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The Hawkeyes are hosting their 2017 tailgater this weekend in Iowa City, and it’s already bearing some fruit, as two four star recruits have announced their verbal commitment to the Hawkeyes’ Class of 2019.
It’s quite the start for the Hawkeyes’ Class of 2019, as now all three commits are four stars, according to Derek Young.
The first came this morning when Tim Polasek tweeted that the Hawkeyes gained a commit from a recruit out of Illinois. Speculation was that it was tight end Logan Lee, and the rumors were true, as he ended up announcing his commitment to Iowa late this afternoon.
Super happy to announce that I have committed to the University of Iowa! Glad to be hawk. #swarm pic.twitter.com/26L02lRmr3
— Logan Lee (@LoganLee45) June 24, 2017
Lee is a four-star tight end out of Orion, IL, per 247 Sports, and they consider him to be the 10th best tight end prospect in his class. The high school junior has been highly recruited, particularly by Big Ten teams - out of his nine offers, seven were from teams in the conference, while the other two were from Mizzou and Ole Miss.
Lee is already a really big guy, as he stands 6’5” and weighs in at 225 pounds. Once you sift through his defensive end highlights (which there are plenty of), you get a pretty good sense of what this kid is as a tight end - a tenacious blocker. He has a couple of receiving highlights at the beginning of his 2016 clips, but the majority of his highlights are as a blocker. In that sense, he looks a bit like Kittle - he absolutely plows some of the defenders into the ground and blocks them through the whistle which is exactly what you want to see. It appears as though he has good vision as a blocker as well in that he often makes it into the second level and identifies the personnel he needs to block. In most of his clips, he’s blocking someone in the second level, but his size would lead me to believe that he will have no issue dispatching some defensive ends at the college level.
Overall, this is a great get for the Hawkeyes. It’s clear that a bunch of teams liked him as a player and the Hawkeyes are better known than most for the way they incorporate their tight ends into their offense. This guy looks like he perfectly fits the mold for an Iowa tight end and there’s no reason to believe that once he’s playing for the Hawkeyes, he can continue a long tradition of NFL tight ends.
Iowa’s second commitment of the day came from OL Tyler Enderes, who made a surprise appearance at the tailgater camp and gave the coaching staff the news, according to Young’s writeup.
Very blessed and excited to announce that I have committed to the University of Iowa to play football! pic.twitter.com/eovEzK6Z65
— Tyler Endres (@tendres45) June 24, 2017
Endres weighs in at a nice 6’6, 285 lbs who hails from Norwalk Senior High School in Norwalk, Iowa. He chose the Hawkeyes over offers from Iowa State, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Young reported that Endres visited Iowa three times this month alone, including attending one of the previous camps where he got hands-on experience with the coaching staff. He’s got a great frame for only being a sophomore...I’m expecting Endres to make a big impact when he hits the field, and should pair extremely well with fellow 2019 commit Ezra Miller.
His highlights from last fall are below:
Many consider Endres to be the best in-state talent for the OL position, so having commitments from him and Miller so early is a great sign for new coach Tim Polasek. Beating out Wisconsin for an offensive lineman is always pretty great as well.
It may only be three players deep so far, but if this keeps up, it’s safe to say that Iowa’s 2019 Recruiting Class could be full of some solid talent from day one.
Welcome Logan and Tyler!