Recruiting Country: The latest recruiting news surrounding the Maroon & White

TexAgs' recruiting analyst Ryan Brauninger joined TexAgs Live on Wednesday morning for another edition of Recruiting Country presented by American Momentum Bank, highlighting the latest news and notes from the recruiting trail surrounding Texas A&M.

Key notes from Ryan Brauninger interview

• The recruiting staff had some jobs to do because of all the attrition they had seen in the recruiting class up to spring practice starting. They had different jobs. No. 1, resolidify who you had committed, and I think they've done a great job of that when you look at Jordan Carter‍, Aaron Gregory‍ and Helaman Casuga‍. They're just reinvigorating the commit class to stay together. By no means does that mean it's done. You have players like Gregory in the class that everybody in the country is going to come after. They had to resolidify the ground that the current commit class was on.
   
• Secondly, they needed to get their in-state haul up and moving, and they did that in a major way with the additions of Jonathan Hatton Jr‍ and Mike Brown‍. That's two Texas kids who you felt needed to be Aggies, and you went out and got them.
   
• The third thing is that last year, they put so much emphasis on these spring practices and creating momentum both in-state and out-of-state that they have to do that again, and they have to hit. They have to start creating some kind of snowball with our momentum to put us in a good position.
   
• If you look at Mike Elko's history as a head coach, March, April and May have been really fruitful for him. June and July now, too, but more so in the spring. They decided when they got here that the spring game wouldn't be a big deal. It was just going to be another recruiting day or weekend. They really wanted to push so they could get those kids to come to practice so they could watch how the kids interact with coaches and how the coaches interact with the kids, and they could talk about it. Through that, they needed to build momentum with top targets across their board, whether from the state of Texas or beyond, and they've done that.
   
• Overall, right now, I'd probably give them a B-plus or A-minus. They've done all of those things. They've checked all of those boxes. I think we're going to start seeing that momentum turn into commitments. Some of them have happened already, and they're just not public. My opinion, is silent commitments are not commitments. Until these things go public, I don't put much stock into them. I do think we are on the verge of A&M running off a few commitments. That would move that grade from B-plus or A-minus into the A or A-plus range.
   
• When you look at the out-of-state, Lamar Brown‍ is the best line-of-scrimmage player in the country. He's in LSU's literal backyard and has come to College Station a lot. He's made no bones about Texas A&M and LSU being his top two schools.
   
• Tristen Keys‍, a five-star wide receiver out of Mississippi, just committed to LSU, and he turns around the next weekend and visits College Station. You are fighting for Brandon Arrington‍ and Richard Wesley‍ out in California. They are two of the top players in California, and you're fighting big-time battles with elite prospects across the country. Those are tough. They're tough to get, and they're tough to hang onto, but you'd rather have them than someone else have them because they're even tougher to flip.
   
• They had a kid on campus yesterday, a linebacker named Storm Miller‍, out of Strongsville, Ohio. Great linebacker name. He's a 6-foot-3, 220-pound kid who kind of wasn't even on our radar until he showed up for a midweek visit. They blew that kid out of the water from what we understand. A&M has a ton of momentum there. I can't remember the last time A&M got a highly-coveted commit from the state of Ohio. They haven't gotten it yet, but they're in a good spot and fighting for one of the top players in that state.
   
• The out-of-state momentum is certainly noticeable. It's something they've maintained, especially when you look at their recruiting class right now and how much of it is from out of state. They've done a good job across all points of the United States so far.
   
• In-state, you could start rattling off a whole list of names. The offensive linemen, a lot of those are from DFW. Drew Evers‍, Zaden Krempin‍, Pupungatoa Katoa‍ and John Turntine‍. All of those offensive linemen out of DFW are really feeling A&M. The likelihood that A&M signs all of those is pretty low, but if you're going one by one, they're at the top. You expand on that with the receivers. Boobie Feaster‍, James Scott‍ and Aljour Miles‍. I'm not saying these will all end up at Texas A&M, but I would consider A&M among the favorites for all these guys.
   
• It's an odds and numbers game. You go and do recruiting for a little while, and nobody hits a hundred percent of the guys they're leaning for. There are eight months left in this thing. That might as well be a decade in recruiting circles.
   
• There's a certain number of these kids, where if A&M plays well this fall, then the conversation gets way more legit. On the flip side, if A&M doesn't play well in the fall, you will have a tough time landing some of these guys. A lot of these kids are going to take into account what they see with their own eyes on the field. 
   
