The higher ranked a player is coming out of high school, the better shot he has at playing in the NFL. Nevertheless, only 40% of five stars make it to the NFL, which means 60% (or 50% more) do not. This doesn't mean first round draft pick. This means making the NFL in any fashion. There were about 30 five-star players last year. So a whopping 12 of them will likely make the NFL. And how many of those will be true players, i.e. guys drafted in the first three rounds? Call it five. So that means that the other 90 or so players drafted in the first three rounds will be mostly four stars and three stars. I'm guessing about 20 were four stars. Point is, the whopping majority of NFLers drafted are three stars or below coming out of high school. In other words, there's tons of talent among the three and four stars.

This doesn't mean recruiting rankings are worthless. I personally think they're making as good of an educated guess as can be made. But that's all it is. Had Mac recruited a bunch more four and five star players in his first couple of years, I doubt we would've done any better on the field. I'd take a seasoned group of upperclassmen three stars over a bunch of freshmen five star players any day, especially in the SEC.

Frankly, we don't know what we have yet as far as talent is concerned. We thought we had a bunch of highly ranked classes with Chump. He went 4-8 and 7-5 in his third and fourth years. A bunch of them went to the NFL, too (though the best ones were clearly on defense). Obviously Chump couldn't coach worth a lick.

We're still a young team. Most of the top talent is young. There are hardly any seniors on offense. We're going to have a freshman QB, likely Franks at this point. So we're still very much in the rebuilding phase, but we're definitely gaining momentum. We're far more competitive recruiting the state of Florida than we were two years ago. We have a real chance for offensive production this year. Plenty of players on the offensive line for a change, and a solid between the tackles running back. A decent stable of receivers. And a big fat question mark at QB, though the guy clearly has the height and arm strength to play the position.

At this point, I just want a balanced team with solid players. That's something we haven't had in a long while. I think the staff has done an excellent job of getting production out of players who weren't highly recruited. That's a lot better than having highly ranked classes and going 4-8.