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Louisville Football landed their second commitment of their big recruiting weekend when Zay Peterson announced his commitment this afternoon. Peterson is a three-star safety out of North Carolina with offers from Colorado, Pitt, Rutgers, Syracuse, and UCF. Peterson becomes the fifth member of the 2020 class and the fourth player on the defensive side of the ball.
Peterson’s style of play is much more like a Calvin Pryor type of safety as opposed to Gerrod Holliman. He likes to ht people very hard and he’s very good at it. Peterson is also a strong tackler in the open field and shows the ability to take good angles to the ball. The one thing that doesn’t show up in his highlights are plays that show his coverage skills or ball skills.
If you read any of the breakdowns of the 2019 App State season on this site you know that Peterson’s aggressive style of play will fit well in the new scheme. Bryan Brown wants defensive backs that can get to the edge and make open field tackles. That shows up a few times in his highlights. It’s just an added bonus that he is blowing up ball carriers in the process.
Louisville’s class moved up into the top 50 with the addition of Peterson. It’s early, so the rankings don’t really give much clarity. Wake Forest has a top 20 class right now, for context. However, I do think that average rating is a good tool to use and it’s especially helpful when classes aren’t full. Right now the class sits at an average rating of .8522 in the 247 composite. That’s comparable with the 2015-2017 classes. There have been some complaints about the recruiting so far but I think that stat is a fair way to look at things.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Louisville lands another commitment from either a high school player like Josh Minkins out of Ballard or a grad transfer like Ty Terry from Marshall. Louisville is trending for a few guys and the players that visited this weekend have had a lot of positive reactions. There’s a good chance they get on a little bit of a run in recruiting soon.