re: 2014 Arkansas Recruiting Thread - Football & Basketball Commits

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Arkansas signed a trio of 3-star recruits. Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Dillard's Randy Ramsey, Douglasville (Ga.) South Paulding's Khalia Hackett and Marrero (La.) Archbishop Rummel's Dwayne Eugene all were recruited to play outside linebacker for the Razorbacks.

Shannon was the lead recruiter on Ramsey while Taver Johnson had Hackett and Michael Smith had Eugene though Shannon also helped on Hackett and Eugene. Shannon talked about what he saw in Ramsey to lead to the scholarship offer.

“I first saw him in the ninth grade,” Shannon said. “He was a 6-2, 185-, 190-pound corner. He played a lot of basketball and was very athletic. In the tenth grade, he and Kendrick played against each other. He covered Kendrick when they played in a playoff game. As time went on, he growed a lot and just kept getting bigger. He has a lot of speed and is very athletic.”

As a senior, Ramsey had 83 tackles, 34 tackles for loss, 25 sacks and four forced fumbles; Hackett had 85 tackles and four tackles for loss; Eugene registed 73 tackles, five fumble recoveries and two interceptions. All can run something Shannon considers a must in the SEC.

“We felt we had to get some linebackers that are athletic,” Shannon said. “I saw Eugene throughout the season. One thing about it is these guys are playing basketball so they are staying in shape and not gaining weight which is really, really good. I think each of them are up to 218 to 222.

“I'm excited about all three of them because so much of this spread offense and diversity teams are trying to bring now. You need guys who have played linebacker instead of moving guys. Everybody thinks these guys just played DB, but if you watch the film they played some outside linebacker. We're excited we got three guys that played linebacker in high school and can come in and we can build some depth. These guys can play big-time in space.”

Shannon feels that linebacker recruiting has to change to meet the changes in many offenses in the SEC.

“Somebody asked the question why we hadn't recruited a middle linebacker?” Shannon said. “Well, besides Alabama and LSU playing two-back smash-mouth football you don't see it as much in this conference.

“You have to have a guy who can play middle linebacker. We feel we've got some guys now on the team that we can put into that middle linebacker and probably go three-deep and feel comfortable right now. We're building the guys who can play the outside and give us some speed and athletic ability and do some creative things with.”

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