Only 1 school has more commits in 2025 class. Why is Syracuse football taking so many recruits?

Syracuse, N.Y. — The Syracuse football program has 27 verbal commitments in the Class of 2025, the second-most in the country trailing only Rutgers.

In recent years, that large number of commitments would mean the Orange was finished with recruiting. Until a rule change in 2023, schools were limited to taking 25 new players in a single year. The limit was changed, in part because schools needed to be able to accept and replace transfers.

While Syracuse doesn’t necessarily need to stop recruiting in the Class of 2025, the Orange already appears to be facing a numbers crunch. Each additional high school commitment, or added transfer, could mean one more player on the 2024 roster will be gone the following year.

Syracuse has 17 seniors on its roster. Those are the players who would traditionally be expected to run out of college eligibility and create space for the 2025 recruiting class.

In addition to departing seniors, there are juniors who can declare early the NFL draft, including tight end/receiver Oronde Gadsden II and running back LeQuint Allen. Other players may decide to pursue a graduate degree or a better shot at playing time elsewhere.

For now, the math doesn’t add up to the 85-player scholarship cap imposed by the NCAA. Syracuse doesn’t have the space to take 27 high school recruits without anticipating a measure of changes later this year.

Brian Dohn, a national college football recruiting analyst with 247Sports, suggested multiple reasons why Syracuse has accepted verbal commitments from such a substantial number of recruits.

They are:

• Recruits committing earlier in their careers.
• Efforts by Fran Brown and his staff to overhaul the roster.
• An uncertainty around roster sizes starting in 2025.

“The easy thing to do is sit here and say this is the reason,” Dohn said. “The reality is there are a lot of different factors in play, especially at Syracuse. There’s not just one.”

Brown came to Syracuse with a strong reputation for recruiting. His first recruiting class, put together in a span of months, was ranked higher than any group the school has brought in during the recruiting rankings era. His second recruiting class is positioned similarly.

Dohn praised Brown’s early efforts and said Syracuse’s new coach prioritizes physical traits more than some other coaches in recruiting.

“I’ve known Fran dating back to his time at Baylor and he’s a traits guy,” Dohn said. “If you have a kid who is going to put up good track times and maybe his tape isn’t what he wants, or he’s a big-time wrestler or a thrower, he might take a chance on those guys.”

Still, Syracuse will need to free up some space to take those chances.

Transfers will likely be a big part of creating space. Some talented players might decide to head toward other programs like Duce Chestnut and Ja’Had Carter did two years ago. Some players might not mesh well with a new coaching staff. Some might look at the depth chart after spending a season with Brown and decide the potential for playing time is better somewhere else.

“You need to protect yourself from transfers and people need to realize that transfers work both ways,” Dohn said. “Kids that you want (to keep) will leave your program. And kids that you don’t want (to keep) will leave your program.”

In addition to its seniors, Syracuse also has 18 redshirt juniors on its roster, including eight that will have spent four years at SU. Coaches sometimes must have difficult conversations with both players and recruits about depth charts, roles and playing time that spur decisions.

Brown’s first offseason with the program included an initial wave of 28 players transferring from the program. Only six found spots at Power-Four programs.

Former Syracuse offensive lineman Jayden Bass said he made the choice to leave because he wanted to be able to play. He wound up transferring to UConn.

Dohn said a second heavy wave of departures as Brown continues to assess the team would be fairly normal.

Unforeseen things can also happen in recruiting. Syracuse lost a pair of players from its list of verbal commitments last weekend. Both are reportedly considering attending junior college. At least one of them needs more time to get academically eligible.

“Ninety percent of the kids will stick,” Dohn said. “But there’s always a decommitment or two. Some of it is ability, some of it is academics, some of it is coaching changes and coaches leaving for other jobs.”

Dohn said there could be another reason, besides upgrading its roster, that Syracuse has taken so many commitments from high schoolers already.

A proposed court settlement that college sport leaders hope will settle antitrust questions reportedly includes ending scholarship limits in college sports. This means schools would be permitted to go over football’s current 85-player scholarship limit.

Syracuse, Dohn said, could be accepting commitments from high school players to help position itself in case those limits disappear.

“I think the biggest thing is there is uncertainty about whether rosters are going to be capped at 85 come 2025,” Dohn said. “There is a lot of talk that rosters could be 100-plus. Now, we’ll see if it goes through, but you can’t just, all of a sudden, go out and add 40 or 50 kids to your roster. You have to do it over time. Part of it is, maybe, some pre-planning with that.”

If Syracuse is offering scholarships based on that assumption and it doesn’t happen for the 2025 season, the team’s roster crunch will get even more complicated.

In order to go into effect that proposed settlement has to be approved by California District Judge Claudia Wilken over the objections of at least one school, Houston Christian.

Syracuse has not said whether it plans to go over 85 scholarships if permitted. The school has declined to discuss the proposed settlement and its potential impact.

Still, it is another part of the picture, another reason why Syracuse’s new coach is positioned to lead one of the most dramatic roster makeovers in Syracuse football history.

“There’s some energy in the program so you may expand your class a little bit,” Dohn said. “Rosters may expand. You need to replenish your roster. You are more aggressive taking commitments because the whole process has sped up.

“It’s not just Syracuse. I know they have a ton right now. But there are a lot of schools that have taken 20 recruits already. There are a lot of factors.

“That’s why you are where you are. It shows they want more talent in the program. I guess that’s the best way to put it.”

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