Four Commit to EMU in Busy Weekend
Three prep players and an NJCAA D3 All-American QB commit to Eastern Michigan football over the weekend.
Welcome to The Ypsilanti Eleven! Eastern Michigan saw four players commit to its program across the 2022 and 2023 classes. The quarterback room’s going to get a little bit deeper with an accomplished, but still young, JUCO guy.
Three players across the Midwest made their official visits to the program over the weekend and committed to bring EMU’s class size up to six.
Friday: JUCO QB Brooks Blount commits
To help fill out EMU’s roster, quarterback Brooks Blount announced his commitment to the team Friday evening.
Blount, a 2020 graduate of Waukesha HS (Wisc.), committed to the College of DuPage (Glen Ellyn, Ill.) right out of high school, but the college didn’t play football in the fall of 2020. Last year, Blount was the JUCO’s lead quarterback that helped capture the inaugural NJCAA Division III championship with a late, game-winning throw.
For the year, where he had to share the ball with three other quarterbacks, Blount played in 8 games, was 96/162 passing (59.3%) for 1,172 yards (7.2 Y/A) with 11 TD and 7 INT. On the ground, he had 32 rush att., 40 yards, and 3 rush TD.
Blount was named to the 2021 NJCAA D3 All-American Second Team.
The immediate outlook here isn’t for the incoming sophomore to battle for playing time in 2021, especially since EMU was able to get Taylor Powell and Cam’Ron McCoy on campus as early as it did (plus, second-year QB Austin Smith’s still in contention to rise into a starter heading into 2023). Blount seems talented enough to keep things competitive in the QB3 and QB4 roles, but the more meaningful snaps won’t come until he’s already spent at least a fall and spring in Ypsilanti.
Chris Creighton has historically brought on multiple quarterbacks through multiple avenues (high school signee, transfer portal, JUCO route, walk-ons) throughout his signing classes. Not all pan out, and some quarterbacks end up transferring out, but that’s the nature of playing Division-I football at the FBS level. This year, Powell joins as a graduate transfer with previous stops at two FBS schools. McCoy, a freshman, joined as a dual-sport athlete, who also pitches for EMU baseball. Jeremiah Salem is a 2022 preferred walk-on that’s joining via Germantown, Tenn. (Houston HS). In the middle of it all is Smith, a speedy QB from Ellenwood, Ga. (Cedar Grove HS), who joined the team in the winter of 2021 as an early enrollee.
For 2022, EMU fans can count on Powell being the starting QB for the team. That’s my read on it.
But no matter how this season goes [on the field], EMU’s primed to have a deep QB battle next spring between some guys who are all fighting for this year’s QB2 spot.
Saturday: 2023 trio visit, commit ahead of dead period
Three recruits who visited EMU’s campus over the weekend joined the program’s upcoming 2023 signing class: CB Caleb Dobbs (Cocoa HS - FL), LB Bryce Eliuk (Linden HS - MI), and OL Trenton VanBoening (Libertyville HS - IL).
Dobbs, from Cocoa, Fla., picked EMU over a pair of in-state schools (USF, FIU), and is currently rated a 3-star recruit by On3 (82). When signed, Dobbs would become the first prep signee to join EMU since Timarcus Simpson in 2018.
Eliuk is rated a 2-star LB by 247sports (77) who picked EMU over rival CMU, Davenport, Valparaiso, and Wayne State. Eliuk (Linden HS) appears on MLive’s list of top 50 class of 2023 recruits at #48, making him the second player on the list to commit to EMU — DE commit Luke Fletcher is listed at #26.
VanBoening is an OL listed at a very projectable 6-6, 295 lbs. 247sports has VanBoening as a 3-star recruit (83) and its #34 recruit from Illinois (Libertyville HS), #122 OT. This OL picked EMU over Buffalo, Cornell, Kent State, Lehigh, Miami OH, and Toledo. He’s currently the only offensive player committed to the Eagles’ signing class.
Including the three defensive players already committed to the program, EMU is up to six commits with four players coming from the Midwest.
Dead period: No in-person visits
Starting today, June 27, through July 24, FBS football is in a dead period. That means recruits and coaches are not allowed to talk to speak to each other in-person, not even in passing at the grocery store. They can still communicate electronically, but official visits and scouting at camps are over for the time being.