pth look at Gator recruiting....

gatorbill116

Ok, so earlier today Thewild1 posted and asked me the following:

“So what is your bottom line Gatorbill? Do you not feel Mac can win a natty ship here? If so, why? … Please explain. Lastly, what is your litmus test for improved recruiting? Please explain.”

To answer that question, I am going full nerd-mode with the help of some statistical analysis. The Excel spreadsheet attached to this post has 2 pages to peruse, each with some important data to consider. Before I discuss the findings, let me first make a few passing notes about my methodology. First, I am not a statistician and my charts are ghetto. Deal with it lol. Second, I did not factor in JUCO signees or transfers, as it made the rankings analysis a bit too complicated for my liking. Third, I did my best to avoid error, but don’t be surprised if you find one. Fourth, I included the 2017 class commits in the UF snapshot page, but only if the incomplete status didn’t skew things. For example, I think It’s fair to look at the bluechip percentage of the class, but it’s not fair to evaluate the number of bluechips signed. Any analysis that includes this class is at least partially flawed, but I erred on the side of being user-friendly.

With that out of the way…. Page 1 is a 15-year statistical analysis of UF football recruiting. It is broken down into 18 categories that evaluate each Gator class (and therefore coach) since 2002. Below the table of information that lies at the top of the spreadsheet, I attached charts to give you a visual representation of the same data. I think it makes it easier to digest visually, but like I said, don’t expect much. Anyway, here are some important facts we can ascertain about Gator recruiting from that page:

DOWNLOAD THE SPREADSHEET HERE: http://www.filedropper.com/recruitingtrends

1) In attempting to make an apples-to-apples comparison of Mcelwain with one of his predecessors, Meyer seems to be the best choice. Both men took over for coaches that had recently been fired from UF. Both had proven track records as head coaches at mid-level western programs. Both men had exactly one regime of separation from a legend at the school. Both had weak first classes that were among the worst I reviewed. Meyer signed only 17 players in 2005, with a paltry 6 bluechippers. Ten years later, Mcelwain’s first class included 21 players, but only 5 bluechips. The difference is in what followed. In 2006, Meyer signed a top 3 class and raised the bluechip % from 35% to 75% for his bump year effort. Mcelwain on the other hand, followed up his historically poor-rated first effort with a bump class that ranked on # 12 nationally and 6th in the SEC. He also only moderately raised the blue chip % from 24% in 2015 (the worst of the millennium), to 36% in 2016.

2) Speaking of “worst”, of the 18 categories I identified, Mcelwain’s classes took the worst spot in 14 of them. The four that his classes didn’t account for were class size, average rating (which may be off because the 2002 is based on incomplete data), # of in-state recruits signed, and the attached percentage of in-state recruits signed. All other bottom finishes since Spurrier belong to Mac.

3) This is no shocker, but the four-year period of 2013-2016 has amassed the largest number of three stars (98) and fewest number of five stars (5) as compared to any other four-year period since Spurrier. Two of those five-stars (Hargreaves and Taylor) left after last season and a third (Tabor) will leave this year. At that point, Martez Ivey and CeCe Jefferson will be the last 5-stars on the roster, and at least one of those is likely to leave next year. That has to be a historic low.

4) The rough average of Mcelwain’s national finishes (21st, 12th, and current 14th) equate to about 15th best in the country over three years. In the SEC, his 7th, 10th, and current 6th place equates to an average of 7th (and I’m rounding in favor of Mac in both cases). Additionally, when ranked against the chief rivals (FSU, UGA, and UT), the past four years of recruiting have seen the Gators ranked 4th, 4th, 3rd, and 4th. This year’s class obviously has potential to positively impact each of the things mentioned in this item, but as of now the class is actually projected to fall in its ranking, even if a few of the bigger targets are landed.

5) Although I’ll address the championship implications of this more in-depth later, the primary shortcoming that I can see with Mac’s recruiting is the number of top 250 players he is signing. Including 2017, he has only managed 14 over three years. Even WITH his historically bad performance, the average number signed in all UF classes reviewed is 11.19. Many of them had more than 14 in one year. To me, this is a staggering drop off and telling of how bad this roster could soon be. Unless he hits on sleepers at a high rate and finishes this class off in a huge way, the roster is going to be much, much less talented than it has been since I’ve been watching Gator football. This trend is consistent for Gator recruiting in and out of state. The ratio is very similar for the top 40 players in Florida, which has traditionally been close to the amount of 4 and 5 star recruits in state each year.

