Not too surprising to Hokie fans, but Luther Maddy has been named one of the best defensive linemen on campus. He is one of the Hokie players that flirted with the NFL draft and decided to come back. Hopefully, he will be able to wreak havoc against opposing teams and improve his NFL stock. Im glad big Luther is back on campus.
Link
http://www.localmemphis.com/story/d/story/on-campus-2014-best-in-class-d...
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Comments
That can't be possible! This guy was a borderline 2*/3* recruit out of high school. I thought we needed to load up on 4* and 5* defensive players to have elite players at VT.
Congrats to Luther!
Just imagine his * rating if a SEC team had offered him
Haha you really never give up do you. You know you don't have to be correct on EVERYTHING?
Somebody missed the sarcastica font
Ahhh crap... I forgot to include the < /
>... my bad
Yes, and statistics don't exist, and there are never outliers. In fact, due to your thorough research, we now know that 4 or 5 star players are less likely to be great college players, so schools are starting to recruit them less in favor of 2 or 3 stars rated players. Good job poster Alum07, you've enlightened us all
ALERT: SARCASTICA FONT
To be fair, he spent yesterday arguing that point. You can't forcefully argue about something and then make a snide comment about one instance of it occurring that doesn't really prove the point.
Yeah, that was my point. I get that it's his view and he can have that all he wants, but the sarcastic asshole remarks are unnecessary and really don't enhance your side of the debate any more. Especially when it's done away from where the discussion originated.
Eh, I wasn't the one who sarcastically brought up the subject in this thread.
Anyway, his stance that we shouldn't care about recruiting because we can make up for it in pure coaching and finding less athletic guys who can still fit our system doesn't address the issue that we are putting ourselves in a statistically difficult position and possibly limiting the ceiling of our defense. When we offer a highly rated guy (and we don't automatically offer every highly rated guy), Bud Foster obviously thinks we can make him fit in our system. To think that losing those recruiting battles has no effect on our defense is ludicrous if you consider the following data:
CBS did a statistical analysis last year of recruiting stars how it correlates to future All-Americans. Here are the results:
5 star: 26.6% chance of becoming an All-American
4 star: 6.4%
3 star: 1.8%
2 star: 0.8%
Here's a quote from the same article on analyzing team recruiting rankings, and how that affects win ratios:
The evidence is overwhelming that higher star recruits tend to be better players. To suggest then, that losing guys like Nnadi or Hand won't affect our team because a 2 or 3 star guy is likely better, simply ignores statistics and common sense. Sure, we may be able to find diamonds in the rough and field an "elite" defense, but we are not putting ourselves in the best position to do so and very likely hampering how good our defense can be.
Yeah, this post is off-topic for this thread. On topic: Maddy is a statistical outlier, and that makes his accomplishments that much more impressive.
Its not just Maddy. As I said below, our history is jam packed with players who came in under-ranked, and ended up being collegiate standouts at their position, ESPECIALLY along the front-7, and this has everything to do with the way Bud Foster has established the workman-like culture along our defense.
I look at it like this. 5* guys. These are guys who are going to come in and start right away and be stars at their position, but likely be gone to the NFL within 2 years. 4* guys, They'll come in, contend for a starting spot right away, and by their Sophomore season, they'll be very good players for their team, and very well could end up in the NFL. 3* guys, they're the guys that will come in, need a lot of development, but very well could be stars assuming they redshirt and get the proper coaching.
5* guys have everything set for them right away. They are NFL ready the day they step on campus.
4* guys just need a little refining to their game before they are ready.
3* guys are likely undersized, but have a ton of potential, and with the right coach, could be great.
There is no shame in loading up on 4* and 3* guys. None. Especially when you have an established culture of redshirting and allowing players to develop. This is why we have continually had a GREAT defense without the elite 5* guys. We bring them in, coach them up, mold them to what we need them to be, and plug and play. You want to say guys like Maddy are the outliers. I'd venture to say Virginia Tech as a whole is the outlier, especially on defense, and especially in the front-7.
I agree that the front seven of our defense relies a lot on knowledge of the scheme, and our defense on the whole is very effective when you have redshirted veterans who are familiar with the system, which is generally true for other teams too. We may not have the 5* most physically-gifted guys, but we make up for that in teamwork and out-coaching teams.
I understand your point, but this model is difficult to sustain as we saw with Boise and we will probably begin to see with Duke. Sure, Boise and Duke were able to out-coach some teams and pull off upsets, but they usually came up short in the games that the teams in that study which typically recruits 4 to 5 star players. They had roughly 33% odds to win with their less talented players, and this wasn't enough to win a national championship and win in games against those opponents. I think VT has had less than a 33% winning percentage against those opponents, but that winning percentage should be mathematically 50% if we recruited at the same level.
