Noel Devine
Sunday, January 30, 2005 at 01:46PM If you follow recruiting with any kind of passion, you have probably
heard the name Noel Devine. He is a Florida prep football player
with a legendary reputation. I don't have a whole lot of info
about him, but for a while had heard his name and people telling me to
go find some video of him.
Well, I've finally run across a highlight tape of his, which we will
link below. I am more than impressed, and apparently he will be
just a high school junior this upcoming season. The highlights
look unreal. Generally the idea is to be very skeptical of high
school highlight clips, because high school competition is nothing
compared to college, where most games don't even have a legit D-1
player on the field. That makes it tough to compare guys'
abilities to break tackles, relative speed, and so many more aspects of
their abilities.
That's why I generally try to find skills that do translate to another
level-things like vision, top flight speed (more for skill guys than
the regular players), size, quickness of feet, etc. There isn't
always a whole lot to work with. What I'm getting at is that
although the video is amazing, Noel may not be this alltime recruit
he's being hyped to be right now. But he very well could.
I was impressed with how he just blew through the initial wave of
defenders, and spent most of his time in the second and third waves,
and was outrunning those guys once he had a step. The video
reminded me a lot of what I saw of Ted Ginn Jr. in high school, and
somewhat from Reggie Bush. Those are two huge comparisons.
That said, their videos looked like a lot of other great highlight
videos of guys who were barely D-1 players and certainly weren't D-1
stars. That's the trick, to try and distinguish what's legit and
what's not.
My early impression is that Devine looks pretty legit. Definitely someone to keep an eye on.
Anyway, be sure and check out the link below, and ignore all the pictures to find the video link at the bottom.
Noel Devine
Recruiting
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