Verbal commitments sure don’t seem to mean what they used to. Not to the players themselves, nor to the coaches of opposing teams still trying to sway them.
Some Arkansas football fans still smarting over the de-commitments of Carius Curne and Bear McWhorter might take a little solace in knowing that more well-moneyed programs are getting poached on the recruiting front too.
Kade Phillips Pulls a Carius Curne for LSU
That certainly was the case on Sunday afternoon, when 4-star cornerback Kade Phillips, a top-65 national recruit in the class of 2025 previously committed to Texas, publicly revealed he’d flipped to Brian Kelly’s LSU football program while perhaps setting a world record for most dour expression on an announcement post.
Just by looking at his face, you’d think the chances of him being happy about where he is would be less than those of Carolina to win it all this season according to top NFL betting sites:
Just like the LSU football staff had done with Curne, the Marion lineman who waffled between Fayetteville and Baton Rouge before finally deciding on LSU, the Tigers stayed on Phillips despite his pledge to Texas on July 7.
Kade Phillips admitted just as much on Sunday when he said his Texas commitment didn’t give the LSU defensive coaches any pause whatsoever: “LSU has been on me ever since they first offered me,” he told On3. “It was a little while once I committed to Texas with them still texting and calling me almost every day. The [LSU] coaching staff was locked in with me even after I committed.”
This wouldn’t be so funny to many in Arkansas if it hadn’t already happened to one of their own commits and could very likely happen again. Except this time, it wouldn’t be LSU doing the poaching but Texas essentially passing on the bad juju they just received from the Kade Phillips fleecing.
Arkansas Football Commit Caleb Bell Pecking Order
If the last few days are any indication, Caleb Bell will get far more attention from Arkansas football fans in the coming months than what he received immediately following his commitment this summer.
That’s typically the case when the Razorbacks land a three-star prospect before he truly blows up on the recruiting trail — and that may be happening with the big defensive lineman out of Milton High in Alpharetta, Ga.
Bell wasn’t exactly a diamond in the rough when he committed to Arkansas on June 19. Listed at 6-foot-3, 270 pounds, he had already taken an official visit to North Carolina State and initially had canceled plans to check out Mississippi State, plus had numerous other Power Four offers from the likes of Georgia Tech, Missouri, Rutgers and others.
On top of the solid, but not great offer list, Bell was – and still is – a consensus three-star recruit. Rivals considers him a mid-tier three-star, while 247Sports, ESPN and On3 each have him in the high three-star range.
That’s nothing to scoff at, but for a fan base used to “settling” for three-star recruits, it wasn’t something to get overly excited about.
Fast forward two months, though, and Bell’s stock appears to be rising.
Texas Goes on The Offensive with Bell
Just last week, he tweeted about an offer from Texas, which is entering the SEC fresh off an appearance in the four-team College Football Playoff.
On Sunday, he told 247Sports’ Hank South that while he remains committed to Arkansas and has a “strong relationship” with the UA staff, it also “felt really good to receive the [Longhorns’] offer. I have been wanting it for a long time.”
That’s “have been wanting” folks, not “had been wanting.” That means he’s been wanting that offer even while committed to the Razorbacks. If that isn’t bad news to Sam Pittman and his lead recruiter Deke Adams, the Hogs’ defensive line coach, then nothing is.
It’s fair to wonder, with quotes like this and the not-surprising news that Bell is going to keep visiting other schools this fall, what’s the real point of even making a verbal commitment vs announcing an official “lean” at this point. Clearly, recruits enjoy the attention that comes from announcing the narrowing down of their school lists and then their verbal commitments (and nowadays often their de-commitments and then their re-commitments or flips).
But for the sake of fans’ sanity, figuring out a way to pare down the number of announcements would be welcome.
To Bell’s credit, his play certainly merits the uptick in attention.
This weekend, he was making plays in a battle of national top-25 teams that featured a combined 57 players who are committed to or have offers from Division II or better schools – including a whopping 19 players pledged to Power Four programs and another 21 with at least one offer from such a school.
One of those plays was a key third-down sack late in the second quarter of a game that his No. 6 Milton team eventually won 13-10 against No. 21 Buford following a two-hour weather delay at halftime, forcing it to end past midnight. Here are three different angles of that sack:
It shouldn’t be too surprising that Bell had that kind of performance to start his senior year or that he’s starting to receive some more attention on the recruiting scene.
After all, he’s the son of Kendrell Bell, who spent seven seasons in the NFL. Once a fullback in junior college, Bell evolved into an All-SEC linebacker at Georgia and then earned NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year honors in 2001 after the Steelers took in the second round of the NFL Draft.
His son appears to be making his rise a little earlier in his career, which means hanging on to him until the early signing period in December may not be easy for Arkansas — especially if Sam Pittman doesn’t get things turned around in 2024.
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Updates on More Georgia Recruits for Hogs
Arguably the biggest recruiting win of Sam Pittman’s tenure with Arkansas football occurred this summer when Tavion Wallace shocked the world by picking the Razorbacks over Florida State, Georgia and others.
If you were wondering why he is considered a top-40 recruit by both 247Sports and ESPN, look no further than his first game of his senior year.
Although his Wayne County High team lost to Glynn Academy, it was a 16-10 defensive battle and Wallace scored his squad’s lone touchdown with a 56-yard scoop-and-score.
It’s unclear if it happened on that play or not, but during the game, Wallace hit a whopping 21.42 mph. That’s a legit speed, too, because his school in Jessup, Ga., employs the same Catapult technology that Arkansas uses in summer workouts.
How fast is 21.42 mph? Well, Isaiah Sategna is one of the 10 fastest returning players in the FBS, based on max in-game speed in 2023, according to Reel Analytics. He topped out at 21.9 mph on his punt return for a touchdown against BYU.
Needless to say, that is elite speed for a linebacker who has yet to go through a collegiate strength and conditioning program.
Big Game in Blowout Loss
The Razorbacks’ other commitment from Georgia was also in action over the weekend, but JaQuentin Madison’s team came up on the wrong end of a blowout.
Even though Alpharetta was destroyed by Houston County 57-10 inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, the three-star defensive lineman had a solid performance.
Madison notched a sack early in the game – which can be seen in the video below – and finished with six total tackles, half of which were for a loss.
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Andrew Hutchinson contributed to the above article.
See our latest on Arkansas recruiting here:
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More on Kade Phillips’ flip from Texas to LSU:
More on Arkansas football recruiting from BoAS:
