Louisville football recruiting: Early signing day updates

12/18/19 8:40 PM: This happened last night but it is definitely work updating. We knew that there would likely be several players transferring out of Louisville either as regular transfers looking for a new opportunity, or graduate transfers. Jordan Travis has already left, and it’s reported that Jon Greenard will leave as well, but we now know running back Trey Smith and defensive end Kam Jones are both leaving the Cardinal program.

Smith, who rotated in and out of the lineup last year for Louisville, will move on as a graduate transfer, meaning he will be eligible right away wherever he lands. While Kam Jones, a reserve defensive end, has yet to play any for Louisville through two seasons. He’ll have to sit out next season wherever he lands.

Neither of these transfers are huge losses in terms of star power, but both will be missed for depth reasons. Trey Smith is clearly the bigger loss as he played a big role last season under Petrino, but with Hassan Hall and Colin Wilson looking like the lead backs in 2019-20 and with the Cards getting back Tobias Little and Dae Williams from injury, there likely wasn’t going to be enough carries for him to be happy.

Expect more transfers in the coming days.

7:39 AM: We have our first signee. Manual star running back, Aidan Robbins, who just recently “recommited” to the Cards and he now will officially become a member of the 2019 recruiting class.

This is a huge get for the Louisville football program as Aidan Robbins is one of the top players in the state of Kentucky in 2019. Robbins attends high school in the Louisville back yard at Manual High School, and is an extremely talented running back who gives the Cards a dynamic play maker. Robbins recruitment has picked up over the last few weeks with Colorado State, BYU, and even Kentucky getting involved, but Robbins decided that staying home was what he wanted to do.

He’ll join a talented and young running back field that includes Hassan Hall, Colin Wilson, Tobias Little, and Dae Williams.

8:15 AM: We’ve got our first new commitment of the day for Louisville football. Longtime Appalachian State commit, Evan Conley, announced that he was committing and signing with the Cards after being previously committed since June of 2018.

Conley, a three star QB out of Marietta, GA, visited Scott Satterfield and the Louisville Cardinals this past weekend and it looked like it was only a matter of time before he flipped. The kid was no doubt under recruited, being a 2 star throughout the majority of his recruitment. However, if you put his highlight tape on you can quickly see he has a lot of talent. Is it ACC talent? I don’t know if anyone can answer that yet even though Conley’s biggest offer was Louisville, but if Satterfield believes he can play, then I believe he can play.

Here’s what I wrote this morning about Conley:

Conley has an impressive arm, and patience inside the pocket. He also does a remarkable job of rolling away from pressure, re-planting his feet, and zipping a pass downfield. He is 6’1,” which is probably the biggest knock coming out of high school, but he has a stockier build than current Louisville quarterback Malik Cunningham, who is the same height. You wouldn’t have a hard time convincing me that Conley has a shot to play right away for the Cards. Check out Conley’s highlights here.

8:00 AM: Louisville was in on four star offensive lineman Triston Miller who recently decommitted from North Carolina State where now Louisville OC Dwayne Ledford was the Offensive Line coach until yesterday.

After decomitting, Triston Miller named a new top three and set his announcement date for this morning. The final three included Louisville, along with UNC and USC. It seemed that the big offensive lineman was likely going to end up a Cardinal, especially with his relationship with Dwayne Ledford. However, Miller ended up committing to North Carolina and new head coach, Mack Brown.

9:53 AM: Long time Louisville football target and local 4 star defensive end, JJ Weaver, was expected not to sign until February in the late signing period. However, something changed as the highly pursued DE is shutting things down and signing with Kentucky.

When Weaver announced that he was going to wait until February to sign with Kentucky, many (including myself) believed that Louisville still had a shot. Weaver would’ve had the chance to come in and play right away, and make a huge impact at that for Louisville. Instead it’s another player here locally who Kentucky pulled out in the end. Kentucky has already signed Demontae Crumes, Jared Casey, and Shawnkel Knight-Goff to their 2019 class.

10:10 AM: Louisville officially has it’s third signee of the day. Zach Williamson, a three star offensive lineman out of West Virginia, is officially in for the Cards in the class of 2019.