I think the star system is a better indicator for raw physical talent, which was maybe why Kyle Fuller wasn't highly rated coming out of high school. But, our staff has a good eye for football-playing ability beyond just physicality. However, if we were able to sign more extremely physically gifted guys, and coach them up to play in our defense, then this would surely improve our odds of winning games. It would improve the talent of not only our starters, but the second and third teams as well. The past two years, we've seen this talent within our own state, and signing these guys would statistically give us a much better chance at improving our defense even more.
I was arguing a stance that says we employ a defense that doesn't need or require 5* recruiticorns to be elite, and when an example comes around proving my point, it shouldn't be considered? Interesting...
James Gayle was a 3* out of high school. Is this invalid as well? Hell, Cody Grimm was an unranked walkon and he went to the NFL, but I guess that doesn't count, either. You can go through our entire history of defensive standouts and its a whos who of underrated mid to low star recruits out of high school that went on to make legitimate names for themselves in college.
The problem with your argument is that 5 and 4 star recruits are statistically more important. You're using a couple outliers and saying it validates your point. Yes 2 and 3 star guys do make All-American, get drafted in the first round, and become stars. The problem is that there are literally thousands of them. Look at the first team 2013 All-American team, it's been pretty typical the past few years: http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2014/02/ranking_the_rankers_revisitin...
* - # on team
5 - 4
4 - 8
3 - 9
2 - 3
NR-1 (he's the punter)
Notice something? 5s and 4s make up half the team. Sure there are just as many 2s and 3s on the team, but there are also over 8 times as many 2s and 3s in the country every year. Something like between 10-15% of the recruits at most get 4 and 5 star ratings. By getting them you're almost guaranteed a really good player that will do very well.
The other point is now recruting ratings are a lot more accurate than they were 15-20 years ago since they don't rely so heavily on what name brand schools are offering the kids. An analyst can easily watch the highlight tape of dozens of kids a day and get a feel for how good they are instead of just going on size and who is recruiting them. Oh and size is another issue. Some kids just get much bigger during their college years. He might be passed up by the upper echelon because he's on the small size and we grab him and with proper diet, exercise, and late blooming genes he becomes a monster.
TLDR: 4* and 5* have a much significantly higher probability of success. It sucks if we don't get them because we have to gamble on lower rated players who, while more abundant, have a lower RoI.
Just a note of contention.
You are using an end-point data to validate your hypothesis which involves time-course and maturation. Not that you have this data, but better data would be to take each player and analyze what happened.
For example, of each 5-star in 2010, how many became all americans, how many became all-conference, how many were starters, etc. Not, how many all-americans were 5-stars.
Even better data, would be to do this on a per team basis. How many of VT's 5-stars (umm... 4-stars) became all conference. This data would truly solve your and alum's discussion. Without it, it's just conjecture whether VT needs 5 stars to become elite or not.
Sorry, I just let my scientist side out.
Edit: Just thought of a good example. It would be like saying white American males make good American Presidents. After all, 42 of the 43 presidents have been white American males. However, I'm pretty sure at least 99% of the white American population would make terrible Presidents.
Yes, I understand your point that we've had success with low rated guys, but that does not mean you are 100% correct in your logic about everything - and that is what I'm trying to say. We have had relative success with our formula, but we don't have a NC and again, if you don't think higher physically gifted recruits would help change that than you are downplaying that to make yourself feel better.
I'm just saying that you are lacking any acceptance of the other side, thinking what YOU believe is the complete and whole truth, when each one of us have valid points. You tend to be very close minded about various aspects of the team which is what rubs some of us the wrong way
This is true but I think this is more true of where we came from and not where we need to go. back before online recruiting, 7on7, youtube, social media and all the things that give more eyes on every player VT could find those overlooked gems that most teams never considered and coach them into 5 star talent.
But that was in the past. It got us to where we are a national brand and almost a national championship. However it's not going to get us back there and it's not going to win us the crystal. As the years go by recruiting is going to become more and more precise in its ratings of high school players. 4 and 5 star recruits, which had been overlooked and considered as 2 and 3 star talents is much harder to come by and will be much harder even still from now on. Maddy and Nicolas are great examples of your argument but every team that has won every championship since the BCS era is the counter and better argument.
Great point Fernley. Times they are a changin. We either change with them or we get left behind. Better to aim high and miss than to not take the shot at all. Statistically, we will get 0% of the 5 stars that we don't try for...
The view that we can just recruit "our type of player" and coach up every single 2 and 3 star and become elite is naive. It's possible but it's like catching lightning in a bottle.
The headline should say " Luther Maddy is the best DT on campus"
Or, "one of the best in the country"
Well gosh, I should hope so. He's starting isn't he?
In this case "campus" means "the NCAA". Duh why didn't you catch that? (necessary, apparently)
Oh dear, you missed the sarcasm....
My reply was supposed to follow along in the sarcasm....
My goodness, we need that sarcastica font.
There is a case to be made that Luther Maddy is better than Aaron Donald. When the two faced last season, Maddy was the better DT.