Bears Snag Top 4 Star TE Target DJ Rogers as 2020 Class Nears Completion

This is fantastic news! Really looking forward to seeing DJ in a Cal uniform and making a big impact.

Go Bears, baby!

DJ Rodgers is a great Cal name. Welcome DJ!

Go Bears!

May this please be the break in the logjam of lack of 4 star recruits. Welcome D.J.! We look forward to your great career at Cal. Go Bears!

This is great news on a few fronts. Obviously the O needs as many weapons as possible and adding a playmaker at TE will really help. But also, he made the commitment after the BB announcement. Maybe he knows who the next OC is and the person is good enough that it allowed him to close the deal with us.

tequila4kapp said:

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This is great news on a few fronts. Obviously the O needs as many weapons as possible and adding a playmaker at TE will really help. But also, he made the commitment after the BB announcement. Maybe he knows who the next OC is and the person is good enough that it allowed him to close the deal with us.

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Yeah, it's interesting that even with the OC heading out and a new one on the way that we don't know who he will be yet, he chose us. Speaks well of our current coaching staff and likely means most of the offensive staff stays.

Welcome on board DJ, Go Bears!

Great news. Welcome aboard, DJ. You made an excellent choice. Go Bears!! Go DJ!!

BIG TIME!!!!!

Joker said:

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ilovetogobear said:

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May this please be the break in the logjam of lack of 4 star recruits. Welcome D.J.! We look forward to your great career at Cal. Go Bears!

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We have two other four star commits

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Our first 4 star HS offensive recruits since Garbers?

tequila4kapp said:

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This is great news on a few fronts. Obviously the O needs as many weapons as possible and adding a playmaker at TE will really help. But also, he made the commitment after the BB announcement. Maybe he knows who the next OC is and the person is good enough that it allowed him to close the deal with us.

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Wouldn't that be great?

Welcome to Rogers, who I hope has a terrific time at Cal!

As I'm apt to do, I have to point out that Rogers didn't make ESPN's ranking of Top 300 recruits. It's a nice step forward for Wilcox & Team, but it is hardly striking "gold."

Cal has zero recruits ranked in ESPN's Top 300. Stanfurd has 4 (but 3 of them are ranked between #250 and #300). The real surprise is USC with zero.

At the time of ToshGate, Cal tended to have a presence on the ESPN list. Maybe someday soon we can get back to that point. For those of you who'll get mad at me for posting facts, please save your keystrokes.

Cal: 0
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Washington: 8
Oregon: 6
Stanfurd: 4
Colorado: 2
UCLA: 1
ASU: 1
USC: 0
Utah: 0
U of A: 0
OSU: 0
WSU: 0

By the way, it's official, I can't have children!

Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Welcome to Rogers, who I hope has a terrific time at Cal!

As I'm apt to do, I have to point out that Rogers didn't make ESPN's ranking of Top 300 recruits. It's a nice step forward for Wilcox & Team, but it is hardly striking "gold."

Cal has zero recruits ranked in ESPN's Top 300. Stanfurd has 4 (but 3 of them are ranked between #250 and #300). The real surprise is USC with zero.

At the time of ToshGate, Cal tended to have a presence on the ESPN list. Maybe someday soon we can get back to that point. For those of you who'll get mad at me for posting facts, please save your keystrokes.

Cal: 0
---------------------------------
Washington: 8
Oregon: 6
Stanfurd: 4
Colorado: 2
UCLA: 1
ASU: 1
USC: 0
Utah: 0
U of A: 0
OSU: 0
WSU: 0

By the way, it's official, I can't have children!

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As was just explained in detail the ESPN star rankings are the least informed..

NVBear78 said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Welcome to Rogers, who I hope has a terrific time at Cal!

As I'm apt to do, I have to point out that Rogers didn't make ESPN's ranking of Top 300 recruits. It's a nice step forward for Wilcox & Team, but it is hardly striking "gold."

Cal has zero recruits ranked in ESPN's Top 300. Stanfurd has 4 (but 3 of them are ranked between #250 and #300). The real surprise is USC with zero.

