07-26-2022, 09:05 AM
Four dimensional analysis on Yamauchi:
Services: 247 composite #889 (#64 interior OL), On3 consensus #739 (#70 interior OL), 247 #87 interior OL, On3 #86 interior OL, Rivals #69 interior OL (5.7 grade, same grade as Kenji Swanson, James Pogorelc, Jake Hornibrook, Trey Stratford, Jack Dreyer, AT Hall, Thomas Oser, Cameron Fleming, David Yankey, Cole Underwood, Khalil Wilkes, Kevin Danser, Jonathan Martin, David DeCastro), ESPN NR
Offers: Stanford, Boston College, Arizona, Army, Cal, Colorado, Fresno State, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, San Diego State, UNLV, Utah State, Washington State
Production: As a junior playing left tackle for Bishop Gorman, Yamauchi was named first team all-Southern Nevada, one of two Gael linemen so honored along with Oklahoma 4-star Jake Taylor. [Teammate Benjamin Hudson, our reach of an ILB signee, did not make any of the first, second, or honorable mention teams.] Maxpreps views Bishop Gorman's schedule as very good but not great, but that doesn't tell the whole story: they travel all across the country and also host national powers in the beginning part of the season before settling into the perennial drama-less annihilation of the hopelessly outgunned in-state competition. Bishop Gorman's nine in-state games last year had a combined score of 478 to 27 (not typos). Analyzing stats comes against that backdrop of the oddity of playing one of the best teams from five different states but otherwise winning practically every other game 50+ to zero. Against that schedule, Taylor, Yamauchi, and the other linemen blocked for an offense with a 58/42 run/pass ratio and 7.7 yards per carry (8.7 yards per carry for the lead back, a Tennessee commit, and 6.0 yards per carry for the secondary back, a Boston College running back). Yamauchi saw his sophomore year completely wiped out by the pandemic and he wasn't yet on varsity as a freshman. 247 didn't have Yamauchi in the top three offensive linemen at the Polynesian Bowl combine but they did say "he was another standout offensive lineman in a really good group" and that he "had some strong one-on-one reps in which he didn’t give up an inch of ground." [Ethan Thomason merited the same kind of honorable mention]
Highlights: Given the pandemic, junior highlights are the only thing to go by. They show Yamauchi playing left tackle, which it should be noted is not the blind side given Bishop Gorman's left handed quarterback. With Jake Taylor now at Oklahoma I assume Yamauchi will flip over to right tackle as a senior but we'll see. In terms of the junior highlights, Yamauchi playing tackle makes it somewhat hard to assess traits suitable to interior offensive line (where every recruiting service pegs him), at least for this layman. The highlights are refreshing in that they show such balance in terms of pass protection and run blocking. The clips against elite competition give me some pause about his ability to handle speed rushes and don't show the kind of evidence of sheer strength to move people in Pale's highlights or athleticism in Baklenko's highlights. The survey of powerhouses started against Hawaii powerhouse St. Louis, a game in which Yamauchi mustered a fair number of highlights but did not get occasion to show his wares against notable prospects as Arizona edge commit Julian Savaiinaea lined up across the right tackle and the bulk of St. Louis' top prospects were offensive linemen. The guy Yamauchi mostly handled has a lone FCS offer from Incarnate Word. Next up was Miami Central and their six and counting major college football defenders. Yamauchi seemed to get the best of his main assignment, an edge defender now at FCS Campbell, but got victimized for a sack on an inside rush move by 4-star DL Rueben Bain. That I have one incident of victimization by Bain to acknowledge may in itself be a decent data point for Yamauchi and/or the Bishop Gorman line as Bain had 19.5 sacks on the season - beast. The third game was against Lone Peak, which despite being a national power did not have many notable prospects. Yamauchi gave up a sack in this one too, an outside bull rush that led to a fumble giving Lone Peak the ball in the red zone. I have to imagine that was a low point of Yamauchi's season. The perpetrator was a guy named Connor Kelley, who is headed to FCS Southern Utah after an LDS mission and was a terror in Utah last year, earning 6A Defensive Player of the Year honors and racking up 13 sacks. Unlike with Bain where the one highlight of note did not turn out well for our guy, Yamauchi put numerous highlights on tape stifling Kelley in pass protection. This