Minnesota Football Recruiting: Recent commitments & National Signing Day primer

Coach Fleck has been leading Minnesota just just over 3 weeks, but if you’re like me it feels like he’s been here a lot longer with all of the recruiting changes we’ve seen in that short timeframe. This weekend the whirlwind continued with 4 more verbal commitments by Sunday night and a 5th just this morning!

Who did the Gophers get?

Here’s a quick recap of the newest soon to be Gophers that GN will have C28 posts for in the near future:

CB - Ihmir Marsette

A great get at a position of need for Minnesota. Also good because Iowa and Rutgers didn’t land him.

DL - Austin Schirck

This commitment surprised me the least, as I figured Schirck was an auto-commit on the spot if given an offer. Minnesota is obviously an upgrade over Northern Iowa and his familiarity with Paup as his future position coach made it a no-brainer.

CB - Justus Harris

Much like Schirck, I figured Harris would commit as soon as he had an offer. His commitment helps round out the defensive back (especially cornerback) portion of this class.

DL - Royal Silver

The Gophers beat out Syracuse for Silver late on Sunday. He was a good pickup for our defensive line depth, but he was not the last DL verbal commit coming out of the the weekend...

DL - Malcolm Robinson

The commitment of Robinson this morning closed out the weekend strong for Minnesota. Prior to flipping, Robinson had been Purdue’s top ranked recruit. Nothing like ending your final recruiting weekend with a commit to a position of need while denying a divisional opponent talent they desperately need!

What recruits did Minnesota miss out on?

WR - Jafar Armstrong

Minnesota lost out on Armstrong to Notre Dame. While this was his expected destination for his flip from Mizzou, Minnesota was in the running until the end this weekend.

Where does this leave the class?

At this point, Minnesota’s 2017 recruiting class is basically complete and you shouldn’t expect any signing day surprises. Technically the Gophers only have room for one more commitment (they are at 27 right now), but the scuttlebutt is that the staff will find room for Boye Mafe and Trey Creamer if both want to play at Minnesota. Creamer plans to announce his choice tonight at 6pm ET, with the rumors being that he’s leaning to Rutgers. As for Mafe, we’ll have to wait and see.

Minnesota is currently #52 in the 247 Composite Team Rankings, which is a 15 spot jump over where the class was when Tracy Claeys was fired. It is the 12th ranked class in the Big Ten (just behind Iowa at #50). This represents a huge coup for Fleck and his staff given the fact that they had less than a month to work with.