Moving on to page 2… Since the question was asked whether Mcelwain can win a national championship at UF, and since the road to the playoffs runs through Atlanta, I thought it more important to discuss whether he is recruiting well enough to win the SEC. To that end, page 2 of the spreadsheet details the 4 preceding recruiting classes of each SEC champion since the Gators won in 2006. That’s 10 championship teams and 40 classes worth of data. After looking it over, here’s what jumps out at me so far:

1) With the exception of Auburn’s 2010 title year (more on that later), every single program has had at least one top-5 recruiting class in the 4-year cycle leading up to their title runs. The aforementioned outlier notwithstanding, all teams actually had multiple top-5 recruiting finishes, or in one case (LSU 2011) had a single # 1 national class and multiple top 10’s to go with it. Again, Mac's classes aren't even close to this level.

2) When looking at the number of top 100 and top 250 recruits, you see that championship teams have signed an average total of 26.4 top-100 players and 50.4 top-250 players from their 4-year pre-title run classes. Even when you take out Alabama’s crazy 2014 and 2015 4-year hauls, those numbers sit at 21.5 top-100 and 46.75 top 250 players per championship team… and these are skewed negatively because they include the outlier of Auburn. If Florida were to win the SEC this year, they would do so with a total of 16 top-100 players and 32 top-250 players on their current roster. As bad as this is, if they don’t manage to sign a top 100 player in 2017 (which is at best 50/50 at this point), then they will walk in to next season with only 10 top-100 players and 23

top-250 players. That is literally almost exactly half of what recent champions have won with.

3) Good ole’ Auburn took a very different route to the SEC title in 2010. First and foremost, they landed Cam Newton via transfer, who as a JUCO transfer, was not factored into these results. He was also a Heisman winning generational-caliber player that obviously elevated that team and overcame otherwise sub-championship recruiting. Interestingly however, Auburn did have one advantage that negatively skewed their results. According to 247, they signed 141 players in the four classes from 2007-2010. To comprehend how impactful this is, imagine if UF signed an additional half of a roster over Muschamp’s tenure. Now I’m not asserting that you can fix stupid, but imagine how that would have helped during the injury-plague of 2013, set up Mac on the OL last year, and provided the small percentage of hidden gems that are to be found among the masses of lower-rated recruits.

4) No team has won a recent SEC championship if they did not have at least one class over the 40% mark for the percentage of its class being comprised of top 250 recruits. 2013 featured a UF class where this ratio hit 50%. This is the last season where those players will be around in force, and instead the roster will be comprised of groups that hit percentages of 38%, 14%, 24%, and 31%. This is a bit skewed since it is a ratio and doesn’t account for total numbers, but the overall class sizes are comparable enough to minimize the impact. This is a bad sign.

5) I haven’t done this, but I would be interested to see what removing the outliers does to the Average rating, bluechip %, and % of top 250 % categories. That bluechip number has been thrown around here quite a bit, but from what I see it looks like an invalid number to use in predicting SEC champion possibilities from a talent standpoint.

6) Oh, and I just added one more blurb on the snapshot spreadsheet as a “stars debate” commentary. Since 2002, Florida has signed a total of 22 non-kicker football recruits who went on to be first-team AP All-SEC (post-season). Of those, 11 were 5-star recruits, 9 were 4-star recruits, and only 2 were 3-star recruits. Consider that for a moment and what the roster will look like in 2017. Ouch.

This is obviously only scratching the surface, but I look forward to you guys tearing this apart and providing your own insight. I tried my best to be fair with not only the interpretation, but the selection of the categories. I understand full well that this doesn’t account for facilities deficiencies and the other intangibles that we can’t quantify. It’s only part of the discussion and its extremely results-focused. I can’t tell you why these things are happening through this data, but I can tell you emphatically, that NO, UF is not recruiting well-enough for Mcelwain to win the SEC, let alone a national championship. To do that with a continuation of current recruiting levels would require a Cam Newton-level turn of events.==============================

he does a good analysis overall.  Some points have to be taken into account though:

1) Chump ran down our program worse than anybody has run down our program since Doug Dickey.  He probably didn't take it down as far as Dickey did (at least the D was good) but the Offense was every bit as bad as the dark days at the end of the Dickey regime and our good name was really trashed on the recruiting trail.  Therefore Coach Mac took over a far worse situation than Chump or Zook or Urban Meyer took over.  Worse team, worse reputation.  I don't think anybody who follows recruiting would even argue the latter and the numbers as to performance speak for themselves.

