Chad Morris landed Mansfield, Texas, Legacy free safety Jalen Catalon on Friday when he made his announcement.
It didn’t surprise the folks who follow recruiting closely. They felt that was the direction the highly-sought four-star was leaning anyway.
This is, however, the first time in what is becoming the strongest recruiting class in a long, long time that Morris has gone into Texas and gotten a commitment from a top target of Texas and Oklahoma.
TCU was also in that final cut, but that’s not going to be as eye-opening as beating out those other two who have long been the biggest players in the state with the most players.
It’s hard to remember, in fact, when Arkansas DID beat out those two for a player.
What may be even more interesting is how Morris and his staff closed the deal, according to some reports.
On Thursday night while the Longhorns were having their final visit with Catalon, the Hogs’ staff was at Mansfield Legacy’s gym watching his younger sister play basketball.
After Texas left the Catalon house, Morris along with defensive coordinator John Chavis and defensive backs coaches Ron Cooper and Mark Smith went in and closed the deal.
The Razorbacks landed four composite four-star prospects from the state of Tennessee. They went into Mississippi and got a quarterback wanted by both in-state SEC programs. The Hogs landed a defensive end from Georgia most of the SEC wanted. They also beat out Oklahoma for a top-rated junior college offensive lineman.
Arkansas’ recruiting rankings are a 247Sports.com composite No. 20, which is their ESPN ranking and at Rivals, the Hogs are 16th.
The overall ranking is progress and has more four star athletes committed that the previous two coaching staffs landed in two years combined most of the time.
It was Florida State’s Bobby Bowden who told his staff every year that having those highly-rated players didn’t guarantee you of playing for a championship, but he did guarantee that not having them guaranteed you would NOT be playing for one.
History has proven you have to have at least one class rated in the top five and another in the top 10 to compete for a national championship in this day and time.
After that, if you’re in the top 20 rankings you at least have a chance to compete at the level just below that, which is basically the best Arkansas has done in the last 30 years or so.
Morris has said in off-season interviews this was never a quick-fix. He knew exactly what he was getting into, but wasn’t going to say it. Coaches never do that.
But he inherited a program that had a decade of unremarkable recruiting and a recent cycle of lack of player development, which is as important as getting the talent on campus. You have to develop even five-star players and the only two the Hogs landed in the last 10 years haven’t played to that level, which is a development issue.
The guess is this is not a class that reaches Morris’ goals.
It is one he’s hoping gets the Hogs pointed in the right direction, though.
