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Weequanic H.S. (Newark, NJ)
Ht: 6-foot-2
Wt: 200 lbs
40:
Rivals rating:
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ESPN rating:
247 rating:
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I couldn't find a football photo. However, the basketball skills are important. Darby would either be a Safety or Wide Receiver, and those ball skills almost always seem to translate well.
Darby averaged about 12 points per game for his basketball team: http://highschoolsports.nj.com/player/andre-darby/
Weequanic H.S. is pure hood and it's a place that an athlete can easily be overlooked by college scouts. Coaching and administration do the players no favors with marketing them and the kids' families don't have the resources to do it themselves. Darby is good friends with our 2013 prospect Al Quadin Muhammad, who goes to Don Bosco. Darby is hoping for a CU opportunity and the coaches just became aware of him. He's got the grades to qualify. Check out the video. The kid can play. If he went to Mullen or Bosco, I bet he'd have a dozen offers. (info came from donmac on the Rivals board).
Here's an amazing story on another Weequanic player, Taj Smith, who has made it into the NFL. The route he took and the difficult circumstances he came from in that part of Newark (and that HS) really shed some light on how easily a guy like Darby could be overlooked by recruiters. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/sp...ward.html?_r=1
donmac also threw out an interesting stat on how many great players get overlooked out of high school for the reasons stated above: "Half of the African American Players in the NFL went to small schools because they went unnoticed or couldn't get into a good D1 or D2 school." [no reference]
After watching his video, what do you guys think?
I know it's a highlight film so there's not going to be a lot of images of him dropping the ball but he seems to have very sure hands. Can't argue with the size either.
Disclaimer: no info on if CU is interested nor if he has a qualifying score.
Competition is poor. Would expect Rutgers to find these types. But could be the real deal. Coaches would want to review full game tape rather than highlights. Worth their time I think.
Read Niks post again. These are the type of kids that Mac built his program off of.Originally Posted by buffaholic
"Fame can come in a moment, but greatness comes with longevity."
-Bill McCartney
I didn't write that post on this board, tini.
No about the kids being overlooked and that he's got the grades to qualify.
Like to see more of him in coverage, but I would lean toward safety. Definitely worth taking a look at though, and pretty encouraging that our '13 recruiting target is out there talking us up.
I totally disagree. Mac built the program with guys like Sal Aunese, Darian Hagan, JJ Flannigan, Joe Garten, Jay Leuenberg and Deon Figures. All of those guys were highly recruited. Everybody knew about them. Even the guys who came before that like Eric McCarty, John Embree, etc. were well known players.
The point was more about how Mac was willing to go into the projects, especially Compton and Houston, and recruit kids with rough pasts. Also, how he would do in-homes in neighborhoods other coaches were afraid to go. And in the beginning, he wasn't landing very many out of state recruits that had a lot of other options. It wasn't an argument that Mac built the program through under-the-radar prospects. He did, however, take a lot of academic and troubled-past risks.
Edit: Nothing suggests that Darby is an academic or character risk. He just lives in a rough neighborhood and colleges are likely to miss on guys like this.
Perhaps I missed phrased that but Nik explained what I meant.
Please defer to Nik for all future posts - just PM him what you want to say and he'll make you look like a genius.
We thought about it for a long time, "Endeavor to persevere." And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union. - Lone Watie, The Outlaw Josey Wales
I probably put too much weight into this, but I love it in the prospect's videos when they score a TD, you see them hand the ball to the ref. I love it when they act like they've been there before and instead of doing some retarded dance they'd rather hand the ball over and hug their teammates. Love it.
As far as the kid, would love to see a longer video as we didn't see much at WR. He looked very physical and pretty fast, though. Never hurts to recruit more Jersey kids to help keep that Bosco connection going.
Meh. I'm kinda over taking on a bunch of projects, but especially if we are taking him as a WR. That tells me the McCulloch signing was a complete waste of time.
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