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In today’s college football where players can play for nearly a decade and late bloomers are all the rage, freshman phenoms still wowed us throughout the 2024 season. And when the young players who lived up to the billing happen to be five-stars, what’s better than that?
Here are the five-star prospects (according to 247Sports’ 2024 recruiting rankings) who did the most damage in their college football debuts throughout the 2024 season.
It’s not often a freshman shows up with the ability to wow right out of the box like Smith did. From the moment he showed up on campus, nobody at Ohio State did anything to temper excitement about what he can do, and once he hit the field (besides dropping the first target of his career), he was add-water instant superstar. From dazzling one-handers all the way to icing the national championship game, Smith was as advertised, and it seems beyond belief that we get to watch him for two more years.
With nine sacks as a freshman, Simmons was a young pup ready to step on the edge of a veteran defensive line and do damage. He has the third most sacks in a single season by a freshman defensive player in Texas football history. Next year, with an even more problem minent role in the Texas defense, the sky is the limit for Simmons.
Lagway wasn’t initially supposed to start this season, but after Graham Mertz went down early in the season, he showed flashes against an FCS team that forced Florida to at least play him in packages. Then, when Mertz was out for the season, Lagway’s explosive play may have saved Billy Napier’s job showing s-tier arm talent and the explosive ability to take Florida’s offense to another level in the future.
There’s a reason…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/eight-best-freshmen-standouts-in-2024-college-football-season-these-5-star-prospects-lived-up-to-lofty-hype/
Author : Richard Johnson
Publish date : 2025-02-01 14:53:00
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