For a bright athlete whose quality of play keeps them among the coach’s top recruits, there isn’t much to worry about. In most cases, everything should work out as planned for both the school and the recruit. A coach who would still recruit the same athlete in the fall of the senior year as they offered a spot to much earlier is expected to provide full support.
The concern that some people have with early commitments is that they are contingent on several things happening. I don’t believe that every coach considers these informal agreements as an obligation to support an athlete for better or worse and forsaking all other recruits. Bodies change and some athletes get relatively weaker and some get relatively better between their sophomore and senior years.
If your child was the number six of six recruits as a sophomore and she is now barely in the top 20, would every coach stand behind your daughter if it meant losing out on a top prospect that suddenly became available? Several of us have seen offers disappear for a variety of reasons. Most of the time things go fine, but that isn’t much of a consolation to the unfortunate few who are forced to scramble late in the process.