The Quest of Florida’s Big 3 for a Top-10 Recruiting Class: Part 2

Will UF, FSU, or Miami sign a top-10 recruiting class this year? Honestly, after this weekend, most Nole and Cane fans are probably more concerned with whether their teams will win another game this year.

But hey, in the hands of the right coach, good recruiting actually does for a football program what Facebook moms think Essential Oils do for their kids. In light of such miraculous healing power, I’d say this is the perfect time to find the answer to this burning question. So, welcome to part 2!

In part one of this series, we identified a Composite recruiting class score of 266 points as a likely minimum for the #10 ranking, but also identified several programs which could crowd the race and drive that threshold higher.

We then reviewed where things stand at FSU and Miami, presenting a brief, objective look at their path to making the cut. I then left you (mostly UF fans) with a fantastically-executed cliff hanger, as I cut to commercial without breaking down the Gators’ chances of breaking into the top-10 for the first time since 2014. I know that was shady, but I’m about to make up for it.

In the UF-focused part 2 below, we’ll review Coach Mullen’s current class ranking and his target prospects, then discuss key factors to watch as the late-cycle recruiting drama unfolds. I’ll then conclude with several mock-class scenarios (because who doesn’t like a good mock class, amirite?). By the time we’re done, you should have a pretty good idea of where UF’s class stands and about their chances to secure the magical unicorn that is a top-10 class.

Before we get started however, I have more disclaimers for your enjoyment!

Disclaimer 4 – This article will feature comparisons between one player vs another at the same position. These are based on player ratings for the purposes of understanding how they will impact the class score and nothing more. While higher-rated players pan out more often than those rated lower, the lower-rated players could prove to be the better option in the long term.

Disclaimer 5 – “Processing” is a common term that describes when a coaching staff parts way with a committed prospect in favor of chasing a better option. As an example, let’s say Johnny 3-star has been committed to UF for a while, but the staff tells him to pursue other options, then they go after a higher-rated guy that they like better. This happens all the time and it could significantly impact any of the Big 3’s 2019 classes, but I’m not entertaining any of those scenarios here.

Ok, let’s get to it…

UF is currently ranked 24^th (11^th in the SEC) with a class score of 215.77 and 15 commits

UF Commits

UF Targets

Although UF got off to an agonizingly slow start for the c/o 2019 recruiting cycle, they probably have the best potential of any Big 3 program for a late cycle surge in the rankings. This is due to their large number of remaining scholarships to offer (possibly up to 10 more spots), a relatively low ranking at present, and a targets board that could fill most remaining spots with blue-chip (4 star or better) prospects.

Some of those on UF’s 247 Sports Targets List who are thought to favor UF at this time include:

• 4-star TE Keon Zipperer
• 4-star OLB Lloyd Summerall
• 4-star CB Chris Steele
• 4-star CB Kair Elam (former Gator DB Matt Elam’s nephew)
• 4-star RB Nay’Quan Wright

Adding only those five prospects would elevate UF’s score to 256.95 and leave them with room for as many as five more to fill out the class. They would then need only 10 additional points to reach the aforementioned 266-point threshold (but again, more may be required). Some of the other blue-chip targets who could help them get there include:

• 5-star RB Trey Sanders is thought to be an Alabama lean, but his brother Umstead is now playing LB at UF.
• 4-star WR Elijah Higgins has UF in his top 3, but most view Stanford or Texas as the likely leader
• 4-star DE Khris Bogle has been viewed as a Miami/Tennessee/Alabama battle but UF is in the picture
• 4-star DL Jaren Handy is committed to Auburn but continues to be a subject of message board chatter for Gator fans
• 4-star DL Quashon Fuller is committed to FSU but acting like a guy who could flip
• 4-star DL Derick Hunter is committed to FSU but acting like a guy who could flip… again.
• 4-star DL Nathan Pickering is committed to Mississippi State but has a long relationship with Dan Mullen.
• 4-star LB J.D. Bertrand was once committed to Georgia, but is now open.
• 4-star OL Michael Tarquin is committed to Miami but continues to visit Gainesville.
• 4-star OL Deyavie Hammond attends Lakeland High school with Summerall & Zipperer.

Key Factors

This isn’t a complete list of UF’s targets of course, but it shows they’re still chasing a large group of quality prospects from which they hope to fill out the class. And while it’s impossible to predict exactly how things will unfold, there are three keys you should keep an eye on that will be huge factors:

The Key Game: FSU – If I made a complete list of the things UF needed to accomplish to land a top-10 class at this point, beating FSU would probably be right behind “Not aligning with ISIS”. Ok, it would be a distant second, but it’s still really, really important.

