Following up on my post from Early Signing Day
Full Breakdown of all recruits by class and position.
Looking at Overall
Major Notes:
-The 2018 class is higher rated (average recruit rating) than any previous class, as far as the 247 data goes back.
-This class is also more balanced than previous across the boards. 11 on offense (2 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 4 OL), 14 on defense (2 DT, 2 DE, 3 LB, 7 DB)
Ranking the Groupings (Rank out of 12):
- WR .9049 (2)
- LB .9021 (2)
- TE .8904 (2)
- QB .8892 (5)
- DB .8772 (3)
- DT .8630 (5)
- OL .8627 (4)
- DE .8578 (7)
- RB .8527 (6)
Forums:
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Comments
Boom!
Now THAT is how you do a comparative recruiting class thread.
Something that stood out to me is to think about what could have been with a redshirt Shai or Marshawn for this upcoming year at RB.
Unfortunately, I don't think Marshawn's knees were going to let him make it to this year regardless.
People said the same thing about Jay Ajayi finishing this past season when the Eagles traded for him at the deadline this year, and we all saw how that panned out.
Edit: Grrr supposed to be a reply to rottingmind
I mean, he tore his knee up 3 times at VT. To me, that just sounds like it's a ticking timebomb scenario, but I'm also no doctor.
Thomas Davis tore his ACL in each of 3 consecutive seasons. When he came back he was arguably one of the best and most impactful LBs in the game, despite sharing the limelight with Kuechly, and I would say absolutely destined for the NFL Hall of Fame upon his retirement after this upcoming season.
Now, I'm not saying our situation would be similar, but knee injuries aren't exactly what they used to be. People have been able to come back from similar situations and dominate.
I'd argue that's more of the exception than the rule. I'd also venture to say the resources available to TD in terms of his surgery and recovery were better than what was available to Marshawn.
You're absolutely right that it's not the same as it used to be and guys can come back quicker (ie Chris Clarke back after only 10 months) but it's still not easy to recover from. Especially after three.
I love this, thanks for taking the time to put it together!
Building depth and trying to get a little better, at every position, every year. Playing the long game, I like it.
Also, it won't help that stats, but was Hazelton in there? Good Lord willin', he's gonna be a beast this year.
I didn't include transfers.
Trying to figure out what year players were recruited for which teams would have been an additional step that I didn't feel like it accurately depicts recruiting abilities.
Makes sense + thanks again for putting this together!!
It is a shame that Clark hung it up. He was a pretty big OL recruit
Surely one or two of those 7 DB recruits is gonna play WR
Not sure I agree. If that's the case, and I know it's just speculation, why move Farley?
Thanks for putting this together. My two observations from the Beamer years.
1) We had a lot of highly ranked talent that never panned out. I had to google several mid 90's rated players. Hopefully we capitalize on current blue chips like Devon Hunter.
2) Our class of 2011 coming off an ACC championship and Orange Bowl appearance was terrible for our onfield success and could be one of the biggest reasons why we saw the drop off in 2012-2015. I also see this coincide with the rise of Clemson. Their 2011 class was incredible despite going 6-7. It's like we swapped classes. I wish I could see what Dabo did to pull that off.
Clemson did hire some very good assistants around this time. Venables and Chad Morris were great additions coupled with a good nucleus of players and adding better talent seemed to snowball from there.
It's not like coaches were using the "Old Beamer" excuse to lure recruits during that time or anything.../s
Wow! Nicely done. Enjoyed seeing the line graph of recruiting rankings through the years; I would've never guessed this was a higher rated class than all of them, especially the 2007 and 2008 classes. Great to see the balance too. Kudos.
When we started getting Guys like Kevin Jones, DeAngelo Hall it was right after the Vick years of "Winning"..Yes I put it in quotation marks because that's a huge driver. Winning 10 games for so long in the beamer Era also got us guys like David Wilson, Ryan Williams and Darren Evans. I think if we can turn it up on the field, no doubt we will improve in recruiting. Clemson has pretty done the same thing, little by little they winning more and more and now they get top talent.
I think we are definitely on the right track. Lets go for more 10, 11, 12+ win seasons.
Would also like to see a few more big wins and upsets where the Hokies are the underdog. I see that coming next for Fuente, Foster and company as they build the talent level and depth.
