Mike Jenkins appears to be ready to
leave the Dallas and the Cowboys seem to be accommodating. The question is
where will the Southeast High product wind up.
Jenkins, who earned All-American honors at cornerback for
USF, is an unrestricted free agent. He has had to battle injuries the last
couple of years and was not happy that prior to last season Dallas owner Jerry
Jones drafted CB Morris Claiborne and signed free
agent CB Brandon Carr to a $50.1 million deal.
Mike Jenkins
The 27 year-old lost his starting job to Claiborne, but then Jenkins wound up starting
at the slot corner when Orlando Scandrick injured his hand.
Jenkins reportedly angered Dallas when he did his off
season rehab from shoulder surgery in Florida and didn’t attend voluntary
workouts with the Cowboys though he was at all the mandatory sessions.
“Do I want to come back? I’ve been here for five years, I’ve
grown attached to everybody here. It’s hard to just get up and leave and not
want to come back. At the same time, you want to go somewhere and have a fair opportunity
and I guess I go on from there,” Jenkins told ESPNDallas.com.
One possible destination could be Tampa. Bucs head coach Greg
Schiano knows Jenkins from his best days when he played against
Schiano’s Rutgers teams.
The Bucs are in dire need of cornerbacks and at worse Jenkins
has never gotten in trouble ala Tampa’s troubled cornerback Eric
Wright, who has been dodging the law since his days at USC.
But another destination could be San Francisco. Jim
Leavitt, who was the USF head coach when Jenkins played there, is the
linebackers coach for the 49ers. He has always had nothing but good things to
say about Jenkins and has considered one of his best all time recruits.
Marquel Blackwell, who many believe to
be the best quarterback in USF history, is returning to the Bulls to work under
head coach Willie Taggart.
Blackwell was a four-year standout quarterback for USF
from 1999-2002 when the program made the leap to I-AA under then head coach Jim
Leavitt
Marquel Blackwell
The St. Petersburg Dixie Hollins product holds
most of the USF career passing records, including touchdowns (67), completions
(795), attempts (1,417) and passing yards (9,108) and ranks ninth in career
rushing yards (1,235) and fifth in rushing touchdowns (20).
Blackwell served on the Bulls’ coaching staff as a
program assistant from 2009-11 and spent last season as a graduate assistant at
Western Kentucky under coach Taggart. Prior to his first stint on the USF
coaching staff, Blackwell served as the head football coach at Freedom High
School in Tampa from 2007-08. He will serve as Director of Player Development.
Taggart has also hired Paul Gonnella
,
who will serve as the staff’s Director of Player Personnel.
Gonnella spent the 2012 season as director of player
personnel at Alabama, helping the Crimson Tide sign the nation’s top class. He
had the same role at Purdue in 2011 and at Memphis in 2010.
Gonnella has also spent time at Miami, Tennessee and
North Carolina in similar roles and capacities .A native of Wakefield, Mass.,
Gonnella began his career as a coach and has worked with high schools in his
home state as well as in Georgia.
Taggart has also moved coach Stu Holt
to special teams coordinator. Taggart also announced he was moving Stu Holt into
the special-teams coordinator.
Holt
has worked with special teams on numerous occasions throughout his coaching
career, including stints as the special-teams coordinator at Western Kentucky
in 2005 and ’09. In 2005, he helped the Hilltoppers rank fourth in the nation
in punt returns.
He helped place-kicker Chris James earn first-team
I-AA.org All-Star and all-Gateway honors, after pacing the league with 1.36
field goals and 7.91 points per contest. In addition, Dennis Mitchell was a
second-team all-conference choice as a return specialist after finishing sixth
nationally in yards per punt return.
In 2009, Holt coached four players that ranked in the top five of Sun
Belt Conference statistical categories, including Jeremy Moore and Bobby
Rainey, who led the league in punting and all-purpose yardage, respectively.
The Hilltoppers kickoff return unit also ranked second in the league.
Ray Woodie has been Willie
Taggart’s right hand man ever since Taggart hired him as an assistant
coach at Western Kentucky.
The Manatee County products have formed quite a tandem
with Woodie named the top recruiter in his first year at Western Kentucky and just
recently cited to be among the best recruiters in the Big East Conference
despite only a few months on the job at USF.
Ray Woodie top recruiter
But Taggart might need more out of Woodie following the
recent resignation of Larry Scott, who left USF to become an
assistant with Miami this week.
Scott had been with USF since the Jim Leavitt
days and had a solid beat on the Miami area. He agreed to take the Miami
position after Hurricanes assistant Mario Cristobal (the
fired FIU coach) left for Alabama.
The only holdover from the Skip Holtz
era, Scott was noted for recruiting some of the top players out of the Miami
area, including this year’s four star signee, defensive back Lamar
Robbins.
Now Scott is gone and it might mean more work for Woodie. The Palmetto native
is solid on recruiting the Manatee-Sarasota-Charlotte County
corridor and Tampa Bay area and is not adverse to increasing his territory.
Trevon Young will sign a scholarship to play football at the University of Florida on Friday morning, Pirates head football coach Curt Bradley said.
Young was a late addtion to the Florida recruiting class of 2013. Gators head coach Will Muschamp brought him up to Gainesville last weekend and offered him a scholarship, prefereably to play tight end.
The 6-6, 260 pound Young was also being pursued by USF and had offers from Purdue, Missouri, FIU and FAU. But the hold up was a basketball scholarship offer he had to play for Division II Eckered College.
The career scoring and rebounding leadert for Braden River, Young said earlier in the week he was torn between playing basketball and football for the Gators. Then USF garnered his interest and with all the uncertainty he did not sign on Wednesday's national signing day.
The three star Rivals.com prospect did not play football until his junior year. But several college coaches have said he has NFL potential as a tight end because of his size and athleticism he showed in basketball.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
@gatorzone @bradentonherald tight end #TravonYoung from #BradenRiver says he will likely sign with #Florida on Thursday
