Cal adds the highly recruited 3* Hawai'i Safety Aiden Manutai
3rd Hawaii recruit of the cycle reinforcing the Cal-Hawai'i pipeline
Despite being rated a 3* on all of the recruiting services, Aiden was deciding between Cal, Arizona, Nebraska, Tennessee, and UW. His other offers were from Miami, Oregon, and Penn State.
The scouting report from Greg Biggins is as follows:
Manutai is one of the region’s top safety prospects and has a nice all around game. He’s a well built 6-0, 195 pounds and has some of the best cover instincts of any defensive back we’ve seen. He has a knack for jumping routes and had multiple Pick-6s last season including a huge one in the Red Raiders exciting upset win over national power St. John Bosco. He can cover as well and showed the ability to play out wide, one on one with an opposing receiver and lock them up. He’ll play some in the slot as well and shows the kind of positional versatility college coaches love in a defensive back. He tackles well in space and has the toughness and physicality to play in the box as an extra defender in run support. He's a true high Power 4 prospect with the ability to play early in college and should be an early contributor on special teams as well.
Per the above, he is a highly versatile defensive back who can make an impact across the backfield. This gives me shades of Ashtyn Davis who for Cal played at Safety, Outside and Inside Corner, and WR when needed.
His overall track and field metrics are quite good for the position:
11.66 100 meters,
5’06” high jump.
Welcome to Cal, Aiden!
Hopefully this commitment sticks.
I think this is a very good get, but I like some things bigger than just this one. This is the class of '25 and there are already 15 commits (netting out any that have *already* re-opened). These are all solid guys. I think a couple of these guys are a little better than their (247 composite) ratings. Talk about the west coast not getting covered, try getting anyone to pay attention to HI... but not just these local guys. How many years have the fans been sweating coming down to signing day with hardly any bodies in the pipe? Anyone notice how this list includes a little bit of everything? We got a QB who can develop for a year based on the bodies already in the room. We got a couple linemen on each side. How many years did we go without any OT's? (I haven't actually checked but it seemed like a lot...) Both a DT and an Edge...yay, dudes! 2 TE's that are big and can catch. A seriously good RB (my niece went to Millikan and says he's probably better than his rating.) LB's galore... and did you notice that Manutai is the lowest rated of the three DB's... even though I repeat that I think he's better than that, that's high praise for the group!
Maybe I've been a little too hard on Wilcox (maybe not, I'm already tired of "breakout" years turning out to be "breakdown" years). This does look like program building. If this is just enough to save our collective prats when the next round of alignment hits then I'll give the coach his due.