Purdue Football Recruiting: 4-Star Safety Christian Gonzalez Commits

The Purdue Football recruiting class continues to improve, and today Jeff Brohm got his fourth 4-star commitment in the class as Christian Gonzalez from The Colony, Texas committed.

Gonzalez is a 4-star safety according to Rivals, ESPN, and 247. He is listed as 6’1” 180 pounds. This is a huge grab over a wealth of schools as Alabama, Notre Dame, Ohio State, and more. Here is the highlight reel:

Obviously getting a four-star prospect is big, and we have a family connection here. David Blough just married his sister, so he is Blough’s brother-in-law.

This move might be enough to move Purdue’s class into the top 25. It is also huge because he is the fourth 4-star prospect of the class to go with six in the 2019 class. This was after Darrell Hazell and Danny Hope combined to get only seven 4-star recruits (per Rivals) total in nine years (O.J. Ross, Ken Plue, Carlos Carvajal, Al-Terek McBurse, Gelen Robinson, Danny Etling, and Ryan Watson).

This brings the 2020 class to 17 members, and here is how the scholarship grid looks. I have done a few adjustments here. First, I created a new cell to track the number of new players on scholarship that count towards the 25 limit for 2020. It is at 20 for the 17 members of the class, plus the blueshift of Joey Wahlberg, the greyshirt of Chase Triplett, and it has been confirmed that Alexander Horvath is now on scholarship, so I think he counts vs. this limit. That leaves roughly five open spots.

The downside is we are projected to be three scholarships over the 85 limit in 2020. That number will almost certainly go down because there is always attrition. For example Purdue had eight players in the transfer portal this year and only one was a walk-on. I have a few ideas on possible targets that I don’t want to speculate on, but lets be honest: It happens every year. So I wouldn’t worry about that 88 number too much.