Darren Evans was a good player but I didn't think he was an especially hot recruit
IIRC Darren Evans was only a 3-star rated recruit, but had size and an incredible number of touchdowns scored, something like 30 or more his senior year. He simply knew how to get the ball into the end zone. No figures in front of me, just going by what I remember; I was and am a huge Darren Evans fan and loved his running style.
For mid-level recruits, Evans and Oglesby made a decent RB tandem. Not like Jones/Suggs or Williams/Wilson, but not a bad duo.
Evans would destroy in Fuente's system. One of the best downhill runners I've ever seen wear a Tech jersey, he has the perfect mentality to abuse defenses that don't respect the run.
Evans was a beaaaaaaaast.
Grant's tape had a lot quick burst downhill runs. Bet CornFu saw that fit in the O. Wish we had gotten him too.
Love your work too, can't wait for your next article.
IIRC George Bell was the big RB recruit for those classes. He, too, had to retire because of knee issues.
That guy won 4 consecutive Heismans in my dynasty mode on PS2.
I had a few years where the Heisman Finalists included my QB, HB1, and HB2. I'd like to have this problem in real life.
In real life, the closest was West Point in 1945. Doc Blanchard and Glen Davis, fullback and halfback. Blanchard won in 45, Davis finished second but won in 46.
I'd have to disagree. Matt Leinart 6th in 2003, won in 2004 while Reggie bush got 5th, came up short in 2005 by getting 3rd while Reggie bush won. So two winners in three years plus in those three years had one or two in the top six. I would call that the closest.
You can disagree, but you're wrong, unless you're defining "closest" as "most recent." The specific scenario was QB and TWO RBs. The second half of that is the crux, because it's exceedingly rare for two backs to both put out the production necessary for recognition. 1945 Army had two RBs finish 1-2. That, a more difficult accomplishment, and they finished higher than any of the pairs you mentioned. Ergo, 1945 Army is still a better fit.
But it's not actually the best fit. After more digging, 1944 Army had those same two backs finish 2 and 3, and their QB was also a finalist at 8th. Here endeth the lesson.
I believe he ended up transferring as well. I think was more of a bust than knee issues but perhaps thats what caused him to be a bust.
So... WE BAK!
for you stats/spreadsheet folks, a neat exercise would be to rank order the rosters for the last couple years by composite avg, note the guys who either started or played a lot, and look for significant breaks to see how well the composites predict success.
Eyeballing it, looks like something around .87 is a nice break point where the odds go up/down substantially
I tried to do that one year and then break it down by region the recruit came from too but it was just to much work to get a decent data sample together imo....if someone else wants to more power to em!
I just printed it out and based on my personal opinion "success" metric for the 4 classes 2012-2015 (75 recruits listed on the table), above 0.87 there is about a 60% success rate. dropping below .87 pulled the rate down. overall below 0.87 success is closer to 40%. Interestingly, above 0.90 it's still about 60%.
just out of curiosity how do you define success? I was trying to grade out players based on games started, post season awards (all acc etc) and other things
because I'm lazy...pretty informally. Starters or regular rotation...and without looking at any stats to back up my perceptions.
if you buy my 0.87 hypothesis, we'd project to get about 8 of these guys from 2016, 11-12 from 2017, and 13 from 2018.
so far, i'd credit Floyd, Kumah, Jackson and Evans from 2016 (could make a case for Diablo); and Keane and Savoy from 2017.
Interesting note. All three of our LB recruits this year are rated higher than Edmunds. I know ratings can be deceptive; but wow is there potential in that group.
It would be interesting to see where Edmunds gets "re-rated" in a couple of years.
He was rated as a 3 star, #441 prospect, #34 OLB, #16 in the State and is now projected to be a top 1st round pick. IIRC, most were saying he was the best Edmunds brother. There was some rumblings that we may end up at DE...so happy our coaches didn't move him. If he goes in the top 10 it will boost our LB recruiting even further. It's scary what Bud's Defense can do with very good LB's (see Hall/Adibi).
I'd heard he was very young coming in (maybe graduated HS a year early or something) and was still growing, which would explain a lot.
