The developmental potential in football is way more important to me than high school ability. – BYU assistant coach Ed Lamb
There’s no perfect recipe for recruiting superstar college football players. But BYU assistant coach Ed Lamb isn’t convinced the single greatest path is to chase prospects with a train of recruiting service stars next to their name.
Lamb likes the laboratory. He likes gathering raw materials, applying football science and molding players into a finished product. And he proved his theory as head coach at Southern Utah University which had three players invited to the NFL combine last year, two of whom, LeShaun Sims and Miles Killebrew, ended up being drafted.
Sims and Killebrew had zero stars as prepsters in Nevada. A third, former Davis High center James Cowser, ended up being the FCS’s all-time leader in sacks and tackles for loss.
He was also “starless” in high school.
“The recruiting stars for me?” asked Lamb. “I often see the opposite of other coaches. I see some of the four and five-star recruits and think, 'That guy has tapped out.’ And unless I already think they are NFL type players, I really don’t want the four or five stars as badly as other coaches.”
What?
No desire to get caught up in the glorified flotsam of hyped-up star ratings? That invites internet message board accusations of blasphemy.
Lamb has a philosophy he loves to prove.
“The developmental potential in football is way more important to me than high school ability,” says Lamb. He says West Jordan’s four-star defensive lineman Langi Tuifua, whose father David played with Lamb at Ricks College, is an exception, as are others.
“Langi is one of the rare, highly-rated guys who has so much developmental ability. He weighs 230 to 235. He’s going to be 265 or 270. His shoulders are so broad and he has so much developmental ability. That’s what excites me.”
But then there’s the raw material.
“It starts with track,” said Lamb of his search for corners and safeties. “I start looking at track times first thing. It’s all over the internet and you don’t have to look up numbers like I used to. Next, I go to recruiting sites and look for height. I don’t even care if they play football or if they aren’t good in football. Keenan (Ellis) not only demonstrated track speed and football skills, but he hasn’t lifted yet.
“A lot of times, if I can find a tall, skinny 200-meter guy, who hasn’t lifted weights, I think there’s a (potential) 100-meter guy in there. It translates a little more into what you look for in a corner. If he’s a 11.2 or 11.1 guy in the 100, if he’d been working on weights, he’d be a 10.7 or 10.8 guy in the 100, and that is perfect speed for a corner.”
Lamb said he and BYU head coach Kalani Sitake are in alignment one hundred percent in this “developmental potential.”
The other night he was making an official home visit to a recruit and having dinner with the parents, explaining developmental potential. The father asked Lamb how much of that BYU was doing. Lamb replied, “I think we ought to do more.”
Lamb's wife was sitting nearby and warned him he shouldn’t be telling them what he wants to do, making it seem like BYU isn’t doing enough.
“No,” he told her. “It wasn’t that at all. Every decision we make, we do it collectively as a staff and we have coaches on our staff that have had great success with players who continue with linear success. I personally have had more success with players whose best days are far out in front of them. They have a gratitude that one coach or one school saw that development potential in them.”
In season’s to come, you’ll see BYU recruit speed and size and then make it fit a need. Tight ends could be defensive ends, safeties could switch to linebackers and linebackers could be tight ends or defensive ends.
“Some of Kalani’s greatest stories he tells are about walkons or under-recruited players who switched positions. So many of the great defensive linemen that came through the University of Utah at the time Kalani was there have been original linebackers or tight ends that he saw potential in.”
As far as “star” ranking, it is interesting that former BYU and current Utah receivers coach Guy Holliday tweeted Friday: Signing day is over, the stars you were given in high school mean nothing in college. Focus on being a 5-star person, student and player. It’s about us, not you.
SUU’s Killebrew gave an illuminating quote to the Deseret News before he was drafted in the fourth round by Detroit last spring.
As a zero star high school recruit, of the Lamb system of development, he said:
“It wasn’t’ like we all went to the magic store, bought some magic beans, ate them and became good football players. It literally was the three of us working together, working often and working hard. It wasn’t an accident.”
Lamb might deal in some hidden magic beans, however. He just calls it something else.