Just saw the ESPN breakdown of under-the-radar players for each top 25 team and I had to scroll straight to our page to see who they picked. This is exactly the kind of thing that gets me fired up about where this program is heading. We are sitting on some serious depth that the national guys are finally starting to notice.
What I love about this pick is that it validates everything I have been hearinng from sources close to the program about the spring practices. The staff has been quietly developing some absolute dogs in the lower tiers of the rotation and now the rest of the country is gonna find out. This is not a guy who got here through the portal with a bunch of hype behind him. This is a homegrown development piece that our coaching staff identified early and has been molding for this exact moment.
The 247 composite on this kid was solid coming out of high school but he was never the headline grabber. Now he is about to be the name that makes SEC offensive coordinators lose sleep. That is the Elko effect in action. We are not just buying talent anymore. We are growing it.
I am looking at the rest of the list and seeing the usual suspects from Georgia and Ohio State getting their guys highlighted but the difference is those programs have been doing this for a decade. We are building that same pipeline right now in College Station. Kennedy Brown being our third five-star in the 2027 year is massive but these under-the-radar picks are what separate the one-year wonders from the sustained contenders.
The staff has been hammering the development angle since day one and this ESPN piece is the first real evidence that the national media is starting to see what we have been watching in spring ball. When the season kicks off in August there are gonna be a lot of people asking where this guy came from. We already know the answer.