I felt like this warranted more than just a comment on the recruiting thread so that's the reason for the new topic. I've had some extra time at work lately and so I've been messing around on Excel. After seeing a lot of the talk about our recent recruiting classes and being unhappy with where things currently seem to stand, I was curious to see what the correlation was, if any, between first round picks in the NFL draft and their ratings coming out of high school. I pulled all of the data from 247 and the ratings are based on the composite rankings.
For the purposes of this, I only looked at players drafted in the first round from 2011-2020. This obviously won't give a comprehensive look at ratings, but first round draft picks should be the best of the best and so I felt as though that was enough for an initial look. I decided I would see what the makeup of picks was, specifically as it related to star rating and composite rating coming out of high school, college, and conference. For the purposes of this exercise I've included Notre Dame as a member of the ACC. Players coming into college without ratings have been given 1 star and a score of 0.65 (2 stars start at 0.70). For the players who went to juco, I've used their 247 scores out of high school.
This spreadsheet is a more user-friendly looking one than what I'd been using to sift through everything:
Some takeaways I have from this exercise:
1. There's a reason that kids choose SEC schools. The SEC more than doubles the amount of players taken in the first round aside from the ACC, who is still distantly behind. Seventeen year old kids want to go pro and dream of being first round picks. Kids pay attention when they see 15 SEC players taken in the first round of the NFL Draft.
2. As you can see on the spreadsheet, the average rating of a first round pick over the past ten years is 0.8939. There's a single Virginia Tech recruit (Alec Bryant) who is over that threshold. There are a few commits who are close, but not there. For comparison with some of our close competition, UVA has three players above that value and UNC has twenty. We also have a pretty low average recruit rating for both of these classes, which most are well aware of. Granted, not all of these recruits will pan out, ratings can still change, and some from the 2021 class may move around, but compared to our close competition we're not looking great at the moment.
3. The 2020 draft had the highest average rating for players taken in the first round. Time will tell whether that was an outlier or if this is the new normal. It'll be interesting to see if this trend holds. It could have something to do with a lack in pro days at schools because of COVID, and teams having to take players that they had already seen perform well consistently over the past few years. It could also mean that less players are slipping through the cracks in high school recruiting as a whole. If that's the case, that trend might continue in the coming years.
4. Almost as many three star players have been taken in the first round over this time period as four star players. At first glance that might seem reassuring, but 37% of recruits are three stars and only 6% are four stars (per 247). That being said, there is a 1-184 chance of a three star player being drafted in the first round, whereas there is a 1-21 chance for a four star recruit (also per 247). This goes to show that recruiting rankings do mean something.
5. When you compare average rating and number of players drafted for each conference, there really isn't much of a trend for the ACC and SEC, but there are trends for the other three conferences (positive for Big 10 and 12, negative for Pac 12). We'll see if these trends continue.
Obviously this doesn't paint the whole picture, but I figured it was a good place to start. We want those four and five star guys to come play in Blacksburg, and as long as they're choosing our opposition over us, we're getting weaker and they're getting stronger.
Feel free to chime in with any critiques or observations of your own. Would be interested to have more of a conversation.
Comments
The 247 article referenced can be found here.
I wonder if a couple other categories could be added. Such as longevity of NFL career. Some of these guys may be drafted, but that doesn't mean it ends up in a great career. We have seen plenty of first rounders fail to make it long term.
Another would be being picked up later.
Right now, I'm hearing a lot of talk about Logan Thomas doing well at Washington and Cam Phillips got picked up by the Panthers. So those are kids that went undrafted but maybe making a career out of it.
Logan Thomas was drafted, just, you know, for a different position.
Yeah, but he is also still somehow hanging around. So I was looking at those that were undrafted, but also those that were drafted and career length.
He was drafted in 2014 and in 2019 was making around $800k. Not to shabby.
Dude is also rumored to be TE1 for the Washington Football Team this year based on how he's camping and what not.
That wasn't really the point of the exercise but things like that could certainly be analyzed. My goal with this was just based on high school and college performance, which is what we should be concerned about as Hokie fans. I'm less interested in NFL career stats. I'd be interested to potentially include other rounds of the draft if I went back to do this again.
Appreciate running the first exercise, was just thinking ahead. Kids in HS may have NFL dreams, but just getting drafted shouldn't really be their goal.
Thanks for pulling this together.
