2018 Early Signing Period, Day 1 Recap: Most of UCLA Football’s Commits Sign With the Bruins [UPDATED]

[UPDATE: 9:14 pm]: Fifteen minutes after publishing this, UCLA announced that Stephan Blaylock’s NLI has been received. The article has been updated to reflect that.

Let’s quickly recap how the first day of the new college football Early Signing Period went for UCLA.

I’ll start off with the bad news.

UCLA lost two commits today. The first was Jahan Dotson, who flipped to Penn State this morning and signed with the Nittany Lions. The second was Abdul-Malik McClain, who, apparently, was destined to be the “player to be named later” in the “trade” with Southern Cal that got the Bruins Bo Calvert as McClain announced that he had decided to sign with the Trojans.

Dotson’s loss wasn’t too big of a blow because UCLA had recently added several receivers to the recruiting class and McClain’s switch was expected because his Twitter account seemed to indicate that a flip was coming.

On the other hand, UCLA got some good news this afternoon when DT Atonio Mafi flipped from UC Berkeley to UCLA, due in large part to new Bruin defensive coordinator Jerry Azzinaro.

All told, eight recruits signed today and only four recruits who have pledged a verbal commitment remain unsigned. One of those is Dorian Thompson-Robinson who had mentioned that he planned to hold off until the traditional National Signing Day in February even though he is completely committed to UCLA. Another is Olaijah Griffin. Griffin enjoyed his visit to Tennessee and is being recruited hard by the Volunteers. While we hope he sticks with UCLA, he could end up flipping.

That leaves just CJ Parks from Mater Dei unsigned. While he could sign in the next two days, it could potentially indicate some uncertainty from him. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens with him.

Here’s the full updated list of the 2018 UCLA recruiting class.

Go Bruins!!!