Red Raider Gridiron: Break Out Candidates for 2015; Daniels & Strickland Deciding

Break Out Candidates. DMN's Tommy Magelssen has his top five candidates to have a breakout season this year.  I'll give you the second one, you go read the rest.

Ian Sadler, sophomore wide receiver
The former Argyle star, who did a bit of everything his senior year for the 2013 state champion Eagles, had 23 catches for 336 yards and two touchdowns as a true freshman. He fits the mold as a shifty slot receiver in the vain of Eric Morris or Jakeem Grant, and he started to emerge as a threat in the second half of 2014 - he had just three catches in the first half of the season. Sadler also seemed to have strong chemistry with fellow true-freshman Patrick Mahomes, who took over as starting quarterback at the end of the season for the injured Davis Webb. If Mahomes wins the job, Sadler could see an added boost.

Decisions. Former Texas Tech commit WR Carlos Strickland is deciding today between USC, Cal and Texas Tech. And we are also going to get the decision for recruit DT Darrion Daniels, who is set to decide on Friday, and he is deciding between Oklahoma, Iowa and Texas Tech.

Time to Move On. This is pretty strong stuff from ESPN's Jake Trotter about how he thinks that Baylor head coach Art Briles needs to move on from his issues about being left out of the College Football Playoff.  The interesting thing to me is that Briles said a week or so ago that Baylor lost out on an 8-4 vote.  Well, apparently that's impossible:

"We were close this year," he said. "We were an 8-to-4 vote getting in from the No. 4 spot. Whether that's public or not, I don't know, but it is now. Unless I'm getting bad information, and I won't give you my source."

Why Briles suddenly brought this up, I don’t know. But according to CFP executive director Bill Hancock, Briles’ source gave him some pretty bad information.

Hancock retorted that an 8-4 vote technically would have been impossible, given that the committee ranks teams in sets of threes, not head to head. On top of that, Hancock added all votes are taken via secret computer ballot. Not even the committee members know what the votes are.

"An 8-4 vote," Hancock summarized, "would not be possible under the committee's protocol."

I suppose I find this interesting because Briles is being lied to someone, and if he is, then Briles didn't vet to find out exactly whether or not his claim could actually be true before going public.  More than anything, he's still talking about it and that's strange to me. There's nothing he can do to fix it now, but I don't see how complaining about it will solve anything other than alienate the voters next year if Baylor were to be so fortunate.

Miscellaneous. Easton head coach Tony Hull, the same high school head coach for Texas Tech targets Tyron Johnson and Arthur McGinnis, said that Texas Tech was one of the best programs that recruit players at his school . . . the NFL is putting pressure on the College Football Playoff to change the dates of their championship game and it appears that Bill Hancock is having none of that . . .