I'm in awe of what the kid has done in the past month, he's going to be a stud CB for the next 2.5 years for us and then be a high-level NFL draft pick.
Here's his rivals page. It looks like the best program he was offered from (besides VT) was UNC. For a kid who so driven academically, it doesn't sound like UNC was the best choice for him (sounds weird to say b/c UNC is a great public university) and he essentially dropped into our laps.
Why wasn't he recruited more heavily? Why is he only rated as a 3-star? Why do legions of dumbfucks (myself included) care about the star system when it's proven time and time again that 4-5 stars don't always mean NFL-level players and 2-stars don't always mean #LOLUVA-level players?
I'm confused. I'm sure French and the other experts could explain this to me.
Comments
why was luther maddy a 2 star?
I'll take this one...
Maddy was a two star because he was iddy-biddy in high school. Wiles picked him up because his boy at Atlantic in Del Ray said to come get him and Wesley Estme, cause they were going to be good. We now know Wesley as Dadi Nicholas- The Wreaker of Much Havoc. Wesley was a no star, I think...he had only played football for about a week before he was recruited.
If there is ANYTHING to be said about this staff, it is their ability to hit on the low star guys. I wouldn't be surprised if it were discovered that more of the program washouts were the multi-star guys than not.
+1 for the Wesley Estime pull. Do you know the other recent Hokie player to change his name between recruitment and playing for us??
Jason Adjepong, now known as Pittsburgh Steelers LB Jason Worilds
+1000 turkey legs and internet dollars. Don't spend them all in one place!
He may prefer bitcoins, though w/ Silk Roads shutting down maybe not.....
Jason Worilds used to be Jason Adjepong. I think he changed it while at Tech though.
Edit: Missed it by a minute. +1 VB06Hokie
JGW was just JG when we recruited him. He added the Winslow before enrolling.
From what I remember Big Lu was evaluated by our staff, and they obviously saw the potential. Then apparently he trained his ass off and really rose to a whole new level just prior to arriving at tech. His high school coach told the tech coaches something along the lines of they will be very surprised when he arrives on campus. As it turned out he was very much right.
I remember seeing Dadi's high school tape and telling my brother, " this kid is a beast, we have to get him!"
I now have a different answer when friends and family ask me that inevitable question "did his parents really name him Dadi?". (Insert NBC The More You Know... gif here). Thank you sir!
You see countless NFL players that went to non BCS schools/football subdivision that slipped through the cracks during the college recruiting cycle. And some guys just develop late.
Just like outside of sports, you cant always see someones true potential between the ages of 16 and 18.
Torrain Gray + 3 star DB = Another great VT CB
People outside of Blacksburg really suck at evaluating talent. That's why he's a 3-star.
"Say what?!"
It just goes to show the size of the gap between coaches and the guys they pay to rate these guys. It's pretty big. I think Virginia Tech has one of the best staffs for finding these guys and recruiting them. We never get a flashy class (by star-standards), but you have to remember who makes the class flashy at first. Then just remember who molds the players into what we see on the field on Saturdays. That is when you realize how meaningless those little stars are.
For a little perspective, Johnny Manziel and Marcus Mariota were both three-stars.
I may never stop laughing internally at Mack Brown for insisting that Manziel and RGIII would play safety for Texas. Sucks to suck.
"Name a quarterback, any quarterback."
/names Quarterback
"Yes, Mack Brown offered (quarterback) as a safety."
-Two people, probably.
The same reason why a player goes from 3 to 4 star when Alabama, Texas, Florida, or Ohio State offer them a scholarship or visit.
It's not how many stars you have, it's how you use them. Someone should tell Mike London.
On second thought, don't.
He is a smart kid who has terrific athleticism. If you want him in drills, he looks a bit awkward. Most recruiting analysts only go to camps, where the kids are in non-pad drills pretty much the whole time. Those analysts go to the camps because they can see large numbers of recruits at the same time. Based on those camps, most of the recruits receive their scoring.
Once the season starts, those recruiting folks only have the bandwidth to go watch the guys who scored at elite levels over the summer, and even then they focus on match ups where they can see multiple high level guys. Great performances in marquee match ups (especially head to head and on TV) have more impact on guys rising and falling.
Facyson perhaps didn't jump out as a rising senior during camps, but the Hokies jumped because of his anticipation, burst, and football intelligence, all three of which are critical for playing the field corner position. In Foster's offense, the field corner plays much more zone and robber coverage, so you don't have to be an elite man coverage player to be successful. Those camps focus almost exclusively on man coverage when top DB's are matched up with top WR's.
I see what you did there...
Typo, but I like the ring this has
Can't be a typo. French doesn't make mistakes.
I haven't laughed this hard since I saw Paul Johnson go for it on 4th and 2 in his own half of the field.
You're getting some run out of that pic...and it's all gold Jerry, gold!