At the time of ToshGate, Cal tended to have a presence on the ESPN list. Maybe someday soon we can get back to that point. For those of you who'll get mad at me for posting facts, please save your keystrokes.

Cal: 0
---------------------------------
Washington: 8
Oregon: 6
Stanfurd: 4
Colorado: 2
UCLA: 1
ASU: 1
USC: 0
Utah: 0
U of A: 0
OSU: 0
WSU: 0

By the way, it's official, I can't have children!

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As was just explained in detail the ESPN star rankings are the least informed..

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Where was that explained?

Number of Cal recruits in ESPN's Top 300 (Top 150 prior to 2013)

2020: 0/300 C'mon Wilcox...
2019: 0/300
2018: 0/300
2017: 2/300 Chase Garbers (#176), Taariq Johnson (#269)
2016: 2/300 Demetrius Robertson (#62), Melquise Stovall (#233)
2015: 1/300 Carlos Strickland (#182)
2014: 1/300 Devante Downs (#206)
2013: 1/300 Jared Goff (#267)
2012: 2/150 Zach Kline (#32), Darius Powe (#66)
2011: 5/150 Todd Barr (#48), Avery Walls (#68), Maurice Harris (#91), Viliami Moala (#97), Jason Gibson (#131)
2010: 2/150 Keenan Allen (#33), Cecil Whiteside (#116)
2009: 1/150 Steve Williams (#75)
2008: 0/150
2007: 0/150
2006: 2/150 Darian Hagan (#78), Derrick Hill Jr (#120)

It's interesting to turn the clock back 10 years and visit Cyberbears...there aren't too many recognizable handles. Lots of turnover!
https://bearinsider.com/forums/2/topics/37404
I do wonder what happened to so many of these old time posters. Take Vandalus, for example...a Hall of Fame Bear with 5,410 career posts. Did he jump to the premium board, never again to mingle with the riffraff on this board? Did he change his handle? Did he turn his back on the Bears, with the Cheez-It Bowl simply being the last straw (his last post was on 12/24/18 -- "I'm officially ready for the Cheez-It Bowl")? Certainly, a few old time posters are buried in Blueblood's cellar -- especially some of the younger, blond-haired ones -- but Vandalus, I hope you're alive and well!

calumnus said:

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Joker said:

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ilovetogobear said:

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May this please be the break in the logjam of lack of 4 star recruits. Welcome D.J.! We look forward to your great career at Cal. Go Bears!

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We have two other four star commits

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Our first 4 star HS offensive recruits since Garbers?

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Will Craig and Nikko Remigio are our most recent. Garbers was the year prior.

Does he know our OC is leaving

what's the deal with "commitments" before signing day? They're technically non-binding, so schools reserve a scholarship for a player that could 10 minutes before signing day change their mind?

GBear4Life said:

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what's the deal with "commitments" before signing day? They're technically non-binding, so schools reserve a scholarship for a player that could 10 minutes before signing day change their mind?

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There'll be a guy or two who would be willing to take a pwo for a year, at most, to help get a late comer, knowing that things will shake out after the fact. The coaches will forever be in that kid's debt for him stepping aside. It is done only for a 4/5* recruit, tho. Not always necessary, since decomms from guys like that te often balance things out.

I forget when in the year you have to get down to the max. Sometimes a program will take extras and move existing players up or back a year to make it work. There's always a way.

Rushinbear said:

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GBear4Life said:

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what's the deal with "commitments" before signing day? They're technically non-binding, so schools reserve a scholarship for a player that could 10 minutes before signing day change their mind?

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There'll be a guy or two who would be willing to take a pwo for a year, at most, to help get a late comer, knowing that things will shake out after the fact. The coaches will forever be in that kid's debt for him stepping aside. It is done only for a 4/5* recruit, tho. Not always necessary, since decomms from guys like that te often balance things out.

I forget when in the year you have to get down to the max. Sometimes a program will take extras and move existing players up or back a year to make it work. There's always a way.

