interested in," gushed Dwight Williams, while Derrick idly microwaved his second bowl of chicken-flavored noodles. Derrick later postponed his Texas visit to allow Spurrier to make an in-home pitch.

And then there is the Florida matter.

Even allowing for Hurricane Jeanne, which kept the family trapped in Gainesville for two extra days, their late September official visit to Gainesville was judged an unequivocal success.

Derrick, who stayed with high school friend and current Gator Derrick Harvey, repeatedly called the trip "brilliant." Dwight was impressed by the wide-open offensive attack, by quarterback Chris Leak and by the possibility of early playing time for Derrick. Mother Brinda Williams called the trip "superb," happily noting that everyone they met had nothing but good things to say about the university and Zook.

And perhaps most importantly, the entire family was comforted by a meeting in Zook's office with the coach, Athletic Director Jeremy Foley and University of Florida President Bernard Machen, in which that trio assured the family that all rumors to the contrary, Zook's job was secure.

Exactly one month later, Derrick Williams was sitting in the Eleanor Roosevelt athletic department when Harvey called with the news. Zook had been fired.

"It really hurt me, because like I said, we talked to the president of the institution, we talked to the athletic director, and they both said Zook would be there, he had signed a contract extension," Brinda Williams said. "And within [four] weeks of visiting the institution, they fired the guy right there on the spot. What were we supposed to think then? Who can we trust now?"

Dwight Williams later called the Florida visit "a wasted trip." During their next campus visit, Brinda Williams said, she told Penn State President Graham Spanier, "I just want people to be honest."

Zook's dismissal, though, did not come as a surprise to Derrick.

"You know in the recruiting process that people trying to get you, they tell you lies and other stuff, and then when you get to campus it's a whole different thing," Derrick Williams said. "Sometimes what they tell you, you know it's a lie, you know it's a baldfaced lie. I knew that before [Zook got fired]. You've got to read between the lines sometimes."

And so Williams and his parents have adapted to this month's new landscape. Zook called Eleanor Roosevelt Coach Rick Houchens twice on Monday with the urgent news that he had landed at Illinois and wanted to remain in the game. At the time, Brinda Williams said, she "didn't even know Illinois had a football program." Now Zook will attempt to visit Williams and his parents next week.

New Florida coach Urban Meyer recently called, trying to keep the Gators in the picture. The Williamses were happy to hear that Meyer plans on retaining some of Zook's assistant coaches, and he, too, is trying to schedule a home visit.

And if the music starts, the coaches grab different partners and a few of the faces change, the Williams family will adjust again.

"This is almost like shooting dice," Dwight Williams said. "And it's a shame that it's like that. But it is."