Welcome to the Fold: Frankie Williams

While it is disturbing that one of our top football recruiting targets is only a three-star commit, it is good news that we still got him. Florida Defensive Back Frankie Williams agreed to come to Purdue this morning, filling the void left by the decommitment of Marcus Caffey.

Williams is a solid defensive back that still plans to visit Nebraska, but he has given a verbal commitment to us as of this morning. Rivals rates him as a high three star, meaning our class has no one that isn't a three-star commit so far (exclusing Akeem Shavers and Sterling Carter as JuCo early enrollees). Officially, he is listed as an athlete, but it seems like he will play defense. Like a lot of Florida guys, he is all about speed.

This past season at Tampa's Robinson high He was a dangerous returner with five touchdowns on kick or punt returns. This is very useful given that our return game was non-existent last year. In fact, he was a first-team all county selection as a kick returner. That tells me we might see him there early on given that our entire secondary returns. At 5'10" he has decent size. He was used as a receiver (28 catches, 483 yards and seven TD's) and defensive back (two interceptions).

In 2009 He just missed playing against E.J. Johnson and Cocoa High in the Class 2A state title game. This year, Robinson fell a game short again, falling to Glades Central in the state semifinals. The video in that article shows a 38-yard touchdown by Williams in the state semifinals. Another story shows his loyalty, as other schools tried to get him to transfer from a downtrodden team, but he stayed to make them better.

As I said, Williams' likelihood of making an immediate impact is probably in the return game. Our kick return game was awful even with Al-Terek McBurse and O.J. Ross. The punt return game was worse. In fact, talking about the punt return game implies we've had one the past two years. He is an All-State performer, so I think we can use him on the field somewhere.