(Graphic by Thomas Wood/CU Independent)
Colorado Buffaloes football coach Mike MacIntyre wore a tan suit with a slightly-darker-tan, polka-dot tie as he addressed the media Wednesday after finalizing his 2015 recruiting class. He’s never been a fashion guru, but his taste in high school football players has given Colorado fans a glimmer of hope.
The Buffs have thus far taken baby steps on their rebuilding journey. It is too much to call this class a milestone as Colorado inches its way back to respectability, but it is an improvement. This class is like the Buffs’ 2014 season — demonstrably better than the year before, but not by much, and likely not good enough to push the team to a winning record. But for Colorado, the smallest sliver of progress feels monumental.
“The very first words said to me by everyone that I met when I got here, ‘Just make us competitive,'” MacIntyre said. “Well, I think we were competitive this past year in the Pac-12 week in and week out. Now we are at the point where I believe we can start winning those games more often, and we should have won more last year, which the recruits see.”
The highlight of the Buffs’ 2015 class is four-star offensive guard Tim Lynott, Jr. The 6-foot-4, 290-pound Aurora, Colo. native has the potential to be a mauling run blocker and should compete for significant playing time immediately. Lynott’s signing might signify something more than what he brings on the field — he committed to Colorado over offers from Pac-12 powers Oregon, UCLA and Arizona State. Perhaps more importantly, he spurned Colorado State.
“Timmy Lynott is one young man that, stature wise, could already have an opportunity to play,” MacIntyre said. “The other guys probably are going to need a year to soak so that’s what we’ll do.”
Lynott is the first four-star recruit to come to Boulder since quarterback Sefo Liufau did two years ago, and he’s part of a promising trend for Colorado — it signed four of the top six in-state players this season. Again, though, that is more of an incremental gain than a seismic shift, and the Buffs haven’t walled off the state. The top two players in Colorado — four-star defensive backs Eric Lee and Avery Anderson — bolted for Nebraska.
Still, the Buffs brought in twice as many top-10 players from Colorado as the Rams did, including Lynott, three-star offensive tackle Dillon Middlemiss, three-star defensive lineman Frank Umu and three-star punter/kicker Alex Kinney, whom MacIntyre called the best punter in the country.
Other standouts include three-star running backs Patrick Carr and Aaron Baltazar and three-star quarterback Steven Montez. Carr, at 5-foot-9, 195 pounds, is a speed back (MacIntyre said he can fly). Baltazar, at 5-foot-10, 220 pounds, is a more powerful runner. He originally committed to Boise State in 2013, transferred after suffering a season-ending knee injury as a freshman, and came to Colorado via Southwestern College in Chula Vista, Calif.
“We just found out and kept recruiting him and recruiting him and he really liked us,” MacIntyre said.
MacIntyre effusively praised Montez, though he offered no specifics as to a potential quarterback competition between Montez, Jordan Gerhke and Liufau.
“His dad grew up in Pueblo and they love being in Colorado,” MacIntyre said. ” So, we’re excited about that. He’s an excellent, excellent athlete and extremely bright.”
The Buffs also beefed up their defensive line, perhaps the biggest position of need after Colorado allowed 204 rushing yards and 39 points per game a year ago. Umu is the headliner here. MacIntyre said he “doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him.” The Buffs also added three-stars Jordan Carrell and Nathaniel Robbins and two-stars Brett Tonz and Lyle Tuiloma.
“The only way you can actually be good on defense consistently is to have enough good defensive linemen,” MacIntyre said. “You can scheme and do all you want, but you’ve got to be able to have guys up front that make plays on their own, come off blocks, knock the ball loose from running backs, tip balls, harass the quarterback. We’ve got more guys that can do that.”
MacIntyre was, as usual, energetically optimistic when describing his new recruiting class — what coach wouldn’t be? — but his buoyancy belied the fact that Colorado was again outclassed on the recruiting trail by the rest of the Pac-12. The Buffs’ 2015 class ranks second-to-last in the conference, ahead of only Oregon State’s, and Colorado has never had better than the Pac-12’s ninth-best class since it joined the conference in 2011.
Lynott is only the Buffs’ second four-star recruit in the past three years and Colorado hasn’t landed a five-star player since it signed Darrell Scott in 2008. Scott was the nation’s top-ranked running back, but he played two forgetful seasons for the Buffs before transferring to South Florida. He signed with the Dallas Cowboys as an un-drafted free agent, never played a snap in the NFL and is now out of football.
Scott’s aborted career shows how meaningless star ratings can be — ranking recruits is little more than educated guesswork, and the number of stars next to a players’ name have no bearing on his future production. JJ Watt said it best:
(Thomas Wood/CU Independent)
Watt was a holy terror on a Wisconsin Rose Bowl team, the 11th pick in the 2011 NFL Draft, and he has become the the most dominant defensive player in the game — and he began his college career as a two-star tight end at Central Michigan. And, as MacIntyre dutifully pointed out, no five-star recruits started in Sunday’s Super Bowl. Rarely, though, do entire classes outplay their rankings in that way. If MacIntyre’s third class can help deliver the bowl bid that Buffs fans have now waited eight years for, no one will care where they came from or how they were ranked. But that might be a few more baby steps away.
Contact CU Independent sports writer Tommy Wood at thomas.c.wood@colorado.edu. Follow him on Twitter @woodstein72. All rankings and star ratings are from 247Sports’ composite rating. View Colorado’s entire 2015 recruiting class here.
