Great to see Treiber make his announcement putting us at 19 commits for 2019. Jared's story says we have just a few more spots left. So we have 15 Seniors. Let's say Montgomery and Butler leave for the NFL after their Junior seasons. That makes for 17 open scholarships. I guess there is just no way to ever know how many scholarships the coaches consider as being available. The only thing we can know for sure is that 25 is the limit, so at most we can take another 6 players.
As an aside, looking at the chart, it is wild that we have no Juniors in the defensive backfield on scholarship. Losing Peavey, Ruth and Payne after this year are huge losses, but unless we bring in a grad transfer next year, we have every defensive back returning in 2020 that we will have in 2019. We would have had redshirt Juniors this year in Stephon Brown and Jordan Wallace, but neither are on the team any longer. I guess maybe those two guys are examples of why you think you only have 17 scholarships available but in the end you have up to 25 because people just disappear for various reasons, some naturally and some by persuasion (that is the euphemism I will choose). But as we know, it's the same at every school and at least from what we have seen our staff is honest and above board with these things. It's just as in life, your employer needs you to be productive and contribute to success, or your services will no longer be required.