New Bears

The California Golden Bears have received early commitments for their 2015 recruiting class from five high school football players. For the end of June, that feels about right for Cal. Here are the five:

Austin Aaron  WR  Napa High School, Napa, CA
Grayson Bankhead  WR  Corona Centennial, Corona, CA
Ryan Gibson  OL  St. Stanislaus High School, Bay St. Louis, MS
Lonny Powell  RB  Sacramento High School, Sacramento, CA
Malik Psalms  CB  Ayala High School, Chino Hills, CA

All five have 3-star ratings from the various recruiting and grading sites. The NFL Draft shows every year that grading football players is basically a crapshoot. Grading high school football players is even more so. So many NFL stars stepped onto their college campus as freshmen saddled with a 3-star grade. 5-star football players will get the boosters and the alumni in a lather but the grade is just for show. All that really matters is what the player does on Saturdays, or Thursdays, or Fridays. Cal's five early commits are a nice start. They need linemen and Gibson will help. Under Sonny Dykes, Cal trots out a fleet of receivers. Aaron and Bankhead will join that fleet. Powell looks like a bull of a back. Cal's defense was a disaster last year. Part of that was due to an unbelievable run of injuries in the secondary. You can never have enough corners. That's especially true when most of them are injured. Psalms adds depth and at 6'2" he has terrific size. Going forward in recruiting, Cal has to add a lot of talent to their defense. Injuries aside, it was a mess. This is the first full recruiting class for Sonny Dykes and his staff. It will be interesting to see how he does. His first season coaching in Berkeley left quite a bit to be desired. Their one win was against Portland St. and they had to really hang on for that win. They held no team under 30 points and only three times did they hold teams under 40 points. After only one season, Dykes is already feeling some heat. His schematic changes from the Jeff Tedford years are dramatic so it's going to take a little time. That's why his first full recruiting class will be so critical.

Not every college attacks this early recruitment the same. Cal has never had a large number of early commits. Even under Jeff Tedford. This year, most of the Pac-12 schools have commits from 5-10 high school players. Arizona went nuts compared to the rest of the conference with 15 early commits. Title-contending schools like Florida St. and Alabama already have about 19 commits. That's about an entire class for Cal. Those schools don't have to do much recruiting. As soon as they offer kids a scholarship they get commits. None of these commits mean a thing until that letter-of-intent is signed in February.