Syracuse Football: Recapping Scott Shafer's National Signing Day Press Conference

Syracuse Orange head football coach Scott Shafer held a press conference on Wednesday at the Iocolano-Petty Football Wing, where he discussed National Signing Day and SU's 2015 recruiting class.

If you were unable to catch the live stream on Cuse.com, here's what you missed:

• Shafer, on what he and his staff were looking for in recruits:

"One major objective we had, when all things were equal in the recruiting process...is we wanted to find kids of intelligence. And we really scrutinized the transcripts and the test scores, and wanted to find a group of kids that would represent this program in a first-class fashion on the academic side of things...And, as always, we wanted to seek players of character."

Shafer noted that 25 recruits, including 23 that signed today, have GPA's over 3.0.

• On Marquise Blair, the defensive back from Wooster, Ohio:

"He's long, he's got great athleticism, and he's like a Durell Eskridge body-type...He will strike you. I mean, he will strike you. He hits like safeties we need around here."

"All three of those kids have similar traits in that they play with great vision and they play all over the place on the field."

"When [recruits] make a decision and they're committed and they feel good about it, it's O.K. for a coach to call and say, 'Are you sure?'...And when a kid says 'yes,' let's let it go. Let's end it, like Coach Harbaugh did. Jim goes to Michigan. Jim's a very dear friend of mine whom I respect, and he was jumping all over Jake Pickard to see if Jake would jump...But when Jake came back home and decided he was going to stay with the 'Cuse, Jim wrote him a very nice text saying, 'Good luck. Best of luck with Coach Shafer.' That's the way it should be done. The others I won't mention, but it's just a doggone shame."

"I want to talk about the kids that have committed to Syracuse. Once again, when you guys jump on the phone and on the text with these kids and you're asking the kids questions, you're going to get the kid's side of the story. Our side of the story will be that we're going to try recruit the kids that best fit and reach the standards and expectations that we put out there for them. And when those standards fall short...we have to move in another direction."

"I love his motor...There are times when his technique is absolutely horrendous. But his effort overcomes it. You can coach technique with a kid that has talent and has long arms like he does, but that effort, that high motor is something you can't."

• On "kids of character":

"It takes every kind of kid from every kind of background to put together a good football team...It doesn't mean we're not going to make a mistake every now and again, too. And then you fess up to it and you move forward. But I've been really pleased with the kids that have been in the program, and I really think this class is just going to continue to add to what type of kid we have here at Syracuse."

Other notable parts of the press conference: