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Purdue Football Recruiting: Brandon Shuman Commits

The Boilers received their 3rd verbal commitment for 2016 last night.

By Andy Zimmerman
Marc Lebryk-USA TODAY Sports

The Boilermakers picked up their 3rd verbal commitment for the 2016 class last night with Florida defensive back Brandon Shuman.  The 5'11", 160ish pound athlete is rated as 3-stars by various recruiting sites.  He has somewhere between 3 and 23 offers from other schools depending on where you look.  247sports confirms offers from Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Florida International while Rivals reports an additional 21 offers from schools including Pitt, Cincinnati, Illinois, and Virginia, among others.  Regardless, he was clearly on the radar for many interested teams, making this another very exciting verbal commitment for the coaching staff.

All three verbals so far for 2016 are defensive backs, which really goes to show you how inexperienced the secondary is going to be.  Frankie Williams and Anthony Brown will be gone, leaving Da'Wan Hunte as the only upperclassman at cornerback.  Joining Hunte in 2016 will be the three freshmen brought in for 2015 along with the three verbals so far this year (as long as everything stays the same, obviously).  That's a LOT of youth, though I'm sure that there will be more shuffling around between corner and safety.  I'm very encouraged by the coaching staff attacking this position early as one of the biggest glaring needs for 2016.

Check out Shuman's highlight video below from hudl.  You'll see he fits a very similar mold to the other two commitments so far - he's fast, intelligent, and physical.  He also returns kicks and looks to be extremely elusive in the open field.  I enjoy watching players like Shuman who have a nose for the ball.  When his man is taken out of the play, his pursuit to the ball and where the action is seems to be very quick.  He's also an above average tackler, but will obviously need to get much stronger to be able to deal with the competition he's going to see in the B1G.

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