In a sign of how football recruiting has changed in the transfer-portal era, all four Public League rising seniors in the state’s top 30 prospects are off the board.
Players used to wait longer to see if a better opportunity came along, but now they’re more often locking in committable offers ahead of their last high school season.
The two most recent commits are Simeon edge rusher McHale Blade to Michigan and Young running back Max Warner to Missouri. Blade is No. 4 in Illinois in the 247Sports composite rankings, while Warner is No. 28. Committing earlier were Morgan Park receiver Nasir Rankin (No. 7) to Illinois and Lane defensive lineman Daniel Howard (No. 24) to Iowa State.
Blade has an unusual story. The four-star prospect who’s in the top 175 nationally played two years at Hillcrest before transferring to Simeon last year but missed his entire junior season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
“I tore it while I was at Hillcrest,” Blade told the Sun-Times. “I played a few games with a torn ACL and didn’t even know.”
Now the 6-5, 245-pounder is completely healthy and can’t wait to play in a game for the first time in almost two years.
“I can already feel in practice how I’m moving and getting off the ball,” Blade said. “I’m kind of starving [to play]. I might get off the ball like a rocket.”
Having the game he loves taken away for so long has made him appreciate it more.
“It taught me a lot about football and life in general,” he said.
National recruiting analyst Clint Cosgrove said college coaches’ views on serious injuries like Blade’s have evolved.
“ACLs nowadays scare people a little less,” Cosgrove told the Sun-Times.
Still, recruiters can take a wait-and-see attitude.
“Usually you don’t see a kid miss their junior season and get all these offers,” Cosgrove said. “That’s a testament to how good people think he is and can be.”
Michigan and Blade are a great fit, he added.
“He’s a prototypical edge,” Cosgrove said. “They’re a D-line factory. He fits that mold. His upside is insane.”
Likewise, Cosgrove likes Missouri as a destination for Warner.
“He’s a guy Missouri [often] offers,” Cosgrove said of the three-star prospect. “They get the running back involved in the passing game. He’s explosive. . . . Once he sees that hole, he can hit it. . . . He’ll be a good special-teams player right away.”
The 5-10, 185-pounder also is elite in track and field. He won a state medal as a sprinter this spring on Young’s 4×200-meter relay team and also has won several Public League titles in the horizontal jumps.
“I’ve seen long jumpers and triple jumpers — those guys have gone on to overachieve in college [football],” Cosgrove said.
Warner started at cornerback for Young as a sophomore but came into his own as a running back last season.
“The speed is there,” Dolphins coach Dan Finger said last fall. “Running full speed was the next part. We were saying, ‘You’re gonna break tackles if you just get downhill and run.’ ’’