2) The first class did rank 21st.....we had to desperately scramble to sign OL....yes even to the point of loading up on any decent looking 3 stars we could get our hands on.  Some of those 3 star recruits like Zuniga, Kylan Thompson, (by some services) Callaway, Keivonnus Davis, we know already are real players.  A couple of guys in that class look like busts and we really can't judge the majority of the OL fairly yet but it looks like a very low number of busts for a transition class.  Transition classes are notorious for having tons of guys not pan out which is what you'd expect given the short amount of time coaches have to evaluate.  Urban's first class looks far worse once you see how they panned out.  So though the ranking was bad, I think this class was actually pretty good.  It certainly did address critical needs like OL instead of simply ignoring them like Chump's highly rated classes often did.

3)  Urban Meyer is a helluva recruiter.  One of the best in America.  He's not the greatest evaluator of talent and he's not the best developer of talent but getting the guys he wants?  Oh yeah.  So when the services have a particularly good year at evaluating, he's gonna kill it.  When the services are wrong about a lot of highly rated guys....like 08 and 09 for us for example.....Urban is gonna have a highly rated class that doesn't produce much on the field.  Coach Mac and this staff seem to be the exact opposite.  We clearly DO lose more head to head recruiting battles for guys we want.  On the other hand, we also identify guys and get them committed early whose stock consistently rises and who often turn out to be surprisingly good players.  At least so far it sure appears that way.  The current class is showing that again with guys like Perine and Taylor and Hammond (Perine and Hammond were elevated to 4 stars from 3 AFTER we took their commitments while Taylor stayed a 3 star).  Reese and Joseph have looked pretty good at LB (Reese moreso) and Clayton's stock rose considerably AFTER we took his commitment and he showed out at a few all star camps.  Polite has looked good too and was another 3 star.

Would I like for the staff to win more head to head battles?  HELL YES!  That said....I can understand given the hole Chump put the program in why they weren't able to ride the wave as well as we'd hoped.  There was no wave to ride.  They were recruiting very well right up until January when the team ran out of gas at the end of the season and we finished in the top 3 for several stud recruits we were after....which is worthless I know but it does sort of explain why we missed on some of them....and let's be clear here...flip say 4 of those stud guys we were after and its a class that's probably somewhere around #5 or so.  I know we did not in fact get them but its not like we were never in it.

4) Now let's look at this class  (I use Rivals rankings because I always have and its easier). 

We currently have 9 guys who are 4 stars out of our 16 total.  We are once again, right in the thick of it (as in top 3) for a bunch more 4 and 5 star recruits.  Of the 7 three star commitments we have I LOVE Miller and Davis especially.  Both are in the top 100 recruits in America in the "ranked by offers" website...which tells you they both have tons of offers from big boy programs which to me is a better indicator than recruiting stars...and I have no idea how guys wanted by that many big dogs can only be 3 star recruits.  Its insane.  Whatever.  Two more a big DTs (one of whom is a Juco) and that fills a need.  We appear to be going to more of a gap control Defense in which our DTs will be dedicated more to space eating rather than pass rushing but that's another conversation.  OK so two need picks.  The high schooler, Scott does have some other offers from significant programs BTW.  So does Toney who is listed as an "Athlete".  Auburn is trying to pry him away from us.  End of the day....there are a couple of our 7 three star commitments I question but its only a couple of them.  The rest look good or at least OK.

5) Those ahead of us....especially in the SEC/and in State

scUM is listed as #12.  They have 19 commitments to our 16 but only four of their guys are 4 star recruits with the no 5 stars.  IOW their ranking per player is considerably worse than ours is and if we just add more bodies we will pass them in the overall ranking.

Maryland is #13 with 19 commitments....one 5 star and three 4 stars.....we blow them away in average per player

Michigan is #11....with 18 commitments.  They have 10 four stars...their quality per player is right about on par with us

#10 South Carolina....21 commitments zero 5s, seven 4s

#9 aTm......22 commitments zero 5s seven 4s

#8 Tennessee.....24 commitments zero 5s eight 4s

#4 LSU....19 commit one 5 ten 4s

we are right on par in terms of quality with Michigan and LSU (and sow which is ranked two spots lower than us).  We are clearly better than the Cocks, aTm and Tennessee and scUM.  They just have more guys committed right now.

Nobody is going to catch Bama so yes, they are going to pull a more highly ranked class than we are.  UGA is sitting at 15 commitments with zero 5s but twelve 4s.  UGA is recruiting well at least "on paper" and it would be a surprise if we finished with a higher ranked class than they did.  However, nobody else in the SEC is likely to have a class ranked higher and given how well our staff has done at talent evaluation, that makes me feel pretty good about where we are in recruiting.  We have needs that are not yet met (like OL and more DBs) but I feel very safe in saying we're gonna finish with a top 10 class.

By the way....#21....#14.....top 10.  See what's happening as our staff gains traction?