South Carolina Football: Newly offered linebacker is elite athlete, could see recruitment blow up soon

South Carolina football recently handed out a scholarship offer to Virginia linebacker Fred Johnson. Johnson. Johnson is relatively unheard of in the recruiting world, but that could be changing soon. While visiting the University of South Carolina on an unofficial visit, Johnson put up some elite testing numbers.

At 6’3.5″ tall and 225 pounds, the rising high school senior is bigger than most linebackers at the high school level, but he also showed that he is a more explosive athlete than most college linebackers.

Johnson’s 40-yard dash time of 4.54 seconds is a very good number, but his 9’8″ broad jump is ridiculous for a 17-year old kid. He is just a few inches shy of the 2023 NFL Scouting Combine average linebacker broad jump, and he has never even been inside a college weight room.

Originally listed by recruiting services as a wide receiver, Johnson has grown into a very impressive-looking linebacker prospect, and programs all over the country are scrambling to become acquainted with the Norfolk, Virginia native. He has received 13 Division-1 scholarship offers since January after only picking up 4 total offers before that point.

Nicknamed “JayR,” Johnson attends Maury High School, a mid-sized school that plays solid competition. His senior year will go a long way in determining how hard programs like South Carolina football may push to get him, but if his athletic testing numbers are any indication, he will end up becoming a highly-coveted recruit.

The Gamecocks have one linebacker committed in the 2024 recruiting class in 4-star Georgia native Wendell Gregory. Carolina is expected to take multiple players at the position in the ’24 class as they took just one linebacker in the ’23 cycle in blue chipper Grayson “Pup” Howard. 5-star Jamonta Waller and the Gamecocks have mutual interest, but he is being courted by most teams in the country and could end up as an EDGE player, instead.