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247Sports has long been high on one of Michigan’s prized 2021 commits in Fresno (CA) Central East four-star wide receiver Xavier Worthy, as he’s currently ranked No. 94 in the country according to the site’s proprietary rankings.
However, Rivals.com sees your 94 and raises.
The — well — rival recruiting site updated its rankings this week, and now Worthy went from unranked to No. 57 in the country thanks to his new evaluation.
According to The Wolverine’s EJ Holland, here’s what the Rivals braintrust had to say about Worthy’s emergence on their board:
“We went back on the wide receiver position because we didn’t get to see nearly as many kids this summer as usual, and we knew most of the Cali players weren’t going to play, so we wanted to compare them all,” said Rivals.com National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell. “Summer is about skill position kids and holding to an early February eval of Worthy based on film didn’t add up after watching him again. His speed is elite and compared to the rest of the class, we felt he was in that Rivals100 range.”
Rivals.com National Recruiting Analyst Adam Gorney, who is based out West, added:
“When I first saw Worthy on tape, I thought he was very impressive, but I wrongly went too conservative in his ranking. I wanted to see him more in person, but then the shutdown hit and that became impossible. So during this ranking, we revisited everybody, and he clearly was a name that deserved a major bump in the rankings as we were able to go over junior film again, check out what he’s done over the last few months — even though that’s been limited — and then compare him to the other receivers in this class. We felt a major move up was warranted, so we didn’t hesitate.”
As a result of the update, Worthy’s ranking in the 247Sports Composite also went up sharply.
He was ranked 174th overall, but now is all the way up to No. 71.
Michigan’s 2021 class is ranked No. 6 by Rivals and No. 9 by 247Sports.