2022 G5 Preview: South Florida Is Not Getting Better
When you hire a recruiting guy, you should probably be able to recruit, no?
This is part of the American Athletic Conference Preview, the final conference in the Outside Zone’s Group of Five season preview package. Check out the preview landing page for all previous stories. All previews and the entire Outside Zone archive are available for only $5 a month or $50 a year.
For a coaching staff that was hired back in the offseason of 2020 largely for its ability to recruit and slowly build back the talent baseline that USF saw decimated in the late 2010s by the listless Charlie Strong tenure, Jeff Scott’s Bulls staff sure does seem to be struggling to recruit and slowly build back this roster.
Sure, two seasons are two seasons. It’s a very small sample size and plenty of coaches have pulled great tenures out of slow starts – yes, even like the 3-18 mark Scott currently holds. But as the former Clemson co-OC approaches his third season at the helm in Tampa, it seems that someone has hit the panic button.
That sustainable, culture-driven recruiting that Scott was supposed to bring with him from Clemson? It yielded impressive results in his first full recruiting cycle. USF landed 21 prospects and secured the AAC’s No. 5 recruiting class in 2021, behind the leaders of the conference like Cincinnati, Memphis, SMU and in-state rivals UCF, but ahead of programs thought to be much further along in their rebuilds, like East Carolina Tulane and even Houston.
Former Miami (Fla.) QB turned JUCO prospect Jarren Williams led the way, but it was largely a class of encouraging high schoolers. The Bulls landed a trio of top-1,000 in-state prospects at wideout, tight end and running back as part of a class filled with Florida talent to the tune of 17 commits. The only other state represented was Georgia, with a punter coming from Australia as well. That’s the model that Scott said he was going to follow at USF, and it’s the model he stuck closely to in year one.
But that 2021 class had something else, too. It featured nine transfers into the program – seven from the P5 ranks.
Scott’s first class, which he had only a few weeks to piece together after being hired, finished ninth in the league and held 14 high schoolers, one JUCO prospect and 11 transfers (seven of which were P5 castoffs).
This all makes sense. Scott was taking over a depleted roster and did work in each of his first two classes to fill some of the holes in the team with older talent to balance out the classes. That’s the standard operating procedure for new coaches in the transfer portal era.
The 2022 class, which just signed this past spring, does not make sense. The Bulls finished fifth in the AAC overall rankings, but they checked in at ninth in the standard-issue recruiting metrics. I want to clear the lane for this next part.
USF signed eight high schoolers in 2022.
Eight! The Bulls grabbed four JUCO prospects to round out the traditional recruiting, and then used the rest of their class space to sign 15 transfers! They signed five fucking players from the state of Florida!
I get it. I do. The transfer portal is a very attractive option for a G5 coach looking to add more potential and top-end talent to his roster, and USF certainly isn’t in a place where it can be turning down either at this point. Scott is a longtime P5 guy, he has familiarity with a lot of these players and felt that they would serve the team better – even if it’s just in the short-term – than high school recruiting would serve it in the long-term.
But, when does a program abandon the slow build in hopes of generating some quick success? At what point in a tenure, traditionally, does a staff begin to sell out for immediate solutions to roster problems? THE END OF IT.
This is not a slow build. This is not applying [said with the most contempt imaginable] The Clemson Model. This is a coaching staff that is desperate to win football games – either to generate some buzz on the recruiting trail or, as it is in literally every case, to get the hell out of town.
So here they are, your 2022 USF Bulls, subtitled: “Oh, you thought that what UCF is doing was lazy, short-sided and shoddy? Check this shit out.”
The offense is Gerry Bohanon’s to run. A rare P5 quarterback transfer with positive experience, the Baylor transplant adds a much-needed spark to this passing attack. Incumbent Timmy McClain showed signs of ability in 2021, completing 145 of 262 passes for 1,888 yards, but he also threw seven interceptions to five touchdowns. He’s only a sophomore and remains the quarterback of the future here, but Bohanon was a capable starter in the Big 12 and is a no-brainer for upgrading a position that needed upgrading.
