The Blue Board

I love this kid. Fast fast fast. Extremely underrated here IMO. ESPiN actually got something right, for once, rating him at 4 stars.

I read that some Maryland fans think he has more potential than Stefon Diggs. Personally, I dont see it. Diggs was a beast not just on offense, but defense too.

Any MD guys in here that can chime in?

I agree ... it wasn't lack of talent as much as kids having absolutely no clue what to do on defense (and transfers).
I had a discussion with Rocky about this before last season started where he was adamant we had no skill on D and I insisted it was the coaching and the players just being absolutely clueless how to play it.

The line recruiting sufferwd though.

I doubt you find any Maryland fans that say he has more potential than Stefon Diggs. For however good Diggs ends up being, it would be hard for a UMD fan to say Jacobs is better than him just because getting Diggs the #2 rated WR last year was such a recruiting coup for them. It would be hard to find a quote from a UMD fan saying that.

However realistically, Taivon Jacobs was the Terps top WR target in this class. He has legitimate speed. He ran a 21.57 to get second place in the 4A state meet in 200 meter race this past spring (which is about equal to a 10.7 100 meter time. Jacobs probably isn't an elite receiver, but a very solid prsopect. Hes fast, perhaps elite speed, depending on how you define elite speed. Hes probably one of the fastest dozen or so WR prospects this year in the nation. Hes a fairly smooth athlete too. Hes on the smaller side and his game really is focused on speed as he'll need to develop route running. As you can tell from his clips they pretty much just throw to him deep, that is not a particularly fancy passing system that his school uses.

He plays in one of the top 2 public school leagues in MD. However, its important to remember that unlike some southern states, but probably like Ohio, MD HS football scene is dominated by the private schools and the best two leagues in MD, the WCAC (centered around DC) and MIAA (centered around the Baltimore area) are private school leagues. The WCAC actually probably dilutes the PG County league as I imagine a lot of their players come from PG County. PG County where Taivon plays produces a ton of D1 prospects each year but the county is predominantly African American and one of the poorer counties in Maryland (hence why the schools don't have impressive uniforms, stadiums, and tracks in his highlight video, a lot of those schools are the poorest publics in MD). That said some of those PG county teams are pretty good, Eleanor Roosevelt High School (one of the richer PG County schools) had a class in 2004 that included Rivals number 1 ranked player Derrick Williams (3rd round draft pick), a five star DE Derrick Harvey that went to Florida (first round draft pick--three sacks against Ohio State in the national championship game), another top 100 (by Rivals) player in DE Trey Covington, and a five star Offensive Tackle (who played DT and TE in HS) in Jared Gaither (sixth round draft pick, but he started 4 years in the NFL for the Ravens). Last year the top PG County player was Ronald Darby who went to Notre Dame, this year Jacobs and Paul Harris (Tennessee) are the top two.

Hard to find a more knowledgeable poster.