With my focus on recruiting and projecting ahead using my high school models, now is a good time to get in early on some players that the services have yet to take note of in their evaluations, with significant rises. For my models, we start tracking their performances as juniors and add to it with their senior years. I wanted to look deeper than the surface-level analysis of the top dudes in this class and provide some names that may be undervalued for now.
My one rule is that no player inside the top 10 of the composite services should be highlighted here. Starting with my roots, I wanted to cover some running backs to know.
Jaylen McGill- Mountain View Preparatory- South Carolina
McGill joins us as a 3-star in the 247Sports services with a composite score of 0.9000 (4-star). Currently, he is committed to North Carolina but holds reported offers from 31 teams. Among those offers are Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Florida State, Minnesota, and NC State. His current summer visits are set for UNC, Tennessee, and Alabama. He has a great bellcow frame with his reported measurements coming in at 5’10” and 215 pounds. He is a state champion on the powerlifting side and has been in track too for his school, so he checks off the multi-sport athlete side too.
His strength of schedule is barely over zero, so I am sure that will ding him in some places, but the only thing he can control is the production on the field, and boy, did he do just that. Across 13 games his junior year, he had 181 carries for 1,721 yards (9.5ypc) for 25 TDs and added another 22 catches for 379 yds and 7 TDs. A 2,000+ yard season across those games is great for him when that also shows he is very involved in the receiving game with over 7 FPPG coming through the air with 17+ yards per reception and close to 30 yards per game to go with his 130+ yards per game on the ground.
Justin Williams- Buchholz- Florida
Justin Williams joins us technically as an athlete, but he plays primarily as a running back for his school after transitioning to the position halfway through his junior season. He sits at 12th on 247’s athletes and 13th in the composite ranks. With a 5’11” 190 lb. frame, Williams has shown up with quite an offer list. Currently, he has reported offers from Florida State, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisville, North Carolina, Ole Miss, Utah, Wisconsin, Tulane, and Memphis, among others. He also plays baseball, so we get a minor bump of being a dual-sport athlete.
The best word to describe Williams is explosive. In a strength of schedule of 35+ in 6A Florida football, Williams became the first player since 2002 to hit both 1,000+ rushing yards and 1,000+ RECEIVING YARDS in the same season. The last guy to do that in Florida? Devin Hester.
Williams was asked to transition full-time to running back during the season and is now being considered to stay there moving forward, which will be great to see if he can use the extra reps to develop into a well-rounded back. Across the season, he hit 108 carries for 1,023 rushing yards with 16 TDs and 85 receptions for 1,473 yards with another 13 TDs. The receiving yardage for just this 2024 season puts him seventh all-time among 700+ high school running backs. Among RBs in the top 12, that puts him in a grouping of Jeanty, Kyren, Achane, McCaffrey, and Kromah now. Those other names all had 23+ games in their profiles, while Justin is currently at 14 games.
Jaeden Hill-Tupelo-Mississippi
This may be the most drastic difference between my process and the services. Jaeden comes in with a workhorse frame of 6’0”, 220lbs, and being top nine in the high school model based on junior years. That ranking is a stark difference from the services, where he is RB41 on 247Sports or RB48 with a 0.8719 rating in the composite services.
Hill is the younger brother of 2024 RB Daniel Hill, now at Alabama, so he has an inside knowledge of how to prepare for the SEC if he stays committed to Mississippi State. If not, his 23 reported offers are absolutely insane to see, with 11 SEC offers alone. Making this quick, he also has offers from Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Louisville, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Ole Miss, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas A&M, USC, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, among others. That screams to me that the services will be playing catch-up on Jaeden later on this summer or in the spring. A two-sport athlete as well, with baseball for Hill.
Even in Mississippi, Hill had a strength of schedule just over 35, which is phenomenal. Across 13 games, he hit 208 carries for 2,028 yards and 32 TDs. While not to the level of others mentioned so far, he adds 15 receptions for 220 yards and 2 TDs on air. Yards per carry comes in at 9.8 YPC, which is the highest of today’s group. If we see a senior breakout, he can push for a little more growth in my model with a higher yards per carry, more receiving usage for his team, and less than a point per game increase. As of today, Hill could be my highest-rated 3-star projecting ahead for the next class.
Amari Latimer- Sandy Creek- Georgia
Latimer checks in at 5’11” and 209 pounds, showing a trend for me of feature-sized backs that are doing well. He ties Hill in my top nine for the model while sitting at RB29 for 247 and RB18 in the composite with a 0.9053 rating. I’ll try to keep it brief, as Latimer currently has 47 offers with summer visits scheduled to Texas, Miami, and Wisconsin. Almost every major program, besides Clemson, with a quick scroll through all the programs, seems to have an offer for this guy. Most of the programs known for their running backs in terms of NFL outlook are also in on this kid joining. It does not hurt his development to know he is also playing basketball, running track, and field. Whichever team gets Latimer is going to need to ensure a role is set, because he can come in and play.
While his strength of schedule was a little lower at 19, his ten games showed potential. He had 136 rushes for 1,113 yards and 15 TDs with 27 catches for 363 yards and 4 TDs. The receiving usage is higher on a per-game level, which is solid when combined with his 110+ rushing yards per game, too. I would like to see his 8.2 YPC rise as a senior, along with taking more touchdown work this year to push his PPG score higher up in my model. Right now, he has a final six of Wisconsin, Texas, Georgia, Florida State, Michigan, and Tennessee. I would get to know this name, as I expect Georgia will be seeing this kid as a potential finalist for Mr. Georgia Football in his classification.
Will Rajecki- Sequoyah- Georgia
For my last name, I wanted to dig deep, and I found one. Currently unranked in 247 Sports and most services (Rivals has him as a 3-star). Based on Rivals, he currently has 16 offers, with highlights including Georgia, Kansas State, Memphis, and NC State. He has several lower-level programs on him as well. With a frame around 5’11” and 195-200 pounds, he could be a nice C2C play come next spring. Being unranked in the services drops him down in my system for now, until the composite catches up. However, his production score is tied for 17th out of 50 guys so far. He also competes in track and field.
His strength of schedule came in at a 33, so Rajecki is not hiding among Georgia competition. In 13 games, he went 265 rushes for 1,541 yards and 21 TDs with 38 catches for 538 receiving yards and another 5 TDs. The red flag immediately is 5.8 YPC. We need a massive correction in his senior year to push that number up to a respectable level. Still, the yards per game and receiving usage suggest a potential for more or to settle in among the G5 programs as a CFF asset after his senior year.
Bonus: Brandan Ridley
He could be another name in a similar vein with fewer offers than Rajecki. These last two names are more C2C/CFF-type plays based on how their final years play out and where they go since both are unranked in the composite services for now. His production score is higher than Rajecki’s, so both of them will be on my watch list to see how programs handle them.