Williamson, who committed to Louisville & Bobby Petrino back in July and kept to his word through the transition to Scott Satterfield. He is one of two offensive lineman committed to the Cards, for a unit that desperately needs depth. The Cards return Mekhi Becton, Cole Bentley, Robbie Bell, Nathan Scheler, Caleb Chandler, Ronald Rudd, and Adonis Boone in 2019-20. Williamson, who is only 270 pounds currently but will be enrolling in January, could have a shot at competing for snaps early in his career.

10:45 AM: Trey Smith confirms via Twitter that he is indeed transferring from Louisville. Best of luck to Trey!

12:45 PM: BOOM! Scott Satterfield and his staff are at it again this afternoon, landing their second commitment of the day in inside linebacker Dorian Jones. You may recall Dorian Jones being one of the plethora of players taking official visits to The Ville this past weekend, even though he was committed to Indiana. That visit clearly went well enough to lead Jones to flip his commitment from Indiana to Louisville.

https://twitter.com/UofLFootball/status/1075436121675452417

A three star out of Plantation, Florida, Jones held offers from Indiana, Kansas State, Syracuse, and South Florida and was being recruited at one point at App State by Scott Satterfield. At 5’11, Jones is a bit smaller of a linebacker then we are used to here at Louisville, but given the lack of depth for the Cards it’s likely that Jones can compete against Robert Hicks & Dorian Etheridge for snaps as a freshman.

This is another great get for Satterfield and his staff and my guess is they aren’t finished yet.

1:07 PM: We’ve had a little bit of everything today.  There’s been crootin’ news, a few transfers, and now we have some coaching news. It was reported earlier today by Howie Lindsey (via CardinalSports.com) that Appalachian State coaches Mark Ivey and Dale Jones were leaving Boone, NC to come to Louisville and join their former boss, Scott Satterfield.

That news has now been confirmed by Pete Thamel.

Mark Ivey, who filled in as the Interim Head Coach for App State during their recent win in the R+L Carrier New Orleans Bowl, will be the defensive line coach (continuing in his same role from App State) and Dale Jones will likely coach the inside linebackers. Jones was the co-defensive coordinator at App State prior to joining the Louisville staff.

3:35 PM: I missed this earlier in the morning so it’s necessarily “breaking news,” but a big target for Louisville football has committed to Pittsburgh. Liam Dick, who is a three star offensive lineman out of Canada, has been on campus a few times and was a kid being recruited prior to Satterfield’s arrival.

It seemed like Louisville was a factor in his overall recruitment, but Dick chose to commit to Pitt.

3:40 PM: Once again this isn’t really a new update but I wanted to touch on a few things Scott Satterfield talked about during his press conference that stood out.

• The team really wanted to land Dorian Jones who had been committed to IU but visited this past weekend. He’s the type of linebacker who fits Satterfield and new defensive coordinator Bryan Brown. Satterfield went as far as saying “We really needed to get Dorian in this class.”
• For this coaching staff to walk away with four guys signed today and two of those players flipping their commitment after the staff had been here for just a few days is HUGE. Any questions about recruiting are fair seeing as how Louisville is a big jump from App State but so far so good.
• The Cards are looking to get 10 more kids to sign into the class of 2019 by February’s National Signing Day. The staff, which is now almost fully hired, can now get out and identify players that they like and build those relationships, something that Satterfield expressed the importance of a lot.
• Scott Satterfield talked about the positions of need today that the staff will try to find players for. Those positions mentioned specifically were TE, OL, LB, DL and of course QB. I expect there will be 2-3 TE’s, another QB (maybe two), and then several offensive lineman and defensive line.
• A big thing moving forward for Louisville is the recruiting of the local players. Scott Satterfield talked about how he went to see Aidan Robbins right away and how the Manual teachers and staff were extremely happy that UofL was there. I really believe that Satterfield is going to lock down this city, and we won’t ever see a class like 2019 again. It sucks that this year had so much talent and Louisville was only able to walk away with one player, but I doubt that will ever happen again. Any coach with a conscious knows you have to start in your own back yard when it comes to recruiting.
• This isn’t related to the press conference but once again Louisville fans are questioning the decision to pull scholarships from players committed. If you have any doubts please look at this tweet from Louisville Sports Live

The former staff really dropped the ball in recruiting the 2019 class and I put all the blame on Bobby Petrino. Just saying.

News may continue to develop over the rest of the afternoon and we’ll have you covered if that’s the case.