Five things we learned on Early Signing Day

Nebraska officially announced the additions of 22 new signees in the 2020 recruiting class on the Early Signing Day on Wednesday.

Here are five of the more interesting takeaways from head coach Scott Frost's press conference at Memorial Stadium...

Of the 21 new scholarship players Nebraska officially added on Wednesday, seven came from the state of Florida. That was after not signing a single player from the Sunshine State in 2019.

A major reason for that success in Florida was due to the work of defensive backs coach Travis Fisher, who was the lead recruiter for six of the seven signees from the state.

Fisher’s impact was so big that one recruit, cornerback Jaiden Francois, was rumored to have been fed some bad information regarding Fisher’s future in Lincoln, which caused an hour and a half delay of his signing before that story was debunked.

Frost declined to directly address that rumor, but he did make it a point to give Fisher all the credit in the world for helping to make NU’s 2020 class as successful as it was.

“I have to tell you, every year, there’s a superstar on our staff in recruiting,” Frost said. “This year, he’s one of the top guys. He has a lot of relationships down in Florida from his time there, both in North Florida, where he grew up and down south where he’s recruited for a long time.

“He knocked it out of the park this year, and that’s really valuable for our football team to have a coach that can go out of state like that and bring in the type of talent that he brought in.”

As for the rumors of the rumor regarding Fisher, Frost put that to bed fairly clearly.

“I don’t want to say too much about details, but this process is tough on a lot of recruits,” Frost said. “It’s tough on 18-year-olds. I think sometimes they have to sort out rumors and truths and falsehoods, and in some situations that can go right up to signing day when they put their name on the paper.

“That’s just kind of how recruiting goes. I’m just glad Coach Fisher’s going to be with us for a long time.”

Up until a couple of weeks ago, there was plenty of handwringing going on with Nebraska’s fan base about the state of the Huskers’ recruiting class as the Early Signing Day approached.

The same could be said for NU’s coaching staff.

Frost admitted there were some “anxious” points leading up to Signing Day, as Nebraska was hanging its hopes on some late decisions, including some that came down to the final hours on Signing Day.

“It was anxious,” Frost said. “It just kind of felt this year that a lot of kids we really were invested in and wanted in our program were making late decisions.

“I heard all the talk early on about how we were behind, and we were behind. We kind of knew that, but we were kind of betting on ourselves in recruiting and had a lot of really good targets out there and luckily we were able to land quite a few of them.”

Frost said they were still waiting on at least one, maybe two, more potential signings before the end of the day. That proved true with the late commitment of JUCO defensive end Pheldarius Payne.

The Huskers currently have two open scholarships remaining for the 2020 class, and Frost said “in a perfect world” they would have at least one spot available to use in February.

Frost added that he and his staff were still deliberating on how to finish out the class up until Wednesday morning.

“We were making decisions on that clear up to last night and even this morning,” Frost said. “Trying to decide how many NLIs to send out, where to send them, trying to decide which kids were in and which were out and how many spots we might want to hold over to the late signing period and beyond.

“We’re making those decisions right up to really this morning and there was a lot of balls in the air, but I’m really happy with our recruiting staff and our coaching staff with how they came through in the end.”

Between the four new additions added on Wednesday and bringing in Jaimie Nance and Demariyon Houston, Nebraska’s wide receiver room is going to look vastly different when the team returns this spring and fall.

By landing signings from Marcus Fleming, Omar Manning, Will Nixon, and Alante Brown, the Huskers significantly upgraded their firepower at a position that was clearly lacking depth the past few seasons.

“That’s one position where we need to improve,” Frost said. “Obviously, we have a couple of good pieces. JD (Spielman) has been a phenomenal player around here for a long time. We’re lucky to have him back another season… Obviously Wan ’Dale (Robinson), everyone saw what he could do this year… I think we’ve got a lot of young receivers in the program that we’re excited to work with in the spring.

“When you look at that position, just being honest, when we came in as a coaching staff, we only had four receivers on scholarship. We usually carry 10 or 11. That was a position just by numbers that we had to rebuild.

“We feel good about this class and where it’s going to take us… I think we did a lot to upgrade that position.”

Speaking of revamping the receiving corps, there might not be a player in Nebraska’s 2020 class poised to make a bigger immediate impact than Manning.

The 6-foot-4, 225-pound junior college transfer from Kilgore (Texas) C.C. not only gives the Huskers the big-bodied target they’ve lacked for years, but he also might be as gifted as any perimeter receiver NU has had in a long time.

After committing to TCU out of Lancaster (Texas) High School and redshirting the 2017 season, Manning transferred to Kilgore and instantly became one of the best JUCO wideouts in the country.

The four-star recruit was named a second-team junior college All-American this past season after catching 35 passes for 727 yards (nearly 21 yards per reception) and six touchdowns.

“All year we kind of wished we were a little more productive at our outside receiver spot,” Frost said. “That’s one place where we thought we wanted a kind of guy that could come in and potentially help us right away. There wasn’t a better guy in the country, in my opinion, for what we were looking for than him.

“He looks different than anybody I’ve ever coached and has tape to match. I’m really excited to get him. He’s got a little work to do yet before he gets to campus, but I think he has a chance to change our offense.”

Nebraska’s quarterback room was already as stockpiled as it’s been in recent memory with Adrian Martinez, Noah Vedral, and Luke McCaffrey already on board.

The rich got richer on Wednesday with the signing of four-star quarterback Logan Smothers.

Looking ahead to NU’s 2020 depth chart, Martinez and Vedral will only be juniors and McCaffrey, who impressed in his debut this season, will only be a redshirt freshman.

That means there’s a chance that Smothers, who was rated as a top-five dual-threat QB in the nation, could potentially have to wait two years or even longer to earn a starting job.

Frost didn’t seem particularly worried about that being an issue for Smothers, though, and that was mainly because it didn’t seem to bother the Muscle Shoals, Ala., native one bit.

“I think it suggests that he’s willing to compete,” Frost said of Smothers’ choosing to join a crowded quarterback group. “I want guys who want to compete. When you talk about the best programs in the country, usually they’re already loaded with people at that position. The kids who have the right frame of mind and want to come in and win the job anyway.

“We hit it off with Logan right away. Him and (quarterbacks coach Mario Verduzco) have an unbelievable relationship. He is the type of kid I want on our team and the type of kid I want to coach. We are going to get started with him right away in January.”

While Smothers will have a lot of work to do in order to legitimately push for the starting job in the near future, Frost said the 6-foot-2, 190-pounder had all of the tools they were looking for at the position.

“We looked for quarterbacks that throw it well, that can run and have the right mentality. Logan is a guy who understands the game and had a good junior year, an unbelievable senior year. I said this a couple times already today, but he really impressed me with his toughness and what he did in the playoffs in Alabama.

“He’s a guy we had to hold some people off on late that were trying to get back in on him. He’s an early enrollee too and I expect him to come in and compete right away.”