Recruiting on the South Plains | OL Maurice Porter

RECRUITING ON THE SOUTH PLAINS Measurables MAURICE PORTER Position: OL Ht: 6'5" | Wt: 290 lbs | Forty: 5.44 High School: Fort Bend Marshall (Missouri City, TX) DTN Profile Video: Clip 1 Rivals 5.7 | Scout ESPN 77 | 24/7 Sports 82 Cumulative Ranking: 74.86 Offers Bayor, Colorado, Houston, Indiana, Oklahoma St., Purdue, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, West Virginia

So this is a good pick-up and it's an interesting story to boot. There's just a bit of a disagreement in the rating of Fort Bend Marshall's Maurice Porter, but he's generally a three-star player, although has a fourth star with one service. The interesting thing is that he's only played football for one year, so what Texas Tech is probably getting in terms of a player is a very raw and athletic player that has a lot of room to grow and mature as a player.

And considering he is such a raw player, Porter had a handful of major offers from some major programs. It's really nice to win one of these battles.

In terms of rankings, Rivals has Porter as the #36 offensive tackle in the nation and #46 player in the state, Scout has Porter as the #16 offensive guard in the nation, ESPN has porter as the #54 best player at tackle and #96 in the state and last but not least, 24/7 Sports has Porter as the #185 player in the nation (overall), #16 offensive tackle and #29 player in the state. It seems that if Porter is a guard then he is more highly thought of, while as a tackle, there's tougher competition.

One other thing is that Porter is he's from the same high school of RB DeAndre Washington, so maybe he had a bit of an influence.

Stats

Stats? No stats.

The Player Speaks

LAJ's Nick Kosmider spoke with Porter about how he hasn't been playing football all that long:

Maurice Porter hasn’t been playing football long. He didn’t take up the sport until his sophomore year of high school, when his mother encouraged him to give it a try.

"She made me go out there and play," Porter said.

And also a bit from ESPN's Damon Sayles, where Porter talked about what he liked about Texas Tech:

"I liked the coaches, and I liked the campus," Porter said. "I know a lot of people going to college there. Plus, my mom likes the living arrangements. They talked to her about all the majors, and I’m interested in majoring in architecture or sports management."

Scouting Report

Here's the film:

More after the jump, including a super exclusive (not really) scouting report from a former NFL player (this part is true) and I'm almost positive that no other site took the time to transcript video.

Former NFL'er LeCharles Bentley, who is helping out with some of the ESPN camps, had this to say about Porter:

Maurice Porter is a guy that really surprised me. I wasn't expecting much out of him and throughout the course of the day, dealing with the drills and what not. He had a very difficult time getting out of his own way, as some coaches like to say. But once he got to the one-on-one segment you really saw a different player, a different type of athlete, as far as the physical tools, he's everything that an offensive line coach or an offensive centric team or conference you would be looking for. He is very raw, and it is going to take a very long time before he really ends up being the type of player he can be, but his ceiling is extremely high.

This looks about right. Porter's technique isn't perfect. He tends to get a bit upright at times, but you can see his athleticism. If Porter has only been playing for a year, then it seems to me that this game comes incredibly easy for him. Porter's video flips between guard and tackle and he could probably play either spot, but with his type of athleticism, then it seems like tackle will be his natural spot at some point. I really like watching him at the guard spot as you can see how quickly he gets to the second level.

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

The 2013 Class

Still a really strong class even with all of the prior defections. It's really early and Rhodes hasn't been rated other than by 24/7 Sports, so we'll fill in that blank later.