FAU National Signing Day: Who's hooting for the Owls in 2016?

In Charlie Partridge's third year as head coach Florida Atlantic finished National Signing Day by brining in yet another quality class as the Owls signed 19 players, eight of them being three-stars.

When Partridge arrived in Boca Raton he emphasized that he wanted to recruit Palm Beach County and I-4 South hard and this year he's done a great job pulling kids from that area yet again as 16 of the players signed are from that area. During Partridge's tenure 73% of his recruiting classes are from the I-4 corridor south. The last time the percentage was that high was between 2006-2008, the last time FAU played in a bowl game.

"With this class, we filled some needs and we battled against some 'big schools' and came out on the right side of the battle, the majority of the time," said Partridge per the press release. One of those needs was landing a defensive tackle and they did so by securing Kevin McCray's signature. The Daytona Beach product had many offers from P5 schools but remained firm in his commitment to FAU.

The 17 commits entering today were pretty firm as there was no panic that any one would flip but the last two editions were a nice surprise as Partridge was able to flip Rashad Smith, a former Syracuse commit, and Devin Singletary, a former Illinois commit.

According to 247 Sports the best recruit is Steven Frank. A three-star quarterback from Illinois, Partridge mentioned how he loved Frank's competitiveness when watching him play basketball during a recruiting visit and saw him as a talented passer. Out of FAU's four best commits, three reside on the line of scrimmage. The class is split pretty evenly with 10 defensive players and nine offensive players.

Since Charlie Partridge has arrived at FAU the expectations surrounding the football program has gotten higher and higher and this recruiting class is a big indicator of that as fans are pretty ho-hum about this year's new crop of Owls.

The class ranks sixth in Conference USA and there seems to be no plans of adding any more players to be apart of this year's #FAUSuper 16.