The 90 Illini #30: Malik Elzy

I feel like some people get lost when delineating between high-end recruits. I was having a conversation with someone last winter, and they just casually mentioned how they thought Elzy, with all of his recruiting hype, was going to have an Arrelious Benn-like freshman year last year. I get it. Elzy is on TV at the high school all star game picking the Illinois hat over the Michigan and Notre Dame hats. So many thought he was regarded the same as Benn.

He was not. And that's not an insult. He's still a four-star recruit. It's just that he's one or two tiers below Benn.

Which is what makes football recruiting so hard to follow. Arrelious Benn was the consensus #2 receiver in the country in the 2007 class. Elzy was a 4-star, and I always say that the 4-stars are the players actually evaluated and rated (instead of slotted), but he was still the consensus #33 wide receiver in the country. There is a massive difference between the #2 high school wide receiver and the #33 high school wide receiver.

The #2 receiver is probably ready to come in and start right away. Luther Burden at Missouri was the #2 receiver in his class and look at what he's done his first two years there. Many people expected the same out of Elzy but that just wasn't the case as a freshman.

Which is fine! It takes time for nearly everyone. He got his experience last year and now he'll hopefully take a step forward this year. But before we get into the breakdown, I just wanted to make that point. The four-stars get the deep evaluations and I trust when those analysts say that the Luther Burden is the #2 player at his position and Malik Elzy is the #33 player. Both are great athletes with possible NFL futures. But it's very rare that a receiver is ready for a senior-like workload as a freshman.