Three & Out: Junior day list hits, Nebraska needs to make Elijah Newby a priority, and recruiting process continues to slide left

Three & Out is Nebraska On3’s feature in which recruiting analyst Bryan Munson gives his weekly takes on topical issues concerning Nebraska football and recruiting.

In this week’s Three & Out, recapping junior day visitors that are now off of the recruiting board, Elijah Newby should be a priority for Nebraska, and the recruiting process continues to slide left with a new rule change.

Junior Day visitors committing elsewhere

It’s hard to look past the bad news that happened this past week regarding recruiting. Several recruits in Lincoln for junior day in March came off the board when they committed to other schools.

Over the past week or so, Nebraska has had to endure some of its top targets coming off the board. Nebraska lost them just weeks after they had a great experience in Lincoln.

As a reminder of those that came off of the board this week:

So many positives were coming out of the weekend that is getting lost on a few. I remind myself that there were 25, 2024 recruits in Lincoln that weekend (that we know of). The silver lining here is that Nebraska is still in with several visitors from that weekend and others, and Nebraska’s recruiting board has never been this deep.

Several of the recruits in Lincoln that weekend have Nebraska on their list, and some even have the Huskers towards or at the top. And several of those recruits will return to Lincoln for visits in the coming weeks and months.

And we will see new names emerge. New offers continue to trickle out, and several new names will likely be added to the visitor list soon.

Newby should be a priority for Nebraska

Elijah Newby is a name from the junior day weekend that should be moving up Nebraska’s recruiting board. Newby, from Cheshire (Conn.) Cheshire Academy checked in at 6-foot-2.5, and 208-pounds that weekend is being looked at to play the Jack linebacker position in the class.

Newby was the “other guy” the weekend of junior day in many ways, which was entirely unfair to him. He was there with two defensive teammates from Cheshire Academy, four-star recruits Jacob Smith and Jerod Smith. 

Newby, however, came in and opened a lot of eyes.

It was his size. It was his demeanor. Like the others from that weekend, he loved what he saw and talked about coming back for the spring game in April and an official visit. 

This past weekend, the track season started for Newby. He had a breakout performance, running a 10.66/100-meter in the season’s first meet.

It will be very interesting to see if Newby makes it back for the spring game next weekend and if the Huskers can get him back for an official visit. 

Recruiting process continues to slide left

The first Wednesday in February used to be a holiday in my house. I would be up before dawn and work until long after the sun had gone down. It was a crazy day, but it was fun.

When the NCAA added an early signing period in December, everything changed. Football staffs signed most of their players in December and typically had just a few open spots left to fill in February.

The NCAA responded and added official visit dates in June. This allowed recruits to accelerate their process, and recruiting classes started to fill up in July. Again, the process slid more and more to the left.

Starting in September, college coaches are expected to finally legally talk to junior recruits when they visit their schools. So, when college coaches are strolling through the hallways of a high school, there won’t be any more “bumped into” scenarios. There can now be dialogue. This begins in the fall of 2023 and will carry over into key recruiting periods in January and the spring of 2024. The head coach will also be able to visit a junior twice – once in January and once later in their senior year.

It’s always seemed silly to follow up with a coach coming to the high school to call a recruit and ask what it was like having a coach at his school when he really couldn’t talk to them. I am unsure of the rule’s purpose, and I don’t know the value of the visit for the recruit.

But, what this rule change does now allows the college coaches to start the evaluation process with the recruit and establish the relationship between the recruit and the coach.

Imagine where Matt Rhule and his staff were in January. Maybe they had a roadmap of the recruits they wanted to see, but they were starting from scratch besides that. The value that could have been there to help a new staff get the ball rolling with a recruit.

This is the right move by the NCAA. I don’t say that too often, but they deserve praise here for recognizing the need. Everything continues to move left, and I assume more changes will follow.

The post Three & Out: Junior day list hits, Nebraska needs to make Elijah Newby a priority, and recruiting process continues to slide left appeared first on On3.