He a 6-0, 210-pound extremely productive linebacker that came to Arkansas camp this summer and was very impressive.
He just tweeted out that he got an offer from Arkansas.
Neal is teammates with Arkansas 2020 OL target Ray Curry.
Here’s my story from this summer.
Dudley, your opinion on why the offer now? And to a LB when we are in an almost crisis situation with the OL?
Is this his first offer? I smell some bad grades
No, he’s an honor student.
As the story states he has offers from Marshall, East Tennessee, Central Arkansas, Eastern Kentucky, Morehead and others.
Because they liked him in camp and only have one linebacker committed.
They obviously have an offer out to Kendall Young of Bentonville West, who is wanting to wait until between Sept. 7-21.
Do you think they may have gotten some indication that Young is talking to or looking at other teams?
I like it.
I get the feeling that CCM brought in Chavis and Caldwell to build a top defense, and he’s letting them do it. At the same time, I think CCM believes he has the players on offense to execute his strategy and score points. We shall see.
CM’s offenses have scored a lot of points without much talent on the OL. They have four starters back on the OL at SMU this year, including three seniors, but the best they could do on Phil Steele’s pre-season All AAC teams was a fourth team spot for a sophomore.
We do of course play in the toughest conference in the country, but the OL talent on our team is not awful, though its hardly elite. Some of the returners have probably underperformed their talent level. I think CM believes he can win enough games with what he’s got to concentrate on defense and offensive skill position impact guys.
So CM appears to have decided that he can work with the OL talent on hand for now, while gradually improving the numbers and talent. On the other hand, he also appears to have made what I think was the correct decision to give the defense re-build top priority, and to give his DC free hand to get it done.
Now the plan could still go awry, particularly if the injury bug keeps biting the OL. But overall I think that defense and offense skill recruiting first fits what CM needs to bring the program back. The OL talent will come as time goes by, based on what we’ve seen in recruiting so far, but this plan seems to me to give us the chance to come back to winning football the quickest.
I think it is best that if you know where you want to go that you get in now
Chief really liked Neal in camp. He played RB too last year.
I remember him showing very well at camp and thought I posted him in some tidbits, but did a search and didn’t find his name. I know I wrote his name down in my notes.