Investigating the Accuracy of College Football Recruiting Rankings

there is no shortage of expectations in college football the best class ever it has to be our year number one class in the country recruiting my commitment to ignites these expectations players are sorted and ranked before they even play a college game but just how accurate are these rankings how good are we at predicting potential generational Talent after coming through years of college football rankings NFL drafts and NFL seasons the results were fascinating they certainly surprised me this is a story about the greatest public human ranking system ever created rankings are a prediction and the delicate art of predicting the unwritten play that lie ahead this is the job of a scout the life of a scout is nothing short of strange your job requires an obsession with high school football players this a Obsession isn't unfounded though in fact this Obsession has to do with what many consider to be the biggest show in the biggest economy college [Applause] [Music] football recruiting has become something that even the Godfather of the 40-yard dash couldn't Envision when Paul Brown lined up players decades go for the drill he was just trying to figure out who should cover a punt who'd want to watch that over time that drill has become a spectacle a way for all to participate in the evaluation process a few T of a second is the difference between fast and slow unranked or five stars millions or undrafted for years navigating this Labyrinth of player potentiality was based entirely on Snap judgments from coaches in Scouts objective measurements that was met with the same type of distaste as well talking back to a coach that was a challenge to the power of a coach's eye so how did this change well in 1998 one man sought to bring the obsessed fans into this Labyrinth and from there the strangeness of a scout was further normalized one evidence well on Signing Day in 2007 Rivals Drew 74.2 million site views more than five times what MSNBC had just a few months earlier on Election night and today of course it's even bigger there are several recruiting sites and one in particular 247sports.com has dethroned Rivals so everybody agrees that these sites are a Gateway for the fan but any coach that downplays their significance or says it's solely for the fan is almost certainly lying because the public eye will grade them upon it every year top ranked class in program history and just how accurate are these sites and what do these Stars even mean the scale is simple for most major sites a five-star is someone who is believed to be a future first rounder a fourstar is believed to be a future NFL pick any round each year there are roughly 30 to 34 players who are bestowed this five-star award is there are 32 firstr draft picks we studied the classes of 20 through 2020 to evaluate draft accuracy and of the 334 five stars in those classes 70 of them were drafted in the first round giving us an accuracy of about 21% there were 3,252 four stars and 646 of those were drafted giving us an accuracy of 20% now that's a failing grade in any exam but not everybody is Miles Garrett that's a defensive lineman each additional star increased the likelihood of being drafted significantly over half of all the five stars were drafted and that is far better than I would have expected I wouldn't have guessed that more than half of these guys would get drafted because they're 18 years old when this evaluation period ends they're full three years of development away from the NFL draft they haven't even played in a college game but there is a lot more to this because the road doesn't just end for these players after they get drafted a question from here becomes who's actually good this is an important distinction because as players progress past the NFL draft these rankings look different real quick if you're enjoying this video I'd really appreciate it if you could subscribe the 2018 paper looked at whether high school rankings accurately predicted NFL success and found that while Stars correlated significantly with draft position there were conflicting results for what one might consider NFL success star rakings didn't really seem to relate to how much playing time a player would see in a season and it also didn't really relate to their overall cash earnings now while this is very telling we don't want to solely rely on it it obviously isn't proven science so I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the very best all proo teams so we pulled roughly the last decade of all pro teams if we go back uh any further than that we're going to have some dudes from the Dark Ages that really pre-existed this internet age these ranking sites so we're five SE recruits more likely to become all Pros slightly but not by much only 133% of all Pros or five-star recruits nearly 60% weren't even expected to play in the NFL now with many sports it would seem that when we look to the extremes we find prodigies LeBron James Tiger Woods players that were highly touted all along in football that's not so much the case the further away we get from high school the less accurate these rankings become and that's some combination of two possibilities the first is these players are just developing differently over