Player: Kosi Eldridge
Position: Linebacker / Strong Safety
Height / Weight: 6-1/210
JUCO: Kilgore College (Kilgore, TX)
Offers: N/A
Video: Hudl
Cumulative Ranking: N/A
Profile Date: May 14, 2019
⚫️🔴Committed🔴⚫️#GunsUp #WreckEm #JUCOPRODUCT pic.twitter.com/zUBReuRK18
— Kosi Eldridge (@k_Eldridge19) May 14, 2019
2019 Kilgore College linebacker / strong safety Kosi Eldridge has committed to Texas Tech. This is a late signee and this is one where we try to figure some things out. Eldridge played his freshman year at Kilgore College where the stats listed aren’t all that impressive. Lots of times, JUCO stats can simply be wrong and/or incomplete. Eldridge played his high school career at Denton Ryan where he finished his senior year with 183 total tackles, averaging 12.2 tackles per game. When a player is that productive coming out of high school and the players heads to a JUCO college, it’s a bit odd. Sometimes it is grades, or grades just aren’t in order (i.e. they’re fine but maybe test bad) or maybe it is discipline, who knows. Maybe the player doesn’t get the offer he wants, bets on himself, and goes to the JUCO thinking that he’ll get better offers. If I had to guess, this is what I think happened to Eldridge since he only had 1 year where he played football on varsity.
From this NCSA Sports site that it looks like Eldridge completed, he only started varsity one year, but in that year he made it county, garnering 1st team all-district and was 5-5A Defensive MVP.
I’d also add that the fact that Eldridge was eligible coming out of Kilgore College means that he had his grades in order to be eligible to transfer to Texas Tech, which means that he’s eligible starting in 2020 2019. These highlights are from Eldridge’s freshman year at Kilgore College.
Also, when looking back at the linebacker eligibility chart, Eldridge would make 8 scholarship linebackers available (SR Jordyn Brooks, JR Riko Jeffers, JR Brayden Stringer, RS FR Patrick Curley, RS FR Xavier Benson, FR Tyrique Matthews, and FR Bryce Robinson). When you’re playing a defense that somewhat features 3 linebackers, that’s not leaving you a ton of depth so I understand adding to the 2019 class for sure, he’ll have a year in the system and would seemingly fit the bandit role of linebacker / strong safety, presuming Eldridge has decent speed.