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WSU Football Recruiting: Peyton Bender, QB from Florida, becomes 2014's first commit

The signal caller from Fort Lauderdale becomes the first high schooler to verbally commit to WSU's Class of 2014.

By Kyle Rancourt
William Mancebo

Death, taxes, and guys committing when I'm out of town or busy. According to Britton Ransford of Rivals, QB Peyton Bender (Fort Lauderdale, FL) has committed to the Washington State Cougars. Bender is listed at 6'1, 175, but he's still just a junior in high school.

As Craig mentioned, he's not ranked by any of the services thus far, but it's extremely early. I'm not particularly worried about that at the end of March/beginning of April. Once we get into August and September, he should be rated accordingly. My early estimate is a high 3 star guy, for whatever that's worth.

Craig also posted some video, but I'll post it again with another. It's important to note a few things before we get into an evaluation: 1) this is his junior year video 2) the video itself is poor quality 3) it's a highlight video. With those standard caveats out of the way, here you go.




The first video is just a workout tape, but you can see how quick his release is. He also has really good feet, and that's important as a QB. He throws mainly quick outs and related routes, which is good. Leach loves to throw quick hitters like that, so it's something we can look at and attempt to apply to his future on the Palouse.

He also throws a nice deep ball, but I'll wait to see some better video of him as a senior before making any final conclusion. He needs to gain some weight, but he's not even 18-years-old yet, so I'll go ahead and let those things work themselves out.

As Hollywood Shellin pointed out, while Bender is technically the first commit of the Class of 2014, Montana LB Dylan Hanser committed last fall on the condition of greyshirting and delaying enrollment until 2014. So, really, Bender is commit number two while also being commit number one.

Finally, a reminder on some things, as I've been getting asked "why another QB when we just got Bruggman?"



Remember this post? In it, I talked about Mike Leach's tendencies in recruiting. He likes to bring in a full "team" each year, and in eight years at Texas Tech (2002-2009), he took eight QBs. Some years he took none, but then doubled up the following year. I think we can expect him to take a QB per class from here on out.

Overall I like the pick up, as it stretches our recruiting base all the way to Florida. While it may not be a pipeline, having a presence in places like Florida is a very good thing.

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