That's less fun than the conspiracy theory of recruiting experts hating kids who commit to VT and not SEC schools.
Sam e reasons Boykin and Coale were two stars. Our coaches have a knack most of the time for seeing true potential in players who a not corrupted by the star system.
I look at it this way. When you play battle mode in Mario Kart, one of you may have 1 balloon while the other has 3 balloons. Just because you have 1 balloon doesn't mean you can't beat the one with 3 balloons.
OK that was a really bad comparison, but damnit I love Mario Kart and Hokie football.
Turkey leg for combining two of the greatest things of all time
Sir (apologies if ma'am), this might have actually been the most illustrative comment I have read all night. Thank you for this.
He also committed in July before his senior year and was firm with it.
That's what she said
He's leading the nation in ints as a freshman. Spell his name right. He deserves it.
Fine. But in my defense, that last name is Dwyane Wade-level tricky.
Haha you're certainly right. I struggled with the pronunciation when we recruited him.
i was still calling him fuh-sy-son until a few weeks ago
The star system is totally biased towards the major programs (tOSU, ND, BAMA, etc) and they only get really get noticed if they get offered by those programs. Whatever I trust the talent evaluators in our staff. They seems to get guys who are stellar on and off the field
A couple of thoughts on this:
1. "3-Star" isn't a bad rating. There are a lot more 3-stars than 4 and 5. Roughly, there are like 25 5star recruits, 100 4 star recruits and 1,000+ 3 star recruits. If you think of 100 schools recruiting 25 kids, that means there are lots of opportunities for the 3 star kids to play meaningful roles. Why does it always seem that 3 stars perform better than 4 stars? Math. If 30% of 4stars fail, that's only 70 successes. If 50% of 3stars fail, that's 500 successes. (roughly, the distribution of 3, 4 and 5 stars changes every year and by rivals/247/espn, etc. These are rough numbers)
2. Basically, kids are given stars based on offers. Offers represent a schools ability to identify talent. The biggest budget schools have more money to pay better evaluators, so their offers account for more. Basically, you can identify a list of about 20 schools which are considered "big boy offers" (BBO's.) A kind needs roughly 3 BBO's to go to 4 star status. 5 stars have roughly all the relevant BBO's. Facyson didn't have enough BBO's to merit 4 star status. Why? Maybe he didn't camp a lot. Maybe him being smart scared off some of the dummy schools (probably not, Myron Rolle went to FSU which is an awful school).
3. Facyson has odd skills. He's got a recovery time that is off the charts, but he's not a traditional turn/run/hips corner like Kendall. He's got ridiculous ball skills, which is a skill that may not show up much in evaluations. He's got intelligence probably thrice that of most cornerbacks, which has to be an advantage but won't show up on film or in a 30 minute camp showcase.
Just be happy we got him, that's a credit to our evaluators over everyone elses. You make your hay on 3 star recruits. everyone wants the 5 stars, the 4 stars are verified, 2 stars are lottery tickets. VT doesn't even recruit 1 star kids anymore.
VT kind of still recruits one stars, and very successfully too, they are the preferred walk-ons. And Sam Rogers is their current king, after taking over the position from Jack Tyler, who is too busy tackling everybody on the planet to be in charge anymore.
right, "recruit" wth a chance to earn a scholarship. And they are the lottery ticket of lottery tickets. We may take 5 2* recruits over a 5 year period with the hope that 2 of them "produce" (not start, not All-ACC). We take 10+ recruited walk ons a year and 3 out of 10 are still with the team 12 months later.
but damn its fun to see Jack Tyler, Sam Rogers, Cody Grimm make it.
and Jack Tyler took over for Cody Grimm.
I feel like a phrase from Whose Line would be appropriate here:
"High school recruiting... where everything is biased and the stars don't matter!"
What was Roc Carmichael ranked out of hs?
Only a 2* but he was a July commit back in 2005. Back then, if you didn't make it to September, you didn't accumulate any offers. Most offers went out in the camps in the summer. Now, the offers go out in March/April.
Rock only had VT as a verified offer but interest from a number of schools like Georgia, UVA, UMD.
2005 recruiting analysis pales in comparison to 2012 coverage. But 2005 was way better than 2000 which was a NASA like improvement over 1995. Every year, recruiting coverage is getting better. That said, there are blind spots in the system. In particular, the Kalvin Cline example of a kid who doesn't even play HS football until he's a senior really goes against the system. Senior offers are something that teams should continue to exploit because it captures more later-bloomers. Kam Chancellor is a classic example.
Nice thread. Great discussion.
vtpoop might say this thread was...the shit
I'd like to note that Facyson just missed a 4* ranking from 247. They rated him at 89 and their 4*s start at 90.
The ACC is now comparing Facyson to Deon Sanders as a two way playing threat, and he hasn't even had a snap on Offense yet.
http://www.theacc.com/#!/video-detail/AwbjZlZjomfTSe87vh-2B78B378_paZU