Pitt Football Recruiting: Marchez Coates On Board

After the big news about Chad Voytik agreeing to join the Panthers, Pitt picked up another verbal commitment from cornerback Marchez Coates later that day.

Getting right into it, Coates is a three-star recruit as rated by Rivals and a two-star rated by Scout. Rivals also rated him the 16th best recruit in Maryland.

It'd be easy to point out that he had no other major offers - the only ones were reportedly from Pitt, Eastern Michigan, and Robert Morris (yes, that Robert Morris), but you've got to go a bit deeper than that.

While it's true that Coates didn't have lots of offers, he was starting to draw quite a bit of interest from big-time programs including Penn State, Miami, Tennessee, and TCU. Where did all of that come from? Probably due to his recent performances in several camps along the east coast:

Coates, who is entering his senior season at McDonough High School in Pomfret, Md., traveled to eight camps in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina and North Carolina and he earned MVP honors at each, McDonough coach Luke Ethington said.

With all of the recent secondary transfers and recruits from this year's class joining, I'm a bit skeptical when I hear that Pitt has picked up more secondary help, but whatever. Plus, a few of these guys are going to end up at different positions, I'm sure.

So with that said, I think the Coates pickup was a solid one.