• Legend Bey‍ is another interesting one. He was amongst Miles, Calvin Thomas‍, Aaron Bradshaw‍ and Scott. These spring evaluations who got offers and have really shot up the A&M big board. I think Bey could play running back, receiver and defensive back. He has all of those. He's kind of like a Terry Bussey tool kit.
   
• When a player doesn't specialize in something, it gives you some versatility and creativity in how you recruit them. With what A&M looks like they will do with this running back class, they have Hatton committed, and they're in a fantastic spot with KJ Edwards‍. I don't think they would be pitching running back very hard to Edwards. The worst thing you can do is be definitive to a kid like that.
   
• It's kind of like how they were with Kiotti Armstrong. I think that's how you recruit those athletes. Unless they come in and say, "Hey, I want to be this. This is what I want to be recruited as." Then, you keep that door open to be multiple in how you recruit them out of position. There are some guys, Jermaine Bishop‍, for instance, I think he is a two-way player. He's an exceptional corner/nickel and dynamite with the ball in his hands. That's the kind of kid where you legitimately recruit him at both sides of the ball.
   
• In-state momentum is building. I do anticipate A&M adding to their commitment group, in-state and out-of-state, in short order. There are big weekends coming up. We will probably produce a visitor list either today or tomorrow on the site. We know Brown is coming back. We do anticipate Arrington coming to town.
   
• The way we're looking at recruiting as analysts right now is that the attention of the A&M fan base has been taken elsewhere. The momentum built, not only in 2026 but even more so in 2027. People are just kind of numb to it or not paying attention at all. Some pretty big-time 2027s are heading to campus as well.
   
• If you're just tuning into the radio, and this is kind of all of the recruiting that you intake for your week, I'm here to tell you that the work that was done in January and February to try and comb through the state of Texas and uncover any misses that may have happened in the fall evaluation process. Because you have so much time to sit in an office and go through tape that is heavy data gathering and intel on measurables, character and all of that stuff. I know for a fact that this A&M recruiting staff put a ton of time in to make sure they weren't missing something in the state of Texas. I would have to say that exercise and all of that work are being put to good use now as kids come to campus. I think they are positioning themselves with a lot of kids that maybe weren't on their big board or were written in dry erase but now have gone up because of those evaluations. You're seeing it at a multitude of positions and you're seeing it a lot in the state of Texas.
   
• There is nothing portal-wise yet to keep your eyes on. We saw that deal with Sincere Brown, the wide receiver out of Campbell. It was a Twitter account that said he had committed to A&M. That was not true. The kid hasn't even set up a visit to Texas A&M, to my knowledge. I'm not saying he won't end up here, but it's way premature for anybody to be saying that or speculating on that.
   
• What we think A&M needs right now is receiver, defensive line and maybe a linebacker. That's about it. That's what we think they need right now. Just like we don't know what other players are going to be in the portal and what high-end players are maybe going in. We don't know who might leave. In two weeks, when this thing really starts kicking off, A&M may need more than just three. That's something the staff obviously understands. You can feel like you're in a great spot with a lot of your players, and either they're unhappy with perceived playing time, they're unhappy with their NIL structure, or whatever. You don't know that until they walk into your office and say, "Hey, I'm out."
   
• I think you're always trying to re-recruit players. To me, in recruiting, numbers matter less now than they ever have. You can have eight scholarship linebackers in your linebacker room right now in the spring, and you look up next spring, and because of graduation, portal, natural attrition, whatever, you could be looking at three or four. You're going, "Wow. I'm glad we oversigned linebackers." That could be any position.
   
• If they're really good players and you think they fit your culture, sign them. Figure out the rest late. In terms of how the roster is structured and the coaches' job of re-recruiting their players, I just don't think that ever stops, especially the guys you really, really want. For Elko and his staff, the guys they really want either have to be super talented or really love football. Preferably a combination of both. With the culture he's trying to build, if you don't really love football, this is not going to be the place for you. I'm sure there are guys over there who are contemplating how much they love football, and they should, whether you're at Texas A&M, LSU, Arkansas or wherever. You should contemplate that. The guys that really love football tend to stick around a lot longer, and they also tend to hit their ceiling, whatever that ceiling is.
   
• For the next couple of weeks, there will be a lot of continued visitors right up until the spring game. Both midweek and on the weekend. I believe, and our recruiting staff believes, that there have been prospects giving A&M their verbal commitment behind the scenes. We'll see if they go public. I'm just not going to put a lot of stock in silent commits, especially in this day and age, but we are tracking a few behind the scenes to see if they make public announcements.