Yesterday 247Sports released their final update to the 247 best high school prospects in the country. For Fighting Irish fans to see RB Chris Tyree take a huge fall from 61st nationally, all the way down to 137th was difficult. It was a tough pill to swallow seeing one of the best prospects in Brian Kelly’s class take such a large tumble.
Thankfully, the experts at 247Sports weren’t shy about why they dropped Tyree so far in their final rankings. National Analyst Charles Power was blunt with his assessment saying that Tyree’s “output is on the low end among the backs who are in and just outside the top 100.” Power wasn’t all negative his assessment of Tyree explaining that “we’re still high on Tyree’s skill set and expect him to be an impact player for the Irish, but we’d like to see a little more sustained consistency on the field throughout high school for a top 50-100 back with his physical skill set.”
Barton Simmons, the National Director of Scouting, didn’t go into as much detail but gave a similar explanation as to why Tyree dropped as “we felt there were other guys that had a more complete skill-set as a true running back. When you compare the production of Tyree to most of the other guys we put him up against, we really felt that it was hard to give a smaller, less-productive back the nod over some of the others that we believe in.”
Simmons does still believe that Tyree will be a solid player, “Don’t get me wrong, we still like him a lot as a player, but we believe he’s more limited than some of the others.” What makes me wonder is what kind of limitations Simmons is talking about. He does not go further into his evaluation and only time will tell what kind of player Tyree ends up as while wearing Blue and Gold.