NU targets reeling in offers from other schools

The offers to Northwestern’s top 2017 recruiting targets have been going out at a breakneck pace recently.

Offers from other schools, that is.

Several players who have long held offers from the Wildcats have been inundated with offers from other top programs in the last month. Just take a look at a few examples on the offensive line alone.

Northwestern was the first school to offer three-star Blaise Andries, back in October. The Marshall (Minn.) product had a total of just six offers on New Year’s Day. Then February hit with a blizzard of offers. In alphabetical order, they were Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado State, Duke, Florida, Memphis, Miami, Michigan State, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Penn State and Virginia. Now Andries is sitting at 21 offers…and counting.

When three-star Joel Honigford of Sugarcreek (Ohio) Garaway got his offer from Northwestern in November, it was just his third. Now the 6-foot-6, 263-pounder sits at 19 after Nebraska, Michigan State, Oklahoma, Penn State, Pitt and West Virginia all threw their hats into the ring recently.

Michael Miranda, yet another three-star, picked up his Wildcat offer in December. It was his first from a Big Ten school, a big deal for the Stow (Ohio) Stow-Monroe product. Last month, however, his recruiting took off, as he added Power Five’s Iowa State, Penn State, Pitt, Syracuse, Virginia, Vanderbilt and Wake Forest to his list.

Heck, Northwestern just offered three-star Will Farrar of Richmond (Texas) on Saturday, and he added offers from Texas and Nebraska since.

There are plenty of other examples at different positions, too. Northwestern offered four-star outside linebacker Pete Werner in December; last month he blew up as a national recruit, adding offers from Iowa, Mississippi, Notre Dame, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Tennessee.

What does it all mean? Two things, really. First, Northwestern does a good job of identifying talent early in the process. And second, it’s going to be a whole lot tougher for the Wildcats to land those prospects.

Northwestern has always relied on zeroing in on its targets early in the process and then, as Rivals Illinois recruiting expert Edgy Tim O’Halloran puts it, “working them.” The earlier they get in on a recruit, the more time Wildcat coaches have to build their relationships with him. Ponying up with an early offer shows the prospect that the Wildcats were one of the first to believe that they can be a Power Five player at the next level. That action speaks much louder than a coach’s words on Twitter direct messages or letters.

Northwestern coaches also hope that the bond they develop with those players, over time, will be strong enough to fend off the big boys who often offer later in the process. All of the players mentioned above have all already taken visits, and Northwestern has a fairly high success rates when they can get a player on campus.

The Wildcats’ MO has always been about building relationships and spending more time with fewer targets. They take a rifle, not a shotgun, approach to recruiting. They don’t do junior days with dozens of prospects; instead, they will invite a handful and give each more time with coaches and players.

Here’s a case in point: Northwestern has offered 52 Class of 2017 prospects, according to Rivals' recruiting database; Michigan, which lies on the other end of the spectrum and casts a much wider net than NU, has offered 206. The Wildcat have offered four offensive tackles; the Wolverines, 28.

It’s a testament to the Northwestern staff’s eye for talent that the Wildcats are able to identify and offer so many recruits who become hot commodities later in the recruiting process. Especially when considering the school’s academic requirements, which greatly limit the size of the pond that Northwestern is fishing in and is a burden that the overwhelming majority of other staffs do no face.

The fact that Northwestern landed 19 of its 20 Class of 2016 commitments before the start of the season helped, too. The Wildcats were able to devote more of their time and effort to 2017 prospects that much earlier, contributing to the number of early offers.

Will Northwestern’s early offers and strong relationships be enough to lead a 2017 prospect to eventually pick the Wildcats over Notre Dame or Michigan or Texas or Alabama? That remains to be seen. It has happened before, most recently with Roderick Campbell (chose NU over Notre Dame), Cameron Kolwich (Michigan), Auston Anderson (Texas) and Jordan Thompson (Alabama).

And by targeting players and getting their offers out early, Wildcat coaches are doing all they can to make it happen again.