Recruiting Country: The latest recruiting news surrounding the Maroon & White

TexAgs' co-owner and executive editor Billy Liucci and recruiting analyst Ryan Brauninger joined TexAgs Live for another edition of Recruiting Country presented by American Momentum Bank, highlighting the latest news from the recruiting trail surrounding A&M.

Key notes from Billy Liucci

• To land KJ Edwards‍, this was one that surprised us yesterday in terms of when it happened. I don’t think we woke up yesterday expecting an Edwards announcement. I’m not positive Mike Elko woke up expecting it. What they did know is that A&M was way more in the mix for Edwards than people thought, and they were really sitting in a good position for him for a while. Even when Jonathan Hatton Jr‍ committed, you felt like they could end up getting both of those guys because there was a need for more than one. The two seemed like they fit in terms of style. Texas did a lot, and LSU did a lot to convince the people covering them and both of those fan bases that they were the teams to beat. I’m reading some of the Texas stuff saying A&M made a late push, but A&M has been there through the entire process. I think LSU and Texas underestimated A&M as a possibility.
   
• They load up at a position to the point where you think they can’t take another one, then they do. I remember Mack Brown. There was a certain player A&M was going to fight Texas for. It was a one-sided beatdown, and Brown was just grabbing all of these offensive linemen. Then you assume the seventh guy, A&M should get, then Texas went and got him.
   
• When you’re elite, you can get the two unquestioned best running backs in Texas. Trooper Taylor is an elite recruiter. He always has been his whole career. That’s a unique name. Anyone from any Texas college has heard of Taylor for years. He is an ace on this staff. I love the way Adam Cushing recruits for what they’re looking for. He has more tricks up his sleeve coming up. I think we are realizing why Holmon Wiggins was hired as the receiver coach at Alabama before A&M.
   
• I’m talking about the offensive side of the ball. I think Elko has a really good recruiting staff on that side of the ball. We’ll talk about Brandon Arrington‍ in a second because Jordan Peterson is starting to make a real name for himself.
   
• I do think part of it is when it’s national and coast to coast, the days of pulling up the “Texas Top 10” and seeing who gets the most off this list of A&M, Texas or Oklahoma are gone. Then, you started seeing more of them go out of state, and now, A&M is going to start adding Texas kids a lot more frequently in the next run of commits. When you look at some of these guys. I think a lot of it with national recruits, like Arrington, who is announcing tomorrow, everyone is gassed up to see who wins out on him of A&M and Oregon. Some of these lesser-known national guys, particularly ones that A&M gets on campus and gets commits from early, the fans haven’t gotten emotionally invested in.
   
• I think the Aggies have an excellent shot with Tristian Givens‍. My point is when Jamarion Carlton‍ from Temple visits Texas, and the Aggies cancel their visit... Instead of melting down and panicking on the message boards about a coaching staff that’s putting together a top-five class, if not higher, maybe take a second and see where he ranks nationally with the other guys A&M is trying to get. It’s the same thing with this WR/DB in Cypress, Paris Melvin Jr‍. He flips out his A&M visit for Texas, and people melt down. I don’t know what kind of take he was at that point.
   
• If you’re going to go that negative on something, you have to be that much more positive when they get Samuel Roseborough‍ over Texas a week after his official visit there. You can be negative, but match that energy by being positive and giving credit when there’s good. People talk about Maroon-colored glasses. Whatever the opposite is, take them off and throw them away. Start enjoying the good.
   
• They landed Edwards, an elite football player, a game-changing back. He is a game breaker, and if he weren’t running in Maroon & White, he’d be in Purple & Gold or Burnt Orange. Everybody is excited about him, but you should’ve been excited about Roseborough. You should be excited about Arrington and Camren Hamiel‍. Get up to speed with what is actually happening with this stuff. We’re talking about landing a five-star running back, and more of the comments from Aggie fans are that, “We’ve seen this before, and we’ll go 8-4 anyway.” If that’s your mindset, I don’t understand why you follow it. You’re allowed to enjoy it and have the common sense to understand they have to develop him and keep him on campus. But you can also see it’s a completely different coaching staff, and that 2022 recruiting class was an outlier. The top five recruiting classes typically win you football games. Just because it backfired once doesn’t mean you don’t want to be there. It’s almost like they’d rather not get the good players and have them magically turn up.
   