that period of time the second this ranking system is just ranking them inaccurately pause for a moment what is it that makes football such a unique sport think about the typical offensive lineman now think about the typical quarterback slightly different athletes to say the least the variance of heights and weights between different positions is more pronounced than perhaps any other major sport football deploys a wide range of athletes for different positions some of these positions Scouts seem to be able to discern they can tell who's going to be legit for others it's the weather 10 days out coming back to our allpro charts running back rankings are incredibly accurate of the 55 all Pros since 2012 38 of them were five or four stars coming out of high school nearly 70% of these all Pros were already expected to play in the NFL when they were teenagers that was the highest of any position group why are running backs so much easier to evaluate well here's a hint a career lifespan of a running back isn't great at the highest level just the slightest loss of step in the next guy haard job anybody who's ever played fantasy football is aware of this running backs are the frequent flyers of the waiver wire one would expect that such an injury riddled position would be full of a wider range of high school star recruits so what's going on well consider what makes a running back great speed agility size strength all measurable traits obviously field vision and other qualities are important but you don't see any great running backs that AR some impressive combination of quick and strong or fast to further this point what offensive position is most similar to running back wide receiver again a position where the objective measurements were highly correlated with long-term success but this correlation quickly faded for many other positions certainly the most important position in all of sports season Tom Brady of the 31 All Pro quarterback selection since 2012 25 of them were not expected to be NFL quarterbacks they had a ranking of three stars or less leaving High School 80% were not expected to be in the NFL no star no offer guy out of high school the position with the most eyeballs received the lowest grade Jimmy was arm strength height speed all of this can be measured but what lies indoors getting chased by 510 190 lb High School defensive lineman just doesn't really create the same level anxiety as this in Reading High School defenses that just doesn't really require the same mental arithmetic as [Applause] this that was a pretty good ball too given that evaluating neurons is outside of the question for the moment we're left with high school game film and seven on seven camps to decide who the next savior is and it shows just take a look at the top 10 winning quarterback since 2000 only one pton Manning was expected to play in the NFL in fact we have to go all the way down to 14 before we find another now keep in mind that if a kid gets an FBS offer they pretty much automatically get a two or three star ranking it's an insurance policy of sorts for these ranking sites and one has to ask the question does that even really mean that they're ranked I'm not not really sure I guess but let's take a look at the POS sorry coach uh so what else stood out positionally well the trenches on one side defensive ends and defensive tackles were incredibly accurate there were more five-star defensive tackles that made in all pro team than any other position we can hypothesize why one reason might be the lack of tangibles needed relative to other positions as the Kelsey Brothers pointed out he's definitely the easiest medall get he came in again I'm speaking broadly here there's obviously exceptions to any broad-based point it's not like defensive lineman don't have to work hard or there's no intangibles required to play the position but similar to running backs and wide receivers much of what makes a defensive lineman great is his tangibles at least relative to the other positions but on the other side of the trenches a far different story emerges offensive linemen have always been incredibly hard to evaluate this is a longstanding problem even coach oraron talked about this 20 years ago in the book Meat Market it's kind of a funny name while nearly 60% of All Pro defensive linemen weree four or five stars and thus expected to play in the NFL only 27% of offensive linemen were four or five Stars so what is it that makes these big little dudes so challenging to evaluate well for one many of these high school linemen are 250 pounds when they graduate so it's difficult to know who will fill into their frame and for those that do have the frame you might not know who's willing to get in shape and cut weight analogous to the 610 guy who's got a Scali just because he's 610 it's also more challenging to evaluate blocking than it is say this Adrian Peterson next to the B and he for the score at least that's what 247 Sports recruiting director would confess so what's your best chance at evaluating any lineman getting them to Camp it's similar to any position but in a way you're kind of just taking chances on a big dude because there's maybe not as many big dudes back to our defense what about the next platoon the reinforcements to our D line there was only