The Jeff Hafley myth..
- Thread starter ruready07
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We all need to realize and it shouldn't be up for debate, GS was the FACE of RU football and brought respectability to Rutger football. He practically single handily got players who took us to 11-2 on the roster. It was GS who got "Our players are off limits unless you're Top 10" - Don Bosco's Mike Teel, Rice, Leonard, Foster, etc to the Banks.
Hafley was getting us to another level. Great leader always surround themselves with great people. Hence why Ed Oregon is paid top dollar and is never 1 day out of job. The guy is a closer, as well (good luck to him on his second try as a HC. But it was him who loaded USC with talent).
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GS was the face. But let's not pretend that Teel, Leonard, and Foster were highly recruited coming out of high school. And Rice would've been in orange had SU not fired Pasqualoni.
1. GS got them here plain and simple.
That's life. So Rice chose us over who ever else was recruiting him. The guy was a 3 Star kid.
I really don't mean to take away from Hafley, who was definitely a good recruiter. The point is that the guys from Pitt that came over were not elite players, eventhough at the time they were highly rated and got our fan base really fired up. So the talent infusion argument wasn't true.
The other point is that just because Hafley was a good recruiter it should take nothing away from schiano. If anything, schiano should get credit for adding good recruiters to his staff.
This whole conversation stems from my disbelief in how little credit Rutgers fans want to give one of the best coaches in school history (the longest football history in America)
The other point is that just because Hafley was a good recruiter it should take nothing away from schiano. If anything, schiano should get credit for adding good recruiters to his staff.
This whole conversation stems from my disbelief in how little credit Rutgers fans want to give one of the best coaches in school history (the longest football history in America)
How is the talent infusion argument not true? Those guys were above average talent coming out of high school with offers from plenty of other schools. Getting above average talent was what he had to do and they were seen as just that by many BCS schools. Developing them into above average players is an entirely different matter. I can't believe you're still trying to argue this. Because a guy like savon Huggins didn't work out its somehow a knock on hafley that he didn't predict the future when guys like urban Meyer were trying to pull him any way they could? (Hafley solidified both shuler and Huggins for us)
Nova was obviously above average as much as fans want to disagree. He started and he produced plenty of offense.
That has nothing to do with his effectiveness as a recruiter.
I think people give GS plenty of credit. That does not change the fact that Pitt was doing very well recruiting in NJ with Hafley leading the charge and that things swung our way when he came on board here.
It has nothing to do with it. This guy magically wanted hafley to predict the future on who would bust and who wouldn't despite the fact that plenty of other schools would've killed for some of these kids to be a part of their class at the time
Nice try Choppin. I looked at the recruiters for the four stars in 2006-2009 and all of the 4 stars recruits in. 2006-2008 were Pennsylvania recruits and almost 90% were offensive players, a lot of 4 stars RB, WR, OL and even QB. None recruited by Hafley, Hafley was a defensive back coach.
Hafley started to recruits 5 NJ recruits in 2009 , 2 2 stars, 2-3 stars and 1-4 star. In 2010, he recruited 4 NJ recruits 2-4 stars, 1-2 stars and 1-3 stars. Hafley had no real effect on recruiting in 2006-2008. I think he was learning during the early years. During his stay at Pittsburgh 2006-2010 Hafley recruited 3 4 stars recruits.
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First off, you rely far too heavily on the "recruited by" listing. As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Hafley had relationships with a lot more players than those where he's listed as the "recruited by". Do you really think that if someone has a "recruited by" staffer next to their name, that was the only person who spoke to them or helped bring them on board? Darius Hamilton and Ray Rice have no one listed in the "recruited by" column... did they just magically appear on the roster without anyone contacting them or building a relationship? You really think that Hafley wasn't involved in the recruiting of Huggins and Shuler because his name isn't listed?
Second, why does the position Hafley coached need to have anything to do with positions of the players he brought in? Do you think that position coaches are only allowed to recruit or talk to guys that play their position? That's just simply not true. Even if you look just at just the "recruited by" name (which, as noted above, isn't available for every player and doesn't show all staffers who recruited a prospect)... Hafley's name is next to Leonte Carroo for Rutgers and Ray Graham (RB) for Pitt. Panagos' name is next to Josh Hicks.
You're trying to use a flawed data point to prove out an agenda.
Stop it. YOU must hate Schiano to give Hafley too much credit. In 2006-2008, they were all Pennsylvania recruits that wanted to play for a NFL coach.
Schiano was a very good recruiter, and took us out of the basement and into respectable territory. He had a vision, and was able to sell that vision to kids and their parents. He took our recruiting classes from FCS level to mid-pack BCS level, which was no small feat. I don't mean to diminish anything that Schino did, or that he built.
But Hafley was additive to that. Making a claim that Hafley brought nothing to the recruiting table, or that his recruiting ability was somehow a myth, is at odds with reality. Schiano upped our recruiting, and Hafley helped it go higher - that doesn't diminish what Schiano did (if anything, it's more credit to Schiano for bringing Hafley on staff to boost recruiting).
No man is an island. Schiano was a strong recruiter, and an even stronger program builder - and he accomplished a Herculean task getting us from where we were in the late 90s to where we were in the mid 2000s. I don't know why giving credit to Hafley takes away from any of that... this isn't a zero sum game.
I see you no longer want to talk about the early Pittsburgh years. You tried to downgrade Dave Wannstedt recruiting
Some posters are just too black and white, there is a lot more gray out there.