• You have to know how much money Texas is throwing around in NIL money. Texas Tech openly brags about it. A&M would rather it not be openly advertised. I wish fans would understand A&M is doing well on the NIL front, and you could always do better, but that’s part of why they don’t want those numbers out. Sometimes it’s just good old-fashioned recruiting. It’s a guy like Taylor, and there’s still recruiting that has to be done because everyone is offering NIL money and more this year than they ever have.
   
• I’ve reached out directly to sources out west about Arrington that feel like that has been trending significantly A&M’s way the last few days. One of those situations where you’re 24 hours from the finish line. You have reasons to feel good about it, but you know it’s not across the finish line.
   
• Even last year in that cornerback class, I think part of it is not just that Peterson is an Aggie, it’s that he came from Kansas. I go back to a guy Kevin Sumlin told me he was going to hire. It was David Beaty. He did an amazing job recruiting wide receivers to A&M while he was here. Really putting A&M back on the map in DFW, where they had been a non-factor for several years prior. Whether it was Mike Sherman or Dennis Franchione, it was a problem. Oklahoma was rolling the way they were. Beaty really turned it around. He was at Kansas at the time. He had gone from high school to Rice to Kansas. Peterson got his first job at Fresno with Tim DeRuyter when he got the head job. I know when Elko hired him, part of it was that he had a reputation for recruiting lights out at Kansas. He brought some real talent there that ended up in the NFL. The question was if he could translate it to A&M. I think Elko made the right call because he’s just a great recruiter.
   
• Everybody talks about Jeff Banks as one of the best recruiters in the country. I mention him because he was at A&M, but he got hired by Nick Saban. Then he left for Texas. But when he got to A&M, nobody gave a damn about him because everyone was worried about losing Brian Polian because he had a name at Stanford before. Then you hire a former punter from UTEP who didn’t have a name at all to the A&M fanbase. I think Peterson is quietly kicking ass on the trail right now.
   
• I always prefer when coaches make a name for themselves somewhere else first. That carries more weight to me. Real quick, Edwards again. A&M has a couple of spectacular skill players committed in this class. There’s more, but Aaron Gregory‍, Edwards and Hatton... Those guys are potential game changers. Edwards is electric. You watch that tape. He had 11-something yards per carry. We talked yesterday about what will set A&M up. The one box I don’t know if they’ll have checked is whether they'll have skill players who will be top five at their position in the conference. There are dynamic players all across the field on any team in the SEC. Edwards absolutely has that juice.
   
• I could think about six guys off the top of my head that I absolutely think they are going to land, and I’m probably forgetting one. I think the Edwards addition is going to set off a little run here. I could see them landing three guys who are borderline five-star players between now and then. That’s not factoring in Lamar Brown‍ or Tristen Keys‍, who A&M is now in the mix for. Jase Mathews‍, too. I think there will be another player or two that they see add that people weren’t really expecting.

Key notes from Ryan Brauninger

• I wanted to highlight when you go through these recruitments, particularly with Kaeden Johnson‍. No one was scouting him at another position until A&M got him. Edwards went on a visit to Texas and committed to A&M right after. I think our guys are working really well, like a well-oiled machine.
   
• Don’t underestimate Taylor. I've written about that before. On the surface, your brain says A&M has one of the best running backs in the state of Texas. Taylor can really, really recruit. He coaches hard and has good energy. His sights have always been set on getting both Hatton and Edwards. He was open and honest, saying he wanted to get both guys.
   
• It’s head-to-head recruiting wins that Texas and LSU guys really wanted. They spent a lot of time with Rosebrough and Edwards. People need to realize this is happening more often with Elko. I think it's because A&M has recruited nationally. They are winning battles against the national kids with their rivals, such as Hamiel, being a win over Oregon.
   
• We feel good about where Texas A&M is at from multiple sources across the country… We are kind of starting to see some real arrows pointing in the right direction with Peterson. When you look at the defensive back class, it's pretty stinkin’ impressive.
   
• It could be a busy two weeks. I’d go all the way to July 4. I think if you draw the line when Tank King‍ announces his public decision, that’s probably a good line in the sand. It’s not out of the question that they could be adding half a dozen more commits between now and then. With the way they’re rolling, if you set the line at 6.5, I may go over cause you can’t factor in the momentum they’ve been on.