12-21-2022, 08:55 PM
Four dimensional analysis on Morris:
Services: 247 composite NR, On3 consensus NR, 247 NR, On3 NR, Rivals 5.4 (profile didn't exist a day ago so this is obviously on the basis of signing with Stanford, same grade as Scotty Edwards, Ethan Bonner, Quinn Evans), ESPN 76 grade (same grade they gave Jimmy Wyrick and Jaden Slocum.....ESPN so clueless)
Offers: Stanford
Production: He was new to football in high school after having come from Jamaica in 2018. He was on the Jamaican national cricket team. In his post-grad year at Phillips Exeter Academy he played the same generally very poor but with specks of major prospect competition Charlie Symonds did. There are no stats provided for how he did but the official site reports he was his team's MVP and was all conference. In his senior year (last year before the post-grad year), he made the Boston Globe honorable mention team, which just means top three players on his team and top 50 or so in his league, which played similarly very low competition compared to the prep league he did his post-grad year. The only stats Maxpreps reports of any of his years of high school were three games from his sophomore year (pre-pandemic, recall this is a post-grad player). In those games he had 2.3 tackles per game (tied for 11th on his team), with no other stats recorded. In track he's claimed a 10.82 100, 22.3 200, and 22' 4" long jump, but I don't see any of those officially verified except for long jump, which is actually verified even longer at 22' 5.5". That long jump would be the sixth longest recorded by a Stanford recruit since 2012, behind Kyu Blu Kelly, Donjae Logan, Nicolas Toomer, Joshua Thompson, and Alijah Holder, an inch longer than Ethan Bonner. If the speed times are even close to accurate then he's faster than many in our room.
Highlights: The sophomore highlights show a half dozen pass breakups as a cover corner, a few open field tackles, and two touchdown returns (one a punt and one a kick). There's an interception on there but it's clearly from a practice rather than a game. The junior season (pandemic spring) highlights include three interceptions, two returned for touchdowns, and some open field tackling. At least against the competition he faced he's a hard tackler. There is also a lot of him on offense breaking off big runs and one play catching a touchdown. The senior highlights again feature a lot of offense. While the highlights are long, there isn't much by way of big defensive plays that year, just a few pass breakups. There are no highlights posted of his post-grad year. If he faced any major college football prospects in high school it sure wasn't many, not finding anything worth reporting in terms of head-to-head matchups.
Talk about a flyer. If Morris does anything for us it will be quite a nice diamond-in-the-rough find. Needless to say to anybody reading the above, this isn't a prospect you'd bet on. It has the feel of the pre-Harbaugh days of DB recruiting (Mark Mueller, Tyler Porras, Blaise Johnson, Kris Evans, Chris Hobbs). I don't know what happened with DB recruiting this year. After Akina's steady success getting high 3-star DBs if not better, the bottom fell out this year after Frausto-Ramos, who might be the headliner of the entire class. Some will argue that if you can't get any other DBs you might as well take a flyer on a guy like Morris and I can see the point, but I also think DB is a position where roster lumpiness can be fine, so I would have been ok holding the scholarship until next year. I'm going to hope that some people who really know football have reason to be excited about Morris. But Taylor's defensive staff wasn't even in place so this feels more like a what the heck Plan C because we have plenty of room and the roster is looking bleak.
Services: 247 composite NR, On3 consensus NR, 247 NR, On3 NR, Rivals 5.4 (profile didn't exist a day ago so this is obviously on the basis of signing with Stanford, same grade as Scotty Edwards, Ethan Bonner, Quinn Evans), ESPN 76 grade (same grade they gave Jimmy Wyrick and Jaden Slocum.....ESPN so clueless)
Offers: Stanford
Production: He was new to football in high school after having come from Jamaica in 2018. He was on the Jamaican national cricket team. In his post-grad year at Phillips Exeter Academy he played the same generally very poor but with specks of major prospect competition Charlie Symonds did. There are no stats provided for how he did but the official site reports he was his team's MVP and was all conference. In his senior year (last year before the post-grad year), he made the Boston Globe honorable mention team, which just means top three players on his team and top 50 or so in his league, which played similarly very low competition compared to the prep league he did his post-grad year. The only stats Maxpreps reports of any of his years of high school were three games from his sophomore year (pre-pandemic, recall this is a post-grad player). In those games he had 2.3 tackles per game (tied for 11th on his team), with no other stats recorded. In track he's claimed a 10.82 100, 22.3 200, and 22' 4" long jump, but I don't see any of those officially verified except for long jump, which is actually verified even longer at 22' 5.5". That long jump would be the sixth longest recorded by a Stanford recruit since 2012, behind Kyu Blu Kelly, Donjae Logan, Nicolas Toomer, Joshua Thompson, and Alijah Holder, an inch longer than Ethan Bonner. If the speed times are even close to accurate then he's faster than many in our room.
Highlights: The sophomore highlights show a half dozen pass breakups as a cover corner, a few open field tackles, and two touchdown returns (one a punt and one a kick). There's an interception on there but it's clearly from a practice rather than a game. The junior season (pandemic spring) highlights include three interceptions, two returned for touchdowns, and some open field tackling. At least against the competition he faced he's a hard tackler. There is also a lot of him on offense breaking off big runs and one play catching a touchdown. The senior highlights again feature a lot of offense. While the highlights are long, there isn't much by way of big defensive plays that year, just a few pass breakups. There are no highlights posted of his post-grad year. If he faced any major college football prospects in high school it sure wasn't many, not finding anything worth reporting in terms of head-to-head matchups.
Talk about a flyer. If Morris does anything for us it will be quite a nice diamond-in-the-rough find. Needless to say to anybody reading the above, this isn't a prospect you'd bet on. It has the feel of the pre-Harbaugh days of DB recruiting (Mark Mueller, Tyler Porras, Blaise Johnson, Kris Evans, Chris Hobbs). I don't know what happened with DB recruiting this year. After Akina's steady success getting high 3-star DBs if not better, the bottom fell out this year after Frausto-Ramos, who might be the headliner of the entire class. Some will argue that if you can't get any other DBs you might as well take a flyer on a guy like Morris and I can see the point, but I also think DB is a position where roster lumpiness can be fine, so I would have been ok holding the scholarship until next year. I'm going to hope that some people who really know football have reason to be excited about Morris. But Taylor's defensive staff wasn't even in place so this feels more like a what the heck Plan C because we have plenty of room and the roster is looking bleak.