seems like a battle of great high school players where some went one way and some went the other way. The final game against an out-of-state opponent was the sole Bishop Gorman loss of the year, to Arizona power Chandler Hamilton. There was no rest for the weary as this one featured incoming Arizona edge rusher Russell Davis II, who had 17.5 sacks on the season and got one of them racing past Yamauchi. Another sack by another player also came off the edge on Yamauchi's side and I don't know if Yamauchi should have kicked out to try to neutralize that guy or if it was just a case of the defense dialing something up that was pretty hard to defend (there was no help on Yamauchi's side so hard to see what he could have done). Yamauchi did pancake Davis several times but Davis probably won more matchups. In-state, the toughest challenge was the top non-Gael power in Nevada, Liberty. I count at least five major college football players on Liberty's defense but Yamauchi's highlights show him squaring off against lower-profile players, with one exception of him stoning incoming Oregon outside linebacker Anthony Jones in pass protection. Jones' highlights had one play of him moving laterally before Yamauchi could engage him in run blocking, but as it was a 5-6 yard gain that doesn't seem like a black mark against Yamauchi. The lone highlight for uncommitted 3-star DL AJ Fuimaono (expected to go to UCLA) was an embarrassing one for Yamauchi as our guy was lined up directly across Fuimaono, ran right past him to block air in the second level, and Fuimaono promptly tackled the running back for a loss of 2-3 yards (assuming refs gave forward progress). Outside the marquee highlights, the tidbit to note is that incoming San Diego State DL Ryan Henderson had a few plays in run defense not getting by/through Yamauchi per se but winning the battle to clog the run and Yamauchi didn't have highlights beating Henderson as far as I could tell.
We're filling out the OL room. We need to keep recruiting some volume as the high-end OL recruiting has been quite dry the last three years, although I'm really hoping Evan Link can be this class' OL headliner. Yamauchi as OL4 or OL5 in a class isn't bad at all. I'm more excited about the others in the class but plausibly Power Five volume is part of the game too. Really want Link though.
Services: 247 composite #889 (#64 interior OL), On3 consensus #739 (#70 interior OL), 247 #87 interior OL, On3 #86 interior OL, Rivals #69 interior OL (5.7 grade, same grade as Kenji Swanson, James Pogorelc, Jake Hornibrook, Trey Stratford, Jack Dreyer, AT Hall, Thomas Oser, Cameron Fleming, David Yankey, Cole Underwood, Khalil Wilkes, Kevin Danser, Jonathan Martin, David DeCastro), ESPN NR
Offers: Stanford, Boston College, Arizona, Army, Cal, Colorado, Fresno State, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, San Diego State, UNLV, Utah State, Washington State
Production: As a junior playing left tackle for Bishop Gorman, Yamauchi was named first team all-Southern Nevada, one of two Gael linemen so honored along with Oklahoma 4-star Jake Taylor. [Teammate Benjamin Hudson, our reach of an ILB signee, did not make any of the first, second, or honorable mention teams.] Maxpreps views Bishop Gorman's schedule as very good but not great, but that doesn't tell the whole story: they travel all across the country and also host national powers in the beginning part of the season before settling into the perennial drama-less annihilation of the hopelessly outgunned in-state competition. Bishop Gorman's nine in-state games last year had a combined score of 478 to 27 (not typos). Analyzing stats comes against that backdrop of the oddity of playing one of the best teams from five different states but otherwise winning practically every other game 50+ to zero. Against that schedule, Taylor, Yamauchi, and the other linemen blocked for an offense with a 58/42 run/pass ratio and 7.7 yards per carry (8.7 yards per carry for the lead back, a Tennessee commit, and 6.0 yards per carry for the secondary back, a Boston College running back). Yamauchi saw his sophomore year completely wiped out by the pandemic and he wasn't yet on varsity as a freshman. 247 didn't have Yamauchi in the top three offensive linemen at the Polynesian Bowl combine but they did say "he was another standout offensive lineman in a really good group" and that he "had some strong one-on-one reps in which he didn’t give up an inch of ground." [Ethan Thomason merited the same kind of honorable mention]