one five-star Insider middle linebacker that became an allpro in our charts and quarterbacks also had a relatively low percentage of four and five stars likely due to the fact that so few Elite cornerbacks will play the position in high school and that's true for essentially all of these positions but it's perhaps the greatest example at cornerback I mean just think if you're a coach you probably don't want to isolate your best athlete a D1 Athlete on one side of the field in just one space you probably want them playing safety or linebacker roaming the field so they can make more plays something that I kind of took away looking into this these ranking sites aren't trying to determine who the best college players will be they're trying to rank kids based on NFL draft potential that is an important distinction because if we look into where players are drafted and draft rate instead of all pro teams positional accuracies tell a completely different story five-star quarterbacks and tackles were the most accurate they were the most likely to be taken in the first round this was the opposite of our all proo findings so what does this tell us well teams take a lot of swings on quarterbacks and offensive tackles in the first round probably because of their relative positional importance however in my belief this further highlights the inefficiency of the draft curious about this I grafted and detailed out the efficiency of a draft in another video would really encourage you to check it out if you hav it I found the results fascinating now there's one position that teams seem to have figured out running backs were also underrepresented in this the data again the opposite of what we found for the all proo teams likely due to the fact that fewer NFL teams are taking running backs in earlier rounds because of this shorter lifespan but what leapt out at me was the inaccuracy of linebackers if you remember only one interior allpro linebacker was a five-star recruit and if we look at draft accuracy of four and five stars well linebackers had the worst accuracy there are at least two reasons for this what makes a linebacker great isn't just athleticism they have to be able to survey the offense call the plays I mean in a lot of ways they're the quarterback of the defense consider this play Within just a fraction of a second by Eric Kendricks he needs to read first is this a run is this a pass he identifies that it's a pass next he needs to see is this running back going to come out of the back field into his zone is the receiver going to come on Crossing route into his zone is jimmmy garolo just going to take off and run the intangibles are incredibly important for this position the second reason well the position has just evolved understandably it's those intangibles that Scouts struggle evaluating to summarize our findings it appears as though high school rankings correlate far more with the positions that require the most relative tangibles and vice versa it's drastically easier to spot a Dalvin cook than a Patrick momes a miles Garrett instead of a Fred Warner obviously these rankings are not perfect and there's anecdotal exceptions in many different ways but they do correlate highly with Team success proof there are 134 FBS schools but not a single one of those schools has won a championship without a top 10 recruiting class all 23 champ Champions since these rankings came into existence had at least one top 10 class success should follow rankings highly correlated with win they might not correlate significantly with the elites and there might be several positions that are kind of crap shoots but programs win because they have the top recruits here with two attack of AO at I struggled to find much of anything that tracked these players after their stars were granted we had to collect and summarize basically all of this data on our own of course there's no shortage of information forums and rankings before the players actually play and I don't think that's coincidental there really is something so magnetic about anticipation five stars Celestial beams anointing a teenager the promise of a career that has not begun that superlative moment between today and tomorrow and lastly uh something that came to me is a player really a bust just because they're not who we thought they were just because they're not who the rankings thought they were perhaps we should Reserve that term for somebody that seemingly pisses away their talent being an overrated 18-year-old shouldn't be thought of as a character [Music] defect hope you enjoyed this video make sure to subscribe if you having and take care

Channel: Michael MacKelvie

Views: 275,540

Keywords: College football, College Football Recruiting, 247 sports, NFL Draft, Data Analytics, Sports Analytics, college football playoff, NFL, NFL Busts, Rivals.com, Rivals, High School Football, Recruiting, NCAA, CFB, FBS, College Football rankings, player rankings, top prospects, underrated players, Underdogs, Patrcik Mahomes, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Josh Allen, Playoffs, Super Bowl, NFL Draft Analysis, Draft Analysis, Mock Draft, Scouting, Combine, NFL Combine, Training Camp

Id: eVXWCnfLnQM

Length: 17min 30sec (1050 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 25 2024