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Actually, guys that are asked to step aside generally take a grayshirt rather than a pwo. This allows them to get a head start on school by taking a minimum number of units in the fall on their dime and receive a guaranteed scholie beginning in the spring, participate in spring ball and not have their eligibility clock begin until the following season. It happened occasionally during the Tedford era.

71Bear said:

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Rushinbear said:

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GBear4Life said:

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what's the deal with "commitments" before signing day? They're technically non-binding, so schools reserve a scholarship for a player that could 10 minutes before signing day change their mind?

---

There'll be a guy or two who would be willing to take a pwo for a year, at most, to help get a late comer, knowing that things will shake out after the fact. The coaches will forever be in that kid's debt for him stepping aside. It is done only for a 4/5* recruit, tho. Not always necessary, since decomms from guys like that te often balance things out.

I forget when in the year you have to get down to the max. Sometimes a program will take extras and move existing players up or back a year to make it work. There's always a way.

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Actually, guys that are asked to step aside generally take a grayshirt rather than a pwo. This allows them to get a head start on school by taking a minimum number of units in the fall on their dime and receive a guaranteed scholie beginning in the spring, participate in spring ball and not have their eligibility clock begin until the following season. It happened occasionally during the Tedford era.

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that, too.

GBear4Life said:

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what's the deal with "commitments" before signing day? They're technically non-binding, so schools reserve a scholarship for a player that could 10 minutes before signing day change their mind?

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Gives them a chance to get a little individual recognition (usually social media nowadays), as opposed to being just another signee on LOI day.

While you all make a few good points about ESPN's Top 300 rankings, I still find most of the counter arguments unconvincing, biased and self-serving (pro Cal), and with flawed logic.

- Yes, many of the Cal recruits ESPN had in their Top 300 didn't go on to have great careers. In some cases, no careers at all. And, yes, Goff outperformed the higher-rated Kline. All of that proves nothing. If you examine any of the other recruiting services, you'd see a similar "miss rate" on their projections. Projections are difficult, and quite simply, many players don't pan out. The question to ask is: which recruiting service has a better projection rate? ESPN might be #1, you simply don't know unless you've done the study.

- Arguments that ESPN is intentionally biased against the West, against the Pac 12, or against Cal, are hard for me to accept. Why go to the effort to have such a bias? It would actually be far easier, with less effort, for ESPN to give 100% effort and produce unbiased rankings, or outsource the task to an unbiased third party, than go to the effort to intentionally bias the rankings to favor select teams in order to drive clicks. That type of conspiracy seems unlikely to me. There may be unintentional bias whereby ESPN would raise a player's ranking after that player verbals to an impressive school -- but then how do you explain that Cal got 5 out of 150 spots in the Tosh era? Certainly, Cal wasn't one of the "chosen few" schools that ESPN would tend to bias upwards. It seems more likely that our Tosh-era players were simply projected to be great players.

- I can see how systematic bias could be possible by region...for example, if ESPN is on the East Coast, they might have a bias towards East Coast talent and schools. And so some of you suggest to look at different recruiting services...let's say, ones that have a bias towards the West, perhaps? How is that more fair and less biased? Don't we want to know the unbiased truth?

- I agree it is interesting if ESPN hadn't updated their Rogers page in more than one year. That would indicate they're not investing sufficient resources into their recruiting ranking efforts. I still don't see how that would result in a systematically bias against Cal, however. Unless you were to make the argument that players that Cal prefers tend to develop later in their high school careers, or whatever you want to spin. But you can't have your cake and eat it too: the authors of this site suggest Rogers got offers from the top top schools. If that is the case, it flies in the face of the suggestion that many of you make that ESPN only updates/upgrades the rankings of those players getting offers from the top schools. If that is true, Rogers' page should have been updated based on the offers he received.

- Ask yourself: Does it make intuitive sense that the "best pass catching TE" in the recruiting class wouldn't make the Top 300? I would view that claim with some suspicion. Look, the posters on this site can be ridiculous. In men's bball, I pointed out when he committed that Paris Austin was a mediocre player who wouldn't elevate the program, and posters ripped me a new one. The bias is strong in these parts.