He completed 173 of 275 passes as a starter in nearly every game for the conference title-winning Bears, picking up 18 touchdowns to seven interceptions with 2,200 yards. He also rushed 76 times for 323 yards and nine scores. That’s not the main focus of his game, but he’s certainly a capable runner and a good fit for an offense that would really like to have a running threat behind center.
If not for the rise of backup Blake Shapen, Bohanon would be the starter for a potential playoff contender in Waco; and if he had entered the portal before April (when Shapen was named the starter), he would have been a hot commodity among other P5 programs.
Instead, USF benefits from some weird timing. He has his issues, but he’s a very good quarterback – especially relative to the other options here. His addition is a major positive for the offseason. His pairing with new OC Travis Trickett, formerly of West Virginia, is fine. Trickett has no original ideas and runs the same offense that everyone else does. It’s fine.
The rest of the offense provides fewer reasons for optimism. Nine starters are back, including the entire offensive line, but this was the No. 100 offense in the nation last season. Bohanon can patch some holes, but USF is going to need a lot more of those transfers to hit for this offense to get into gear.
There’s experience next to him in the backfield, although neither incumbent starter Jaren Mangham nor backup Kelly Joiner Jr. was terribly impressive in 2021. Mangham carried 160 times for 671 yards, while Joiner fared a bit better, toting 78 times for 480 yards. He’s probably too small to be the workhorse, but Joiner is the better back and should see more carries. Clemson transfer Michael Dukes fills out the room.
There’s experience on the outside too, but Xavier Weaver is the only wideout who really stood out last season, catching a team-high 41 passes for 715 yards and two touchdowns. Jimmy Horn Jr., one of those top 1,000 recruits in 2021, is back for his sophomore season after stealing the show off the bench last season, snaring 30 receptions for 408 yards and one touchdown. Both will benefit from the infusion of talent at quarterback, but the battle for the No. 3 receiver spot is as open now as it was a season ago.
Starters Omarion Dollison and Latrell Williams (who played just three games) are back, but neither impressed last season, and that spot next to Horn and Weaver will be hotly contested. Khafre Brown arrives from North Carolina, Ajou Ajou is here from Clemson, and former Baylor transfer Yusuf Terry is back for his second season. Demarcus Gregory and Bryce Miller are gone, but the room certainly has plenty of talent still. Talent hasn’t been the issue, though. I’d guess that third spot goes to Ajou or Brown.
There should be plenty for improvement here, but again, talent hasn’t been the issue. USF has had talent on these last two rosters, just as it did at the end of the Strong era.
Bob Shoop’s (!!!) defense has some work to do. It was 117th nationally in 2021, and though eight starters return, there just aren’t really any reasons to be excited about that. Middle linebacker Tony Grier is a tackling machine (92 in 2021) and fellow seniors Dwayne Boyles (LB), Vincent Davis (NB) and Mekhi LaPointe (S) make for an interesting veteran core, but this line cannot generate even a little pressure.
Shoop is all about blitzing, and USF threw all the resources it had at front seven players in the portal – Wake Forest DL James Ash, Temple DL Nick Bags, Minnesota DL Rashad Cheney and LB DJ Gordon IV, Missouri EDGE Jatorian Hansford and North Carolina DL Clyde Pinder Jr. – but Shoop also stinks out loud.
He’s a bad football coach. His defenses aren’t any good because he has no good football ideas. This one being good would be a triumph of talent over internal incompetence, which is so rarely the case in the G5. This is not a level of football that rewards incompetence. The margins are too thin.
And ultimately, that’s going to be the issue here for the entire Scott tenure. USF hired someone to build Clemson in the G5, and Clemson cannot exist in the G5. Programs with so many nepotism hires, dead weight and bizarre ideological approaches to the game can thrive at the P5 level because the talent margins are that much wider, as are the budget sheets.
No matter how much talent USF accumulates, and whether it does it by way of the portal or traditional recruiting, it can never escape the fact that it hired a coach who can’t coach, and who doesn’t know anyone who can coach. Try again in two years.