My understanding is all the Edmunds brothers reclassified/skipped a grade at some point in their K-12 education. Biggest difference between Tremaine and his brothers was that Tremaine didn't redshirt. According to Wikipedia he is only 19 (turns 20 in May), though its Wikipedia so I'm not sure what the source of their info is. I think NFL views his age as a positive because it means he has more prime playing years in front of him.
He was also coming out of Danville, and was almost definitely overlooked some as a result.
Really great compilation, thank you for this! This year is definitely trending in the right direction, and although we had some key misses on the DL and RB, I think we are continuing to have a better product to sell than ever before. Offense, Defense, and Special Teams all have innovative coaches that are enticing to recruits. The blue bloods will always get their share of the top guys but if we can start picking off a few more that are also pursued by the Ohio St. and Bama's of the world, I think we have the player development to compete on the big stage.
P.S. Also worth noting, our WR and LB class are the only two position groups to have over a .90 avg (w/ more than 1 person in position group) in our recent recruiting history. Pretty impressive.
I know that we're all upset about the big misses, as you put it, but I think the key factor to be drawn out this class, and even last year's class, is while we don't have and extremely elite player at every position, we have a perceived quality depth across the board.
Hard to do the mental math accurately, and it wouldn't let me copy data out for whatever reason, but it seems like the deviation is coming down while the average goes up. Which means we're getting fewer "elite" recruits (which would inflate the average for a given year), and bringing in "very good" recruits more consistently. Does that hold up?
Makes sense and if true isn't a bad thing since football is a team sport.
Also helps when someone gets hurt that you won't have the dropoff in production that you might if it was an elite player being replaced by an average player.
Yeah, exactly. It also holds pretty well with my intuition for what has been happening. Been a while since we've had a Tyrod, but also the average production from non-***** recruits has been good, and we've been able to phase in **** recruits more slowly.
I did a little research and I wanted to point out how hard it is to land a 5 Star. Over the past 3 years there have been 88 5 stars (on247).
UGA-13
Bama-11
OSU-9
Clemson-8
USC - 8
FSU - 5
PSU - 4
LSU - 4
Mich-3
Ole Miss-3
UCla-3
Stan-3
Outside of Clem and FSU the Rest of the ACC only has 1 (Miami this year). The whole Big 12 only has 4 in the past 3 years. Only 23 teams have gotten a 5 star in the past 3 years. I feel we are getting pretty close. And to give you an idea of what a 5 star does to a class, if QP was rated a 5 star we would go from 24th to 19th or 20, just on his bump alone.
Thanks for tallying this up! So the top four got about half of the 4-stars over the last three years.....and the rest of the Power 5 fights for the remainder......
I would love to see an "equity" rule that would limit the number of of "stars" you can recruit. Tie it to athletic revenue, or even better GPA/graduation rates. The higher your budget, the fewer total composite stars you can sign. ...or on the Academic side the lower your GPA/Graudation rate the fewer.
You think the numbers workers are doing witchcraft now.
Love this idea in concept, to "level the playing field" so to speak, but it would never work. Instead of only paying 'croots the $EC/Blue Blood$ would now pay the scouts at 247, Rivals, and ESPN to tank/not rate their guys. They could continue to rack up on 5 star talent who "just happen" to be rated as 3 stars or not rated at all. No matter how you try to regulate it, one thing has and always will reign supreme, money. Plus, the NCAA already does a great job of regulating/enforcing their rules, so why not add a few more /s
NCAA enforcement leaves a lot to be desired.
Why not just have some recruiting limits, or even a draft?
Why should you be able to have better recruits if you have more money?
...other way around. More money = less stars.
I know what you mean.
In the big scheme of things, though, VT rated in about the top third of the power five, and improving. Not too shabby.
That would be cool. Although I have a theory that it's really the recruiting classes 2-3 years ago that have the most impact on a team's success.
Great work!
The thing that still stands out to me isn't necessarily the lack of talent that Beamer and Co. recruited, but the lack of contributors that the staff brought in.
Only time will tell, but if this staff only recruits marginally better (from a "*" rating standpoint) and gets more contributors per class, that would be a win IMO.
Agree- but keep in mind. Fuente's major contributors that he recruited: Evans- that's one.. Decent contributors- Keane, Savoy, Bradburn (since he punts)- that's 3. 2018 will tell the tale more, yes. Frank Beamer is a hall of fame coach and left Fuente with guys like Sam Rogers - 0 star recruit that Beamer "developed", and 3 star guys like Stroman and Tremaine that were two of Fuente's best players . To say that "player development/contributions" on the field will be automatically better under Fuente vs. late era Beamer is a stretch at this point.