Finally, I do find it funny that people continue to suggest that "the stars don't matter," suggesting that those of us who believe that stars do matter must prove the Earth isn't flat. How absurd. For the "stars don't matter crowd," if you look at the Top 25 or so player rankings each year, they are stock full of future NFL players. If the stars don't matter, and if the ESPN recruiting rankings are systematically biased against Cal (and therefore we should just ignore them), then one would have expected Cal's performance in the real world to frequently have exceeded what the ESPN recruiting rankings would have forecast. Yet, in the real world, while I will grant you that Cal has had more NFL players than the rankings would have suggested would occur, Cal's performance in the standings has generally sucked, and at the same time, the schools typically at the top of the rankings have strongly outperformed Cal.

I'll stop now. Every year I make my annual ESPN Top 300 post, and every year I find the counter arguments unconvincing.

Chapman_is_Gone said:

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While you all make a few good points about ESPN's Top 300 rankings, I still find most of the counter arguments unconvincing, biased and self-serving (pro Cal), and with flawed logic.

- Yes, many of the Cal recruits ESPN had in their Top 300 didn't go on to have great careers. In some cases, no careers at all. And, yes, Goff outperformed the higher-rated Kline. All of that proves nothing. If you examine any of the other recruiting services, you'd see a similar "miss rate" on their projections. Projections are difficult, and quite simply, many players don't pan out. The question to ask is: which recruiting service has a better projection rate? ESPN might be #1, you simply don't know unless you've done the study.

- Arguments that ESPN is intentionally biased against the West, against the Pac 12, or against Cal, are hard for me to accept. Why go to the effort to have such a bias? It would actually be far easier, with less effort, for ESPN to give 100% effort and produce unbiased rankings, or outsource the task to an unbiased third party, than go to the effort to intentionally bias the rankings to favor select teams in order to drive clicks. That type of conspiracy seems unlikely to me. There may be unintentional bias whereby ESPN would raise a player's ranking after that player verbals to an impressive school -- but then how do you explain that Cal got 5 out of 150 spots in the Tosh era? Certainly, Cal wasn't one of the "chosen few" schools that ESPN would tend to bias upwards. It seems more likely that our Tosh-era players were simply projected to be great players.

- I can see how systematic bias could be possible by region...for example, if ESPN is on the East Coast, they might have a bias towards East Coast talent and schools. And so some of you suggest to look at different recruiting services...let's say, ones that have a bias towards the West, perhaps? How is that more fair and less biased?

- I agree it is interesting if ESPN hadn't updated their Rogers page in more than one year. That would indicate they're not investing sufficient resources into their recruiting ranking efforts. I still don't see how that would result in a systematically bias against Cal, however. Unless you were to make the argument that players that Cal prefers tend to develop later in their high school careers, or whatever you want to spin. But you can't have your cake and eat it too: the authors of this site suggest Rogers got offers from the top top schools. If that is the case, it flies in the face of the suggestion that many of you make that ESPN only updates/upgrades the rankings of those players getting offers from the top schools.

Finally, I do find it funny that people continue to suggest that "the stars don't matter" and that I have some sort of case that I must prove if the rankings are to be believed. How absurd. For the "stars don't matter crowd," if you look at the Top 25 or so player rankings each year, they are stock full of future NFL players. If the stars don't matter, and if the ESPN recruiting rankings are systematically biased against Cal (and therefore we should just ignore them), then one would have expected Cal's performance in the real world to frequently have exceeded what the ESPN recruiting rankings had predicted. Yet, in the real world, Cal's performance has generally sucked, and at the same time, the schools typically at the top of the rankings have strongly outperformed Cal.

I'll stop now. It's just that, every year, the counter arguments to my annual ESPN Top 300 post are the same, and every year, I find them unconvincing.

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You missed the end of the quote, "stars don't matter...if your team can't recruit highly starred players".

