The recruiting landscape of ASU Football, two weeks before NSD 2017

The final stretch of the recruiting season is ahead of us. Every football team is travelling across the country one last time to ensure their future with young, talented recruits for the coming years.

It is especially true for Arizona State. The next two weeks leading to National Signing Day 2017 on February, 1st are going to be crucial, for many reasons.

Despite a second sub .500 season in a row, the Sun Devils have just 14 players committed to the football program as of today, while Todd Graham & co. are trying to reload the machine with fresh talents. It seems pretty light but ASU seems to have switched the recruiting approach this time around.

Less players but more talented ones.

14 commits is one of the lowest bar in the nation in terms of pledges, setting the Sun Devils at the 43rd spot in the national teams rankings, according to Scout. Only ahead of Stanford, Clemson, Utah and TCU in the Top 50. This could be worrying.

Under Todd Graham, ASU has had a history of putting up together Top 30 recruiting classes consistently, and it seems it will not be the case in the 2017. The class is not empty, although.

It gets interesting if you look at the average recruit stars rankings. Scout has Arizona State currently sitting at the 19th place within this classification (3.36), a few points behind the record mark achieved by the Sun Devils in 2015 (3.43).

This is a good testament of the quality for the class of 2017.

Even tough ASU is ranked behind teams the Sun Devils usually out-recruit, like Minnesota (41st), Rutgers (38th) or Illinois (37th), do not get ahead of yourself and panic. Watch out for a late surge before and probably on National Signing Day.

Let’s say this has been the plan all along. Arizona State has changed its stand towards recruiting by offering and staying close to 4-star high school players more than 3-star athletes. Big risks, big rewards.

This strategy also means pledges are expressed later during the process and closer to National Signing Day, a moment in which blue-blood programs tend to come out winning the battles against second-tier universities like Arizona State. We shall see what that works out for the Sun Devils, but as today, they are waiting on many decisions that could potentially change the face of the program.

Five 4-star high school recruits already committed or signed their NLI at the moment (Benjamin, Perry, Kelley, Johnson and Barnett). In 2016, at the end of the process, ASU signed six 4-star prospects, including JUCO transfers. The class of 2015, arguably the best recruiting class of Todd Graham’s tenure in Tempe, boasted nine 4-star players.

The previous two recruiting classes were composed of a dozen more prospects than this year’s, and yet, high-end talent can be found within the same proportions.

And the best might be coming very soon.

Out of the 15 high school recruits mentioned above, plus 4 players out of junior college, Arizona State should expect to sign a third of them. And that would be an excellent number.

It seems unlikely that ASU will receive the pledges of more than two/three 4-star and three/four 3-star recruits, but such a scenario would bring the count of recruits closer to 20 and potentially one of the best ratio of 4-star prospects ever recorded by the Sun Devils. 5-star local prospect Austin Jackson could even become the cherry on the cake if he decides to stay true to his home state (although USC seems to be the favourite).

Anyway, according to a report from Scout last week, ASU is slated to host quite a few big names before the first Wednesday of February, also known as National Signing Day :

ASU plans to host five-star wide receiver Joseph Lewis, four-star junior college cornerback Tareke Lewis, four-star athlete Greg Johnson, four-star offensive tackle George Moore, four-star cornerback Brad Stewart, three-star wide receiver Gavin Holmes, three-star defensive end Ali Gaye and three-star cornerback Tyon Merchant.

Later on in January, the Sun Devils expect to host four-star safety K.J. Jarrell and three-star defensive end Odua Isibor, a pair of high-profile local products who can add to what's shaping up to be an impressive haul from the state of Arizona in ASU's 2017 class.

A lot is still bound to happen in Tempe as National Signing Day looms quickly. The main recruiting effort was targeted for the month of January, and we shall see in a couple weeks how the dividends pay off. Todd Graham might be playing his head coaching job on the results of this recruiting class.

Here are my confidence picks for potential ASU recruits that were mentioned previously in this article: