FSU football: Branden Jennings falls in recruiting rankings

Today is a rankings update day for 247 Sports. The recruiting service revealed their updated Top247 rankings for 2021 recruits.

For Florida State fans, it was a chance to see if linebacker commit Branden Jennings of Jacksonville’s Sandalwood HS moved up to 5 Star status. There was quite a shock to the FSU fan base when not only had Jennings not inched closer to a fifth star, but he actually fell in the rankings - over 70 spots on 247’s list.

It’s good to keep in mind that early rankings are typically not reflective of end of the year rankings. Jennings is an obvious talent, and other sites still have him as a top 50 player.

After deliberating, Tomahawk Nation surmised three reasons why Jennings plummeted:

1. It’s important to note up front that one of the most important settings for rankings is at camps in shorts and t-shirts. The strength of Jennings game is between the lines in pads so that obviously doesn’t translate quite as well to camp ball.
2. Jennings long speed and agility is not elite. There are agility concerns with Jennings game and they are ones he will need to answer over the course of his senior year. Can he cover and play in space? An important aside here is that the rarest of rare LBs possess this long speed and agility at 230 pounds.
3. There is not a third reason because Jennings possesses top 100 traits everywhere else in his game.

So is potential shuttle/agility enough of a reason to drop a kid out of the top 150? I guess that’s up to the experts.