Highlights: Given the pandemic, junior highlights are the only thing to go by. They show Yamauchi playing left tackle, which it should be noted is not the blind side given Bishop Gorman's left handed quarterback. With Jake Taylor now at Oklahoma I assume Yamauchi will flip over to right tackle as a senior but we'll see. In terms of the junior highlights, Yamauchi playing tackle makes it somewhat hard to assess traits suitable to interior offensive line (where every recruiting service pegs him), at least for this layman. The highlights are refreshing in that they show such balance in terms of pass protection and run blocking. The clips against elite competition give me some pause about his ability to handle speed rushes and don't show the kind of evidence of sheer strength to move people in Pale's highlights or athleticism in Baklenko's highlights. The survey of powerhouses started against Hawaii powerhouse St. Louis, a game in which Yamauchi mustered a fair number of highlights but did not get occasion to show his wares against notable prospects as Arizona edge commit Julian Savaiinaea lined up across the right tackle and the bulk of St. Louis' top prospects were offensive linemen. The guy Yamauchi mostly handled has a lone FCS offer from Incarnate Word. Next up was Miami Central and their six and counting major college football defenders. Yamauchi seemed to get the best of his main assignment, an edge defender now at FCS Campbell, but got victimized for a sack on an inside rush move by 4-star DL Rueben Bain. That I have one incident of victimization by Bain to acknowledge may in itself be a decent data point for Yamauchi and/or the Bishop Gorman line as Bain had 19.5 sacks on the season - beast. The third game was against Lone Peak, which despite being a national power did not have many notable prospects. Yamauchi gave up a sack in this one too, an outside bull rush that led to a fumble giving Lone Peak the ball in the red zone. I have to imagine that was a low point of Yamauchi's season. The perpetrator was a guy named Connor Kelley, who is headed to FCS Southern Utah after an LDS mission and was a terror in Utah last year, earning 6A Defensive Player of the Year honors and racking up 13 sacks. Unlike with Bain where the one highlight of note did not turn out well for our guy, Yamauchi put numerous highlights on tape stifling Kelley in pass protection. This seems like a battle of great high school players where some went one way and some went the other way. The final game against an out-of-state opponent was the sole Bishop Gorman loss of the year, to Arizona power Chandler Hamilton. There was no rest for the weary as this one featured incoming Arizona edge rusher Russell Davis II, who had 17.5 sacks on the season and got one of them racing past Yamauchi. Another sack by another player also came off the edge on Yamauchi's side and I don't know if Yamauchi should have kicked out to try to neutralize that guy or if it was just a case of the defense dialing something up that was pretty hard to defend (there was no help on Yamauchi's side so hard to see what he could have done). Yamauchi did pancake Davis several times but Davis probably won more matchups. In-state, the toughest challenge was the top non-Gael power in Nevada, Liberty. I count at least five major college football players on Liberty's defense but Yamauchi's highlights show him squaring off against lower-profile players, with one exception of him stoning incoming Oregon outside linebacker Anthony Jones in pass protection. Jones' highlights had one play of him moving laterally before Yamauchi could engage him in run blocking, but as it was a 5-6 yard gain that doesn't seem like a black mark against Yamauchi. The lone highlight for uncommitted 3-star DL AJ Fuimaono (expected to go to UCLA) was an embarrassing one for Yamauchi as our guy was lined up directly across Fuimaono, ran right past him to block air in the second level, and Fuimaono promptly tackled the running back for a loss of 2-3 yards (assuming refs gave forward progress). Outside the marquee highlights, the tidbit to note is that incoming San Diego State DL Ryan Henderson had a few plays in run defense not getting by/through Yamauchi per se but winning the battle to clog the run and Yamauchi didn't have highlights beating Henderson as far as I could tell.
We're filling out the OL room. We need to keep recruiting some volume as the high-end OL recruiting has been quite dry the last three years, although I'm really hoping Evan Link can be this class' OL headliner. Yamauchi as OL4 or OL5 in a class isn't bad at all. I'm more excited about the others in the class but plausibly Power Five volume is part of the game too. Really want Link though.