No problem! And yes I agree, that's the beginning of their NFL dream. For this that was all I was concerned about. It would be interesting to analyze the same group of players later on once they've retired.
I think trying to tie data from HS rankings to NFL career longevity introduces a lot of variables that don't really have anything to do with where they were rated in HS. Too many injury possibilities, and you would have to account for players that may be taking their longterm health into account. It becomes increasingly uncorrelated to me when you realize players make choices like Jason Worilds to leave the NFL in his prime for his long term health, that's just one example, but there are a lot of players who make choices like this. He likely could have double his career length. If every player's goal across the board was to play the longest possible NFL career, then it would be more related, much like every college player is tied to a finite 3-5 year path with a uniform goal of making it to the NFL. That's much easier to measure. In regards to the "success" of someone's NFL career it becomes much more difficult to find a uniform goal.
Maybe the variable would be cut off to like 3 years. So if you are a one and done, then it's a fail, but if you end up 3+ years, then that is somewhat of a success.
I think if you are smart, you could definitely leverage a 3+ year career into setting up your life.
Would be interesting though to see how this pans out.
Right, I would definitely like to see those kind of numbers, using 3 years or 2nd contract as the measuring point. However, I would still view it as a supplemental piece of information whereas the original work conducted on here is probably the most relevant in terms of VT and what they can pitch to recruits. I think what they do in the NFL becomes more about that individual player, and getting them to the NFL has a higher correlation to do with what the college did for them. Not that the college couldn't have prepared them well for a long NFL career, but that after they make it there it has a lot to do with their own ambition, longterm plans, and luck with injuries.
Yeah, there was a time where a lot of VT players didn't last long in the league, at least thats how i remembered it. And it was mainly due to injuries. I always felt like Beamer was able to find the diamonds in the rough, and get the timing right for these kids to peak while they were playing their college ball.
I think if we are keeping it based on who gets to the NFL, then we should also look at the free agents as well. Not sure if you go so deep as to folks who make it after grinding a year at the XFL or CFL or not.
this work is exceptional and thank you so much for doing it.
I'd love to see any additional rounds you manage to get to.
Thanks and no problem! I'll make sure to post any future findings if I continue with this.
....Brad come on we both know you don't do 40 hours of work every week at work.....
I'm a very very busy man.
The macro analysis is that the SEC signs the best high school players. They have the highest paid coaches to develop those top rated players, thus they get drafted into the NFL. It all makes sense if you think about it. Bama's LB's are prototypical size coming out of HS- they aren't Teddy Bruschi or Zach Thomas size.. they are 6'04, 260... and Saban is coaching them- no wonder they have a ton of NFL picks.
Amazed it took this long
This is great.
Apologies if it is here but I am not seeing it, but I would be interested to see how the top schools in each conference skew the results (Bama, Clemson/ND, Ohio St, Washington/Oregon, Oklahoma/Texas) and how the talent is distributed amongst the "also-rans".
That was something that I realized might be worthwhile to add as I was finishing everything up. I might try to do something like that whenever I have a chance. That would be an interesting thing to see. Appreciate the suggestion!
This is where the SEC even further separates itself.
You take Clemson out of the ACC and the skew is more noticeable.
Bama didn't even have the most players drafted last year in their own conference... and they had nine players drafted and all in the first 87 picks...
The SEC had 15 of the 32 first round picks last year. Relevant to this post you don't have to look further than the recruiting rankings to see why.
I've run these numbers a few times, and made lots of reddit tables to illustrate it, but the SEC averages ~12 of the top 25 recruiting classes each year. That means the other 4 P5 conferences + Notre Dame account for the remaining 13 classes each year.
1. This the exactly the type of great work that deserves its own thread. I encourage others to follow Brad's lead.
2. Happy to drink and post this again.
3.
This is a really good way to frame the impact of an average 4-star player, they're an NFL talent. More NFL talent on the Hokies' roster is a good thing.
Ha, check out the big Brian on Brad.
Totally missed that when I posted.
Unrelated to the topic (this is probably just noise) - there was a chem professor at VT when I went there named Brian Tissue. I always did a double take when I walked past his door. Anybody else know of him?
