Inside the commitment: Jaiden Braker

South Carolina inched closer to closing out its high school linebacker class for 2025 on Saturday night with the commitment of Snellville (Ga.) South Gwinnett three-star linebacker Jaiden Braker.

GamecockCentral provides an in-depth analysis of the pickup below.

The recruitment

South Carolina offered Braker while he was on campus for an unofficial visit in early-to-mid April and there was instant mutual interest between the two parties.

While it was still too early to say for sure at the time where Braker might end up, even with that initial visit and offer, there were some signs that Carolina could ultimately be the pick. But Braker wanted to go through the process and make sure he was making the right decision by taking official visits to several schools.

Going into the visits, it appeared that this would ultimately be a South Carolina-N.C. state battle and Braker set up officials to those two plus Kentucky, which offered in May after an evaluation trip to his school, Rutgers, and Utah.

Braker visited South Carolina first and word behind the scenes was that the Gamecocks were the favorite exiting that trip, though he didn’t shut down his recruitment meaning Carolina would have to survive the remaining visits.

There was also some chatter than UGA may offer after he ran a great time at their camp, though that didn’t happened.

Braker would give head coach Shane Beamer the word of his pledge on July 4 and go public with a commitment on Saturday.

His relationship with Clayton White, who served as his primary recruiter and will be in position coach in Columbia, as well as how the Gamecocks want to use him in the scheme were two major factors in the decision.

The evaluation

As we’ve mentioned on the site before, South Carolina has a 2025 linebacker class of prospects with varying skillsets and Braker profiles as an athletic, sideline-to-sideline linebacker in the Gamecocks’ scheme.

He has been compared a bit to current South Carolina freshman linebacker Fred JayR Johnson at the same stage due to his combination of length, speed, and twitchy athleticism.

Carolina has Braker at 6-foot-3, 220-pounds and he ran a 4.52 40-yard-dash at that UGA camp mentioned above. While he’s still a bit raw as a linebacker, he does play in space in high school, whereas a lot of linebacker-sized prospects are now playing EDGE at that level.

Braker, who was a priority for the Gamecocks, likely profiles as a SAM or WILL ‘backer in this scheme.

The On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average of the four major recruiting media sites, ranks Braker as the No. 682 overall prospect and No. 75 linebacker in the class. On3 is higher on him, ranking Braker as the No. 45 linebacker for 2025.

What’s next?

As we’ve mentioned before, with four contributing seniors on the current roster, we expect a big linebacker class to help replenish the depth chart, and Carolina is well on their way to filling that.

With the commitment of Braker, South Carolina now has four linebacker commitments for 2025 in Blackville (S.C.) Blackville-Hilda three-star Jaquel Holman, Buford (Ga.) three-star AJ Holloway, and Henderson (N.C.) Vance County three-star Taeshawn Alston.

Carolina would also like to add Havelock (N.C.) LB Donovan Darven, who took an official visit to Columbia in June, and is battling the Wolfpack for his signature.

I also expect the Gamecocks to once again hit the portal at the position to replace some of the experience that will be lost after the current season.

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