Recruiting should be extremely interesting for the next few weeks. For those who haven't followed as closely during the season, there is a new early signing period for schools between Dec. 20 and Dec. 22. There is also a dead period starting Dec. 18 and lasting through Jan. 11.

This means that we have two weekends for official (and unofficial) visitors before the Monday where coaches are not able to meet players face to face.

This staff is obviously behind a number of other coaching staffs in their relationships, one of the most important parts of recruiting. Since we started off so much later than most, it makes sense that Mullen and Co. are focusing on some of the players that already were recruited by UF and then a number of the players that were recruited by Mississippi State. The good news is that a chunk of programs we recruit against are going through coaching changes. FSU, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas A&M all have changed coaches.

Our top immediate priority is to get some of our biggest and most valued targets to either sign during the early signing period OR not sign with other programs during that time. This would include our top targets at QB, some of the major commits that have stuck around, and some of the major prospects looking at signing early at any other programs. It appears that the staff has done a good job of locking up a few of our current commits - Amari Burney, Kyle Pitts, Dameon Pierce, Iverson Clement, David Reese, and Randy Russell are all 4-stars or future 4-stars who I feel confident about sticking with the orange and blue. Dante Lang and recent OT commit Chris Bleich are also likely to stick around.

A few players have decommitted that we are still going to
be targeting heavily (Jacob Copeland, JaMarr Chase), a few have decided to look in other directions and will be tough to get back due to defensive scheme and coaches leaving (Divaad Wilson and Taylor Upshaw), and a few of the decommits are just not part of our future plans.

Two players that may end up leaving that the staff really would like to hang onto: Richard Gouraige and Tyquan Thornton. Both are likely to be looking around, but Mullen is making an effort to keep them on board.

Matt Corral is a huge question mark with all of the QBs that we have been targeting. Stop worrying about what he or his dad say about UF and what our staff says regarding him. Pay more attention to where he visits and where/who our staff visits. The fact that our staff has started messing around with other high-profile QBs is a pretty clear indicator in my opinion that he isn't the first choice of this staff. Look to see if Corral is on the official visit one of these next two weekends or if he ends up visiting different schools.

Other players that could potentially leave this class: Corey Gammage, Nigel Bethel, and Deontai Williams. I don't think this is a huge issue based on who we have offered and are targeting currently.

December 18th is a Monday. Coaches can only call/text/tweet recruits at this point. Some of our commits will be signing early that week, but this is the point where the staff finally gets to sit back and re-evaluate the entire board. They have spent so much time on the road and making phone calls that they haven't had as much of a chance to break down players and fits in depth. Expect our recruiting board to change a good bit at this time. It's also a chance to evaluate talented prospects who are waiting until national signing day.
We have already made a large number of new offers and coaching visits over the past week and a half with Mullen here. Official visit lists for the next two weekends should have some really exciting players coming to take a look. Expect OL and DL to be the huge focuses, but there should be a few big name surprises showing up as well. I'll dig into the biggest targets once those visitor lists become a little more solidified and I will hopefully have a post at some point in either late December or January with the updated target board.

This post was edited on 12/6/17 at 4:09 pm