SUPER nice guy. And yes, the "brain tissue" joke was circulated to the point that nobody used it after first semester of grad school
source: hokie chem phd
So my question is - how much of the SEC's success is a chicken or the egg scenario? Is the SEC really developing talent, or at an average of .5 stars higher than everybody else, just getting better recruits who were more likely to get drafted anyway? Looking at the results, of the ACC, Big 10, and Pac-12, a recruit should choose the ACC because for similar recruit rankings, they're getting 20 more draft picks, then they should choose the Big 10 because the PAC 12 has a slightly higher recruit ranking but less picks.
First off I think it's both development and talent acquisition for the SEC but in different ratios for different schools. Bama for instance stacks talent, but also has the best ratio of turning 5*'s into 1st rounders, and it's more than double the national average.
There's some added layers as well. The SEC has teams that stack talent for competition and ultimately quality players get passed up and they transfer elsewhere and some still get drafted. Those guys then count towards other conferences or schools draft numbers. So it may look like another conference is being more efficient than another with greater volume of top prospects, but it's unlikely that would hold steady as you increase volume.
One would need to look at the ratio of 3 and 4 star players drafted overall and by school to see if SEC schools for into the overall model or are exceptions to the model. Basically if Bama lands 45 4-star players over 4 years and 20 of them get drafted, that would exceed the national ratio the author found by more than a couple standard deviations (I assume) meaning they are better at putting players in the pros.
Interesting data, thanks for posting. Further confirms the value of recruiting.
Now to play devil's advocate...
This could be a classic case of confusing correlation and causation. Does the SEC send so many players to the NFL because (1) they coach players better, or (2) because get better players, OR (3) does the NFL have a pro-SEC bias, and draft these kids because they believe they are better?
My guess is it's about 80% due to #2 and 20% due to #1. It would be interesting (as one poster said above) to factor in NFL longevity/success and see how SEC players fair. If the SEC players tend to have shorter careers (when adjusted for volume) it could suggest some bias.
I'd probably argue the first two, along with the success of SEC teams on the national stage. Yeah that would be an interesting correlation to check out for sure! But yeah, I think all of the things are connected. The SEC teams get players drafted because they've got good coaches and get better players. It seems to be something that just reinforces itself. Good players go there and then those players get drafted, which just leads to good players going there and later getting drafted.
which is why it's an exponential climb from a top-30 program to a perennial top-5 national championship contender.
the rich get richer, and since it's a zero-sum game, it comes at the expense of preventing the have-nots from breaking into the haves outside of a confluence of circumstances -- and even then it often requires another confluence of different circumstances to be sustainable.
It has to be the first two. And to varying degrees depending on the team and coaches at the time. A lot of good to great NFL players came out of South Carolina's 09-13 run, for example. They are still putting guys in the league but haven't been recruiting at that level they were in the lead up to that run. Other teams have had similar runs, and opposite runs where they do the opposite and spoil/waste talent, perhaps while Mullen was developing lesser talent into great players at Miss State. Bama on the other hand, statistically, develops elite talent into first rounders at a higher level than anyone else in the country. But overall there is no doubt that the quantity of talent is going to help the numbers more than anything else.
There's too much money and importance at stake for it to be three, though there may be anecdotal examples where a GM has a "gut feeling" about a guy they watched get a lot of coverage in the SEC.
I disagree about the potential career length correlations. As I stated in another comment about a similar question, there are simply too many variables such as the individual's professional ambition, how much they are worried about long term health risks, and the random nature of severe injuries to draw useful info from NFL career length.
Outside of a few coaches, I'd take #3 over #1. It's not SEC bias as much as the SEC has a lot of players that fit the size "requirement" of the NFL. They physically look the NFL players instead of playing like NFL players (the second being actually what is important if any NFL teams are reading).
But even then there has been a lot of players taken out of the SEC that had no business being in the first round. Its anecdotal evidence, but if half the first round busts, and hald the first round is SEC then maybe the NFL is looking in the wrong place. And yes its always had lots of busts, but the NFL just looks in the wrong place a lot and really don't know what they are doing. The SEC is just providing the NFL with the players it thinks it wants.
Did you notice any correlations between positions and ratings? Are a lot of the three stars getting drafted from positions where it is harder to project (offensive line) or players who play a different position than high school (3* WR/QB moves to D where hands and size matter less)? Is it more important to pay attention to stars at some positions that others? Are players from the ACC more likely to turn pro if they play LG than DE because more 3* players get drafted at that position?
I left out the positions but that would probably be a good thing to look at. I might go back into Excel and add the positions for all of these guys to see how things shake out. Thanks for the idea!