The offseason is a great time, especially the early months, isn’t it? We’re eager to get drafting and flag plant guys we love. It’s a dangerous game, though, because in college football, nothing is ever for certain, and things will change five times before it’s all said and done.
What ends up happening is we, as a CFF community, pump up players that we love, and as more information is gathered, we reverse back into the bushes like that one Homer Simpson gif. We’re all guilty of it, and quite honestly, it makes for a funny conversation. It’s nothing serious! I did want to laugh about those we pumped and dumped in 2024 though.. Who knows, maybe we’ll look back at this article in a year and see that our first pumps were our best pumps…
Da’Quan Felton, Virginia Tech, WR
Starting this article off with my own personal pump and dump from this offseason, just to show everyone that we’re having fun here! No shade. All laughs. I was big on Felton and with good reason. He caught eight touchdowns after starting slow. He’s a former FCS transfer, so a slow start shouldn’t surprise us. Felton really intrigued me because of my Hokie offense returning so much production and Kyron Drones improving so much last season. In his final three games of the season, he had two 2-TD games and two games of 100+ yards.
So, why the dump? Well, it became apparent in the spring game that Ali Jennings was healthy and that he would take away at least a good bit of attention from Felton. I’ve moved my attention to Jennings and will occasionally sprinkle in some Felton, but at this point, he’s nothing more than a final-round pick at best.
Robert Freeman, Utah State, WR
Does anyone else remember Robert Freeman week? It was a fun one. The love that he received felt fair at the time. He was a JUCO All-American who would be playing with his JUCO quarterback at Utah State. Freeman is miniature-sized like Terrell Vaughn before him. It just felt so right!
Well, the spring rolled around, and apparently, he was fourth string at times. Big time yikes. He’s probably not worth taking in drafts right now, and we’ve seen that ADP drop over the past few months because of that spring game. We’ll always have that week, though.
Chris Tyree, UVA, WR
Mark 2024 as another offseason in which I got bamboozled by Tyree. The former Notre Dame running back turned receiver received a ton of love from us all because it just feels like a natural fit at Virginia. The Cavaliers are going to chuck it around, and they will be forcing 100+ targets to two receivers in this offense. With Tyree, we thought we had, at the very least, that number two receiver at a discount. His ADP rose, and then the air was let out of the ball.
What’s great about Tyree is that he was talked up some during ACC media day. Do we have our first pump, then dump, then back to pump? Tyree is 100% draftable right now, but maybe isn’t the potential star we thought he was likely to be this spring.
CJ Daniels, LSU, WR
Going into the offseason, we all thought Daniels would be the top LSU receiver we wanted on our teams. The guy went for 1,000+ yards at Liberty, so why wouldn’t he be able to do the same with Nussmeier and this great LSU offense?
Well, things took a turn for the worse pretty quickly. We all loved Daniels to start, but the pumping did not last long before spring reports crushed our Daniels dreams. He was routinely second team and those that draft him right now (myself included) are doing it strictly because “what if”?
Elijah Arroyo, Miami (FL), TE
Arroyo is listed here as not the most true of pump-and-dumps. The love behind him in the spring was legitimate and 100% worth drafting. We had ourselves a tight end-eligible player who was going to likely receive snaps at running back in a great Miami offense. The transfer portal giveth and the transfer portal taketh, though.
Damien Martinez transferred into Miami, and now Arroyo feels unlikely to be anywhere near the cheat code we thought he’d be. A truly unfortunate situation that I would classify as an “inadvertent pump and dump”. The sha** of pump and dumps, you could say?
Jay Butterfield, San Jose State, QB
When talking about this article idea with Andrew Katz, I described this one as a kamikaze effort by Katz with Butterfield. Sure, the offensive scheme is likely great, but it’s year one, and this staff seemingly has no allegiance to anyone in the quarterback room. Yet, the Burning the Redshirt team pumped up a player that the staff now acts like isn’t even on the roster anymore. At the very least, the one that pumped is the one with basically every share of Butterfield. We can call that justice.