Certainly a valid point.
But as stated above, the spectrum is much broader (it appears) with this staff. Early, it seems as if they are focusing much more on getting the right guy to fit a particular need, meaning that the path to contribution could be much easier.
Only time will tell.
Gallo, Stro, Edmunds and Sobczak really pulled down the average for 2014. Would have been a much better class if we had not recruited them???????
What I wouldn't give to have Sobczak right now...
No kidding. Kid played hard, tough- and could easily spell Walker some snaps without much drop-off. DT depth is scary for 2018. If Walker misses ANY time, we are in deep deep shit there.
Whatever happened with his situation ? Wasn't there words he might have Just been taking time off and eventually come back ?
No details were ever really given regarding his situation. Fuente keeps that stuff on lockdown. He is not coming back, unfortunately.
I also went ahead to compare this class with those from Miami, UNC, and UVA.
Miami had a strong class across the board, but didn't land a single linebacker, which may not be a problem until you realize their best linebacker last year is rated lower than 4 of ours over the last 2 classes.
UNC may be ranked higher than us overall, but it's very close. We are pretty even at QB and RB, they have a slight advantage at DE and clear advantages at WR and OL, and we have clear advantages at TE, DT, LB, and DB.
UVA. We have 5 position groups that are higher rated than any single recruit they have.
LOLUva. This is the single best stat I've seen in a while. Happy Friday y'all.
Wow, really shows the need to recruit depth. It's sad to see the numbers that never really saw the field.
And the QB misses (outside of Motley) from 2010 to 2015 are eye-opening - thankful for Michael Brewer!
Love the trend toward greater quality across the board. I only like extremes when they are on the high side!
Wahoos were bitching on the Sabre about the low quality of CBM's recruits this year - one noted that VT even got a 3-star long snapper - higher rated than much of their class. LOL
I'm sure we were praising the quality of those guys that didn't pan out the week after signing day too. There will always be players that wash out (for a variety of reasons).
There has to be a way to minimize it. Some of it is mathmatical, 4 classes of 25 > 85 scholarships. But this is the waste on the floor of the factory. We need improved efficiency. There has to be so much value there is we can just make incremental progress.
This was brought up on 247 about the academic talent as well. While in terms of pure football rating these guys are very solid they are also very smart kids. Quick to learn the system etc.
We are building a very deep, identifable and impressive culture in Blacksburg. I mean read any article about QP and you see the type of maturity Fuente and Co. Want
Excellent class.
Now it's time to get the in-state recruiting back on track, while maintaining the NC2VT track.
Recruiting service ratings do not take intellect and leadership skills into account. Fuente & Co seem to emphasize these traits, I.e. JJ, Walker, Farley, QP, Dax, et al. That's what Miami has been missing on for years, thus no ACC Championships despite good talent.
On a related note, do they value effort and motor and physicality? I see it mentioned in some evaluations, but am never sure how it affects the ratings compared to measurables, technique, or fluidity. do they rate them in all areas and average, or just watch the film and make an impression?
I did some more research, if we get the top 12 players from NC and top 12 from VA plus the guys we already have it would give us a class score of 284.99, which this year would be good enough for 6th.
I took a look based on who is listed as "warm" or higher on 247.
The class would have an average rating of .8862 with 0 QBs, 2 RBs, 5 WR, 1 TE, 5 OL, 3 DE, 1 DT, 2 LB, 8 DB. Granted we're not taking 8 DBs and we can't take 27 players now that there's the 25 player cap.
3 DEs would lead the class, averaging .9593, followed by 2 RBs averaging .9196.
The 1 TE would be the poorest rated group that has anybody with a rating of .8327
Let's definitely get those DEs and RBs.
That would rock.
Gotta think that an elite RB is looking at our situation and thinking he could really stand out. I mean with how we are trending it seems all our skill positions, minus RB, at the moment are getting better and deeper.
Hopefully that is what Ford is seeing. Hopefully McClease and company do well this year and Fuente can feature what the RB can do in his system.
Basically how I feel right now with the way fuente is recruiting; We aren't there yet but.....
