Bearcat 'Crootin: It's Raining Football Offers

A week ago, the big football news on your screen was related to the NFL Draft. Unfortunately, now that all the names have been read we are really in the doldrums of the football calendar. As we anxiously await the arrival of summer practices and season previews, we can at least satiate ourselves on news from the recruiting trail. This week, Cincinnati sent offers to recruits from Florida to California. Here's a run down of some of this week's news.

On the football side of things, UC has been quite busy. Starting down south, Cincinnati has offered at least three players in Florida this week. The state is often a rich repository of talented football players. Mike Boone and Tion Green are just a pair of players on the current roster from the Sunshine State.

Headlining the Florida prospects who received offers are offensive lineman Connor Robbins and athlete Dawson DeGroot.

Robbins is a beast by any standard. Standing at 6-foot-8 and weighing in at 323 pounds, he is a three-star recruit from Saint Augustine. He ranks 107th among offensive tackle recruits according to 247Sports and 176th among players in the state of Florida. His list of offers his quite long, with UC among 16 schools that have attempted to court the high school junior. That includes several other American Athletic Conference teams like Memphis, UCF, East Carolina and UCF.

DeGroot is another three-star recruit on UC's radar. He is a player that could do a few things for the Bearcats, as he currently plays wide receiver and free safety for Fort Myers High School. Standing 6-foot-2 and weighing 190 pounds, he has the build of a receiver, but since he's a 2017 recruit, he has plenty of time to bulk up and play on defense. DeGroot doesn't have the diner-style menu of teams that Robbins has, with Cincinnati joining Boston College and Central Michigan as suitors who have sent offers.

Also receiving an offer for the 2017 class was Will Mallory, a wide receiver from Jacksonville. Mallory has quite a few more offers on the table than most and 247Sports is already predicting that he will choose Michigan, although that is far from a done deal.

Taking a trip a little further north we come to Georgia, where safety Joshua Brown resides. Brown is a three-star recruit playing for Langston Hughes in Fairburn. He is the No. 51 ranked safety nationally and the No. 63 player in the state of Georgia. UC is competing with Arkansas State, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi State, South Carolina and Tennessee for Brown's services, which come to a campus (hopefully) near you in 2017.

Fellow Georgian Caleb Chandler also got an offer from UC this week. Chandler is a 6-foot-5, 285-pound offensive tackle out of Jefferson. He is a top-30 recruit in the state of Georgia and the No. 32 offensive tackle recruit in the country. The breadth of schools interested in him is impressive and includes some SEC powers such as UGA.

Pennsylvania was another hotbed this week. A pair of 2017 recruits opened offer letters as did a pair from the 2018 class. Zane Zandier, a 6-foot-3 outside linebacker from Jefferson Hills and Tyler Sear, a 6-foot-5 tight end from New Castle could both be wearing red and black in 2017. Zandier is a three-star recruit according to Rivals. 247Sports predicts that he will choose West Virginia but that was before UC entered into the fold. Sear has mainly received interest from in-state schools, with offers from Temple and Penn State.

Looking further into the future, Cincinnati sent offers to Kwantel Raines and Julian Major, who are both 2018 prospects. Raines, who hails from Aliquippa, is a 6-foot-3 safety with a nice stable of offers. Aside from in-state programs like Temple, Pittsburgh and Penn State, he has been contacted by West Virginia, Iowa State, Michigan and a few others. Major plays on the opposite side of the ball, as a 6-foot-1 receiver. Playing for Penn Hills in Pittsburgh, Major has offers from a number of schools in the Pittsburgh region, including Pittsburgh itself. (Hopefully you were not playing the Pittsburgh drinking game for that sentence.)

As a school from the Midwest, Cincinnati makes plenty of offers in its own back yard, and that's just what they did in offering Jaylin Garner. The 6-foot-1 inside linebacker is from the 2018 class and, according to 247, is leaning toward Ohio State.

Finally, we will travel all the way to the Golden State. No, not to talk about Draymond Green's Mr. Freeze act. Instead, we will be discussing a quarterback prospect. Aidan Willard is the man in question here. He is a pro-style quarterback and a three-star recruit from Napa. Cincinnati is a bit of an outlier among the schools he has received offers from, which include Hawaii, California, Colorado and Colorado State. Interestingly enough, Toledo is also in the mix.

Well that's it for this week. Remember, recruiting never sleeps.