Virginia Tech brought in 9 players as part of their 2023 Transfer Portal Class. Many of those players have become fan-favorites after turning around Virginia Tech's 2023 season en route to a 7-6 record and a Military Bowl win over Tulane. Today, we'll take a look at every transfer's 2023 ranking before the season, re-grade them based on their statistics, and compare each Virginia Tech transfer to their counterparts in the portal.
The short version - the six players who played major minutes for us this season either matched or surpassed their initial rankings. Stone Synder, Clayton Frady, and Ali Jennings were not ranked because of limited or no playing time.
Given the NIL/transfer portal landscape, this staff has to pluck diamonds in the rough year after year from other programs to be competitive. Small sample size but I think this is compelling evidence that the current staff can out-evaluate the average P4 program.
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So they reranked Drones, Tuten, Felton, Lane, and APR to 4* status.
So next year we have 4* players at QB, RB, WR1, WR2, WR3, and TE
Well, that's the job.
Thanks for posting this.
Fun reading.
Gives some perspective with the comparisons to their transfer peers.
The short of it....our staff seems to evaluate/? develop well?
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Go Hokies
I think for this was more evaluation. APR looked like a stud at times at UF, but fit our defense so much better than their. So they identified his strengths and sold him on use them at VT.
Tuten did what he did at A&T, the staff just hit on him moving up competition.
From what French said in another post, the receivers had some development to fit in the the blocked needed, but Lane had a couple of nice long runs after the catch that looked exactly like the one that he had against Miami while he was at MTSU.
I think for players that play right away the coaches evaluated well and then coached well to have them fit within what they were trying to do. It took Tuten and the coaches a few games to put him in a position to do what he did this year.
They're updating ranking a year after they played? Seems... idk a little late?
It's unofficial and more of a retrospective exercise
I think this sort of thing is valuable even if pretty evident - comparing the in the moment evaluation compared to rating/ranking their actual performance. Maybe it even adds a touch of accountability.
We were excited by who we brought in and the guys who played even outperformed their transfer ranking.
I don't disagree, but it seems weird to only do this for transfers.
It's just part of the 247 content machine... but there's value to exploit here. Maybe we can figure out a way to use this to pitch future transfers on overperformance/development.
A number of people are interested to see what happened to improve a team so significantly and fast during the season.
I dont think you can do it after a year for a normal recruiting class so maybe 3 years you could attempt but it's not like transfers who should play at least some. Still would be hard after 3 years for most schools.
Also it's a lot of work doing recruiting classes, for you make Terrell and Tremaine 5* recruits because they were 1st round selections? Even if other players were better in college?
I agree, which is why I'm a little confused. Do they regrade all transfers? Just some? Does anyone get downgraded?
It's just a hypothetical reranking. They aren't actually going in and changing their 24/7 ranking. Like someone else said, just hypotheticals to produce content at VTScoop only. No one has or will get reranked.
Oh I misunderstood. Got it.
Let's be honest - Jennings was also easily a 4 star (I get why he is unranked), but from an evaluation standpoint the staff was 7 for 9 in a big way.
Point is they got 4 star level transfers for all but 2 players - not just contributors. Impressive
I don't even think 7-9 is truly accurate. I think the staff was fully aware that Stone and Frady were limited. They were not able to get other guys at those positions given the high demand, but we had the roster spots, so they were willing to take a flyer on each of these guys.
Stone didn't even stay to start the season and Frady is done with football, so it checks out. 7-7 if you ask me.
Stone also never received a scholarship so there was 0 risk in bringing him in. Frady was a last second add after Crook came in and Rudolph had refused to play the transfer portal game. Agreed that we are 7 for 7 with a depth add in Frady right before the portal closed
Fair - hit rate it high!