After two extremely successful recruiting weekends the UMass football team’s #OptimusPrime16 is far from finished. In fact, over the past couple of days, they have added more commitments from talented players and in doing so have further solidified the incoming class as the best in school history.
As first reported by the Maroon Musket, JUCO QB Andrew Ford and TE Cody Banks have pledged to the Minutemen prior to NSD tomorrow.
Ford is a big get for the Minutemen, a 3-star lefty gunslinger who will come in and challenge for the starting job right away. Ford is a very highly-rated recruit coming out of JUCO and is the #2 rated kid in the Minutemen’s class as of right now. Ford originally signed with Virginia Tech out of high school (he was Pennsylvania’s Mr. Football in 2013 and he was the Gatorade Player of the Year in PA as well) but redshirted his first year in Blacksburg and subsequently requested his release to transfer.
He transferred to Lackawanna Community College in PA and graduated in December, giving him three years to play three when signing with the Minutemen and enrolling in the fall. Take a look at his JUCO highlights here and you can see why he was so highly sought after, especially out of high school initially.
Ford’s got a great arm and is very accurate as well, especially when on the run. For a guy who goes 6’3″ and 215 he moves very well within the pocket and has escapability outside the pocket. He’s got the look of a guy who can make all the throws and do so efficiently. I said as soon as his commitment came in that he might be more of a traditional fit at QB for the offense that Mark Whipple likes to run.
His arrival in Amherst will ratchet the intensity surrounding the quarterback position up to 11, which is a very good thing. Ross Comis was the heir apparent to the job after Blake Frohnapfel graduated. He was the backup last season and was very effective in his limited mop-up minutes in 2015. He’s got a strong arm and is very mobile, a dynamic which the offense did not have when Froh was the signal caller. He’s a real competitor and a hard-nosed kid who’ll take a hit to make a play.
Comis may not be as big as Ford but he’s still got the size to command the position. What he may lack in size he makes up for in both heart and mobility. Having Comis under center changes the dynamic of the offense and brings in the possibility of entire new schemes offensively, such as running a zone read in an added play set.
To me bringing in a game-ready QB like Ford indicates that perhaps the staff were not so settled on Comis as the guy going in to the 2016 season. Don’t get me wrong I think they like him a lot, but I also think they wanted to have the most possible competition for the role and bring in a guy who could potentially step in and win that job to start week one.
I honestly think that Ford, given that he is a 3-year player who could have gone a lot of places with more unsettled QB situations, has a slight inside track on the job as of right now. But that does not mean by any stretch he would win it. Comis is no shrinking violet, he’s a tough kid who will look at competition Ford brings as a chance to improve and make himself better. He’ll welcome the challenge, that much I’m sure of.
This will be the first real QB position battle since Whip was rehired. Yes technically there was a “competition” when Froh transferred in, but I don’t think anyone is surprised that he ended up starting. It was clearly his job to lose before he even came here. Now that he’s gone and there are four QBs already on the roster with Ford making 5, the competition will be fierce and I for one am greatly looking forward to it. We’ll know that whoever comes out on top beat out talented players to be the starter.
The other official commitment over the last two days for UMass was TE Cody Banks. Banks was originally a UCF commit in the 2015 class, but he never signed in central Florida, thus he is eligible right away for UMass. He’s a 3-star player rated as a DE/TE, and he’s 6’7″ and 250 pounds. He’ll be playing TE for UMass, and his size of course will draw immediate comparisons to Jean Sifrin. While he may not be the athlete that Sifrin was, he will add depth and competition to what was a very weak spot in the Minutemen lineup at tight end.
The majority of Banks’ tape here is at DE, but there are spurts of him as a TE that show some surprisingly soft hands and a real knack for blocking. One might wonder if he’ll be used primarily as a blocking TE or short-yardage weapon, or if he’ll see more consistent, every down time in the offense. Either way glad to have him on board.
There is another listed commitment for UMass that at the time I’m writing this is unconfirmed. Sam Franklin, who UMass fans remember as a surprise signing from last season, is now listed on the Minutemen’s commitment list over on the Musket.
Franklin is a 3-star athlete that the Minutemen had designs on being a WR for them last season until he didn’t qualify and had to go to prep school. Franklin attended East Coast Prep in Great Barrington, which in case anyone didn’t know is in the middle of fucking nowhere in the 413, but he appears to have gotten his academics in order and will hopefully be joining the Minutemen’s 2016 class (in fact ECP’s website has had him accepting a UMass offer {scroll down} for a little while now).
Franklin switched over to safety for ECP this season after a couple of games, though IMO UMass would be best served to have him come in and compete at WR; they need the help there more than in the defensive backfield. Franklin’s highlights reflect the change to defense clearly but they also show his great natural athleticism. Hopefully his recommitment to UMass is legitimate and we see him in Maroon & White next year.
I covered UMass’ most recent commitments for Hustle Belt today as well, give that a click and check it out if you like.
I’ll also be covering NSD for Hustle Belt tomorrow, but I’ll be all over Twitter all day and will have a post wrapping things up over here at some point as well. And of course make sure you check out the #1 resource for UMass recruiting the Maroon Musket tomorrow as well.
Go U.
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