Chapman_is_Gone said:

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While you all make a few good points about ESPN's Top 300 rankings, I still find most of the counter arguments unconvincing, biased and self-serving (pro Cal), and with flawed logic.

- Yes, many of the Cal recruits ESPN had in their Top 300 didn't go on to have great careers. In some cases, no careers at all. And, yes, Goff outperformed the higher-rated Kline. All of that proves nothing. If you examine any of the other recruiting services, you'd see a similar "miss rate" on their projections. Projections are difficult, and quite simply, many players don't pan out. The question to ask is: which recruiting service has a better projection rate? ESPN might be #1, you simply don't know unless you've done the study.

- Arguments that ESPN is intentionally biased against the West, against the Pac 12, or against Cal, are hard for me to accept. Why go to the effort to have such a bias? It would actually be far easier, with less effort, for ESPN to give 100% effort and produce unbiased rankings, or outsource the task to an unbiased third party, than go to the effort to intentionally bias the rankings to favor select teams in order to drive clicks. That type of conspiracy seems unlikely to me. There may be unintentional bias whereby ESPN would raise a player's ranking after that player verbals to an impressive school -- but then how do you explain that Cal got 5 out of 150 spots in the Tosh era? Certainly, Cal wasn't one of the "chosen few" schools that ESPN would tend to bias upwards. It seems more likely that our Tosh-era players were simply projected to be great players.

- I can see how systematic bias could be possible by region...for example, if ESPN is on the East Coast, they might have a bias towards East Coast talent and schools. And so some of you suggest to look at different recruiting services...let's say, ones that have a bias towards the West, perhaps? How is that more fair and less biased? Don't we want to know the unbiased truth?

- I agree it is interesting if ESPN hadn't updated their Rogers page in more than one year. That would indicate they're not investing sufficient resources into their recruiting ranking efforts. I still don't see how that would result in a systematically bias against Cal, however. Unless you were to make the argument that players that Cal prefers tend to develop later in their high school careers, or whatever you want to spin. But you can't have your cake and eat it too: the authors of this site suggest Rogers got offers from the top top schools. If that is the case, it flies in the face of the suggestion that many of you make that ESPN only updates/upgrades the rankings of those players getting offers from the top schools. If that is true, Rogers' page should have been updated based on the offers he received.

- Ask yourself: Does it make intuitive sense that the "best pass catching TE" in the recruiting class wouldn't make the Top 300? I would view that claim with some suspicion. Look, the posters on this site can be ridiculous. In men's bball, I pointed out when he committed that Paris Austin was a mediocre player who wouldn't elevate the program, and posters ripped me a new one. The bias is strong in these parts.

Finally, I do find it funny that people continue to suggest that "the stars don't matter," suggesting that those of us who believe that stars do matter must prove the Earth isn't flat. How absurd. For the "stars don't matter crowd," if you look at the Top 25 or so player rankings each year, they are stock full of future NFL players. If the stars don't matter, and if the ESPN recruiting rankings are systematically biased against Cal (and therefore we should just ignore them), then one would have expected Cal's performance in the real world to frequently have exceeded what the ESPN recruiting rankings would have forecast. Yet, in the real world, while I will grant you that Cal has had more NFL players than the rankings would have suggested would occur, Cal's performance in the standings has generally sucked, and at the same time, the schools typically at the top of the rankings have strongly outperformed Cal.

I'll stop now. Every year I make my annual ESPN Top 300 post, and every year I find the counter arguments unconvincing.

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Most of the people/fans live east of the Mississippi.

Rushinbear said:

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Most of the people/fans live east of the Mississippi.

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Are you therefore suggesting that ESPN intentionally biases its recruiting rankings to get more clicks?

Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Rushinbear said:

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Most of the people/fans live east of the Mississippi.

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Are you therefore suggesting that ESPN intentionally biases its recruiting rankings to get more clicks?

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I am suggesting that ESPN is motivated by ratings and the profitable ads that they bring, or should I say the profitable rates. It doesn't help that Pac-12 teams have not been dominant lately, by comparison.

Welcome Mr. Rogers, I think you are joining the Cal offense at a really good time.