2024 Duke Football Recruiting

[johnb]

Elko has been capitalizing on last year's success to a wonderful degree. Duke's credibility as a football program is at the other end of the spectrum from where it was a year ago...seems we have some very able, experienced recruiters as well.

Bradley Smith committed for 2024 yesterday. He's a 6'3" 290 pound offensive lineman from Woodward Academy in Atlanta. He's obviously still a junior but had already garnered 22 offers, including 7 from P5 schools. He's currently the highest ranked of our 6 committed juniors--though, at #508 nationally (including #30 OL), Smith clusters at a similar 247 consensus level as our other commits (5 in the top 600, 1 clocking in at 686).

Overall, 247's team rankings puts us at #14 for 2024, where we're wedged between Clemson and Ohio State. Okay, we have had more guys commit, and that same service had our 2023 recruiting ahead of Alabama's back in June, but these committed guys are all very impressive.

All of that comes with the usual caveat: these rankings are compiled by web site writers, and I'd trust Elko & Co more than web sites, if only because our staff is probably laser focused on maybe 100 guys (200 guys?, 60 guys?) and not trying to compare every defensive lineman in the 3.8 million square miles of the US (just looked it up).

duke football.jpg

[chrishoke]

Welcome Bradley! BleedBlue.

I love getting guys from the talent rich state of Georgia.

[Acymetric]

Great pickup! I am really looking forward to seeing how this recruiting cycle plays out.

[johnb]

2023 Transfer Update:
We've had 8 guys transfer into the Duke program (5 OL; 2 CB's; 1 LB).
All have experience starting for their prior teams, and all seem to be expected to compete for spots in the regular rotation.

We've had 11 Duke guys enter the portal to transfer (3 OL; 4 DL; WR; TE; LB, CB).
From a quick review, they seem like solid guys, and several seem to be graduating with their '23 Duke class. Wish them well--all seem to have bled blue! From a purely game-competitive standpoint, however, none seem to have gotten much Duke playing time.

I'm guessing that Duke may be unique in regard to this transfer ratio (everybody we bring is a likely rotation player while none of the guys we lose would be expected to be in the rotation) as well as in signing all 26 of last summer's commits.

[johnb]

Preston Watson committed yesterday.

He’s a 6’2” 270 pound junior from Seminole, Florida.

He already had 5 ACC offers, besides the one from Duke.

The 247 consensus ranking is national #538, which puts him so in the midst of our excellent recruiting class that he is TIED with Hauss Hejny with a 0.8628.

The precision of the ranking system reminds me of chemistry class, without the actual, uhm, precision.

Fwiw, Watson’s commitment slides us up to #9 nationally, just ahead of Alabama.

That’s partly because we already have 7 guys and most schools have fewer, but it’s also true that while all or commitments are 3 star recruits, all 7 are rated higher than any of our 2023 recruits (who were also all 3 star recruits).

This increasingly has the look of a game-changing recruitment group for the Duke program.

[Bob Green]

The precision of the ranking system reminds me of chemistry class, without the actual, uhm, precision.

I’ve no idea on the precision / non-precision of the various recruiting services but ESPN lists Preston Watson as NR.

[Acymetric]

I’ve no idea on the precision / non-precision of the various recruiting services but ESPN lists Preston Watson as NR.

Film for last year (junior year for class of 2024) is still being evaluated, NR just means they haven't gotten to him yet. He is a solid 3 star on 247 I think. Given the historic difficulty recruiting the DL at Duke this is a really good pickup.

[DevilHorse]

Preston Watson committed yesterday.


The precision of the ranking system reminds me of chemistry class, without the actual, uhm, precision.

I think you meant Accuracy and not Precision. If it were Precision, that would mean extra digits on each ranking.

Larry
DevilHorse

[johnb]

I think you meant Accuracy and not Precision. If it were Precision, that would mean extra digits on each ranking.

Larry
DevilHorse

Very true…. I’d say that my personal definition of precision did contain a semiconscious dollop of accuracy (consensus 0.0105%), but I now have them distinct!