Stephen F. Austin Gives Wills Point Linebacker Sloan Rodberg First Offer

The best Wills Point season in more than a decade came to a close last week. It appeared that might have been the end of Sloan Rodberg's football playing career.

Fortunately, that's not going to be the case. Stephen F. Austin contacted the senior linebacker Tuesday and invited him to join their program on scholarship for the 2017 season and beyond.

Rodberg (6-3, 220) reported his first Division I offer to ETSN.fm.

Wills Point finished its season with a 7-5 record and a handful of impressive individual player statistics. Most notably, Rodberg is East Texas' leading tackler with 217 through 13 weeks of competition.

Rodberg -- who won the region's regular season tackle title on the ETSN.fm football statistics leaderboards -- just might have enough takedowns to fend off junior Newton linebacker Corbin Foster and senior Van safety Cooper Bledsoe. Those two guys have 168 and about 150 tackles apiece and are the two closest players still alive in the playoffs.

Stephen F. Austin's latest target also closed his senior season with nine forced fumbles. That is the second-best number in the region behind senior Jefferson defensive tackle Alijuan Rice's 10 strips.

Prior to the start of his senior year, Rodberg graded out as one of the better overall players at the invite-only ETSN.fm + APEC Football Recruiting Combine. He tied for the seventh-best pro agility time among the athletes at 4.19 seconds, finished fifth in 225-pound bench press reps with 17 and recorded the second-best Kesier squat output with a lift that generated 3,518 watts of electricity.

Only John Tyler linebacker Shaundrick Williams had a better Keiser squat output. Williams created 13 more watts, less than half a percentage point higher than Rodberg.

Stephen F. Austin finished its 2016 campaign last week with an overall record of 5-6 and missed the FCS playoffs for a second consecutive season. Sam Houston State received the Southland Conference's automatic bid to the postseason and mutual rival Central Arkansas earned an at-large bid for the field of 24 teams.

The Lumberjacks program, situated in Nacogdoches, naturally receives a lot of its talent from the East Texas region. Four local football players signed with the school last year, a few more walked on and former Whitehouse receiver Trent Williams is transferring there after spending his freshman season at Henderson State on the NCAA Division II level.

Rodberg, like all college football prospects currently in their senior year of high school, will become eligible to sign with any school that offers him in February.