We lucked out with Rice, but he didn't have to come to RU. That was still a very good get.
It is so strange that a couple people view this as a Greg vs Hafley thing, as though you can't say, "Hafley was a great addition to the staff, and Greg gets the credit for bringing him on," or that "Greg is an excellent recruiter, too." It doesn't have to be one or the other - they both are good.
I've told this story before, but I was at a family party and sat with a group of recent Don Bosco graduates. My cousin had played on the powerhouse Bosco teams, but was only a D3 to D1aa recruit. They started talking about recruiting and the conversation turned to Hafley. They went on and on and on about how cool he was. I asked why they said that, and each had a story. My cousin said something like, "I wasn't being recruited by Rutgers, but he always talked to me, always asked if he could help with my recruitment." Another kid said the same thing. THAT is why Hafley was special. He made every kid at Bosco feel like they were part of the Rutgers family, something that hasn't happened before or since.
I think Greg was a great recruiter too. I can't tell you how many times a kid would say that he cried when he thought of how hard it would be to tell Greg he wasn't going to Rutgers. Greg went for a lot of kids who had WAY better options than Rutgers. He didn't win all the battles, but he battled.
I've told this story before, but I was at a family party and sat with a group of recent Don Bosco graduates. My cousin had played on the powerhouse Bosco teams, but was only a D3 to D1aa recruit. They started talking about recruiting and the conversation turned to Hafley. They went on and on and on about how cool he was. I asked why they said that, and each had a story. My cousin said something like, "I wasn't being recruited by Rutgers, but he always talked to me, always asked if he could help with my recruitment." Another kid said the same thing. THAT is why Hafley was special. He made every kid at Bosco feel like they were part of the Rutgers family, something that hasn't happened before or since.
I think Greg was a great recruiter too. I can't tell you how many times a kid would say that he cried when he thought of how hard it would be to tell Greg he wasn't going to Rutgers. Greg went for a lot of kids who had WAY better options than Rutgers. He didn't win all the battles, but he battled.
OK, someone above asked me to call out the misinformation, so I'll do so by confirming what you say here. To say Jeff only recruited kids at DB or on defense is ludicrous. I was literally standing next to him at a rehearsal dinner, having a conversation with him, when he took a call from Shuler while I listened. The next day at the wedding, he took a call from another non-DB while we waited for the bride and groom to finish pictures. Seriously, have an idea what you're talking about before you spew this garbage on the Internet.
i give Hafley credit but many posters try not to give credit to Schiano. Does anyone know the great recruiters that work for Franklin at Penn State? I just say that Franklin is a great recruiter.
thats a simplistic view. nobody is saying Schiano isn't a good recruiter. however, it's obvious his recruiting took off once the Pitt guys arrived. that can't be said about Franklin who has been killing it since day 1.
When did I try to downgrade Wanny's recruiting? Just as with Schiano - why can't Wanny have been a good recruiter, and Hafley was additive to that? Why does it have to be all one one guy and none on the other? That doesn't make any sense.
Dave really started with a premise and then bent facts and figures around to support it. He read somewhere that a former NFL coach has a three-year honeymoon period with recruits, so from 2006-2008 all Pitt's recruits were "Pennsylvania recruits that wanted to play for a NFL coach"?? What? And you must hate Schiano because you recognize that Hafley was a good recruiter? Da fuq.
there hasnt been any recruiter at RU to the level of Schiano and or Hafley since they both left.Time will tell about current staff,but the lack of a NJ tied Asst coach on staff is a concern for me. The aspect of Fleck taking the RU job when Flood got the boot was allways a good move I thought due to his aspect of recruiting and his relationship and buzz level with recruits.Also the fact Fleck was allready a proven Head Coach with past RU ties and NFL experience makes me think he would have done well here at RU with the right staff.
So, you say that you don't criticize GS for his recruiting and are only supporting Hafley ? What does this post say? For some stupid reason, you hate the best coach in RU's history. Which is odd for a RU supporter. Makes no sense.
The post says pre Hafley Schiano struggled with top players. It's not hate it's history
Schiano had a real strength at identifying very good two and three star players and getting them to buy in to his system, which is what got us from (1-11) in 2002 to (11-2) in 2006. He had an eye for unheralded talent, and started by getting guys ranked 11-35 or so in NJ and supplementing FL players that got overlooked by the Big 3 down there (as well as some solid three star players from surrounding states like PA/NY/MD) - which was a step up in talent from where we had been seeing. Then he coached them up into a team that played better than the sum of its parts, and built up the almost nonexistent program infrastructure. The only four-star players on the (11-2) 2006 team were Kenny Britt and Kordell Young, both freshmen.
That's when we started to get more looks from more of the top prospects, and started getting a few bigger recruits out of NJ (5 four star guys out of NJ over the next 4 years)... then Hafley/Cignetti came along and we got 6 more four-plus-star guys from NJ over the next 2 years, even though we hadn't made it back to double-digit wins on the field. Things were finally rolling on the recruiting front, with Hafley being additive on top of Schiano. We were making strong inroads into NJ HS recruiting, and it looked like the "sleeping giant" was finally waking up... and then Greg took his talents (along with Hafley and nearly all of his staff) to Tampa Bay, which ended the trend pretty quickly.
There's no need to tear down Schiano to see that Hafley helped us in recruiting, and no need to tear down Hafley to say Schiano helped us in recruiting. They both brought different things to the table.
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