Recruiting on the South Plains | CB/S Stormy Butler

Sometimes commitments come out of thin air and sometimes you have a good feeling about players that will eventually commit. The commitments of S/CB Stormy Butler and CB Darren Dotson were out of thin air for me. I've been trying to do a better job of tracking these players that have offers and may eventually commit, but neither were on my radar.

Butler's commitment is a bit strange in the sense that he's taken an interesting road to where he is today. From what I can tell Butler was originally part of the 2006 recruiting class for Connecticut and the story below alludes to the fact that there were NCAA clearinghouse issues with Butler. The thing that I find strange is that this was 6 years ago. That's a long time to wait.

Butler's brother, Darius Butler, plays for the Carolina Panthers and so the thought is that they might have similar athletic ability, but I don't know.

Stats

For the College of Sequoias, Butler finished the year last year with 22 tackles, but his highlight film seems to indicate that he had a few tackles for loss so I don't know how accurate those stats are.

More after the jump.

The Player Speaks

LAJ's Don Williams spoke with Butler and he's excited about the opportunity:

“I like the conference. They play against top-notch competition,” Butler said. “Coach Lovett’s telling me I have an opportunity to play right away. I want to go in and make a statement early playing against top-notch competition.”

The most interesting thing to me is how secondary coach John Lovett is taking a sincere interest in getting some help in the secondary. You may recall that CB Olaoluwa Falemi was the one guy that Lovett convinced to commit last year and now there's an emphasis about how both Butler and Dotson were impressed by Lovett's attention #

Scouting Report

The first thing you need to do is watch Butler's Hudl video. He's really playing a hybrid linebacker and safety spot. More linebacker than anything else and maybe this was just about getting an athlete on the field and getting him some time. It doesn't appear that speed is a problem for Butler and he doesn't look out of place when he crouches towards the line of scrimmage. The film does indicate that his coverage skills need some work, but there is time for that. In the LAJ story, Butler's coach had this to say about him:

“Stormy’s a physical safety. I can put him in the box and also can put him on a No. 2 receiver, an inside receiver, because he can cover very well for a safety."

That sounds about right, but I still think that Butler has some work to do in coverage.

You can also check out this YouTube video with Butler, Dotson and Steve Nelson (a Georgia commit) just working out and to me, Butler seems like the smoothest of the three athletes in these drills, for whatever that is worth.

Stormy, welcome to Texas Tech and Git Your Guns Up!