To explain why, I could simply remind you that the winner of this game has enjoyed recruiting superiority over the loser in each of the last 13 class cycles…

The winner of the UF vs FSU game has signed a higher ranked recruiting class than the loser for the past 13 years. The avg rank of the winner’s class during the period is 3.8 nationally. #Gators #Noles pic.twitter.com/dDkxYW69RL

— Bill Sikes (@realbsikes) May 21, 2018

…but this runs deeper than a single, long-running statistical correlation. In part, it’s actually about the life cycle of a coach’s recruiting pitch as it relates to his on-field results. The basic timeline of which goes like this:

1^st (aka transition) class – The new coach takes over with a few short months left till signing day and scrambles to piece together a group of kids who don’t know him all that well. This class is built before recruits see any on-field product, so the new coach sells nothing but the glow of a new relationship and the vision he has for the program.

2^nd (aka bump) class – The new coach recruits before, during, and after his first season. He continues to sell vision and build relationships, blaming any struggles on the coach he replaced. Historically, this results in a higher ranked class than in the first year (hence, the name), with some reaching elite status. Important to our discussion is that winning big on the field isn’t a historical prerequisite to landing a big-time class (you can read more about that here).

3^rd class (and beyond) – Each class after the bump year depends increasingly upon on-field results, since each on-field season features more of the new coach’s players and system implantation. In other words, the farther you get away from the old regime, the more your body of work matters. At some point, after all, you have to back up the sales pitch with results.

With this timeline in mind, let’s now look at the current Sunshine State of affairs that serves as the contextual backdrop for the upcoming UF vs. FSU matchup.

Down in the land of oversized roaches, aka Coral Gables, Mark Richt is riding a 4-game losing streak and just tallied his 12th loss over his first 3 seasons at “Da U”. The seat may not be warm, but Miami fans aren’t happy.

Perhaps some have caught on to the fact that since Steve Spurrier conquered the ACC in his 3rd year at Duke in 1989, only 3 coaches have won that conference for the 1st time after their 3rd year at a school (excluding Bowden & Beamer, who won it in their 1st season as ACC members).

To be fair, Richt is also one of only 3 Power-5 coaches hired since 2005 to land a top-10 class in his 3rd recruiting cycle, after missing out on the mark during classes 1 and 2. So perhaps he should be given a little slack and patience for another year. But do class of 2019 recruits understand that? I suspect not. I suspect they see results that don’t match the sales pitch and that’s why Miami appears to be losing traction in recruiting.

Speaking of losing traction, Willie Taggart is really testing the limits of the whole “blame it on the last guy” thing that has facilitated so many great bump year recruiting classes in recent times. Sure, you can tell recruits that Jimbo left the cupboard bare, that the culture is broken, or whatever you want, but that doesn’t erase the visual impact of being blown out on a weekly basis.

Taggart isn’t just losing most of the time, he’s losing by 24 points per game! If you remove their 1-point loss to Miami from the equation, the average margin of defeat increases to over four touchdowns. With two home games against ranked opponents remaining to close out FSU’s season, the wheels could truly come off in Tallahassee, both on the field and in recruiting. And while the data says you can recruit well even if you don’t win in year one, I suspect you do have to actually look like a college football team.

So, as Dan Mullen’s much-improved 2018 Gators roll into their matchup vs. FSU, they do so at the precise moment that both of the in-state recruiting rivals are busy derailing their recruiting momentum. This provides a tremendous opportunity, but to capitalize Mullen must drive the stake into FSU’s figurative heart at Doak Campbell. Here’s why:

In defeating FSU, Mullen:

• Puts an exclamation on the regular season, rolls into bowl season with tons of momentum, and enjoys an air of positivity surrounding the program.
• Breaks FSU’s 5-game winning streak over UF and sells recruits on the idea that he’s the new Alpha in the home state.
• Uses FSU’s own recruiting efforts against them, gaining a key win in front of the in-state recruits that the Noles invite to the game.
• Positions UF for a quality bowl game & possible 10-win season, points back to last year’s 4-win debacle, and tells recruits to “imagine what I can do with you here”.
• Emerges as the clear riser among the Big-3 programs, while FSU would likely be absorbing their 8th loss and Miami ends up at no better than 7-5.
• Executes FSU with a finishing move as they close out their worst season since 1976, when they went 5-6 in Bowden’s first year (Hey, maybe Willie is the next Bobby B!)

In a nutshell, beating FSU bathes UF’s program in all kinds of positive mojo, embarrasses the Noles at home in front of recruits, and sets up a VERY pro-Gator narrative for the entire offseason. However,

In losing to FSU, Mullen:

• Temporarily rescues FSU, allowing Taggart to use the game as evidence that they finally got things turned around.
• Extends FSU’s streak over UF to 6 games and let’s Willie T tell recruits that “Even at our worst, UF can’t beat us. Why go there instead of here?”
• Provides FSU with a season-ending recruiting showcase game, losing to a fierce recruiting rival in front of prospects less than a month before the early signing period.
• Enters bowl season with little buzz surrounding the program, allowing both Taggart and Richt time to regroup (impacting both the 2019 and 2020 classes).

I’m sure I speak for Gator fans everywhere when I say no friggin’ thank you. This game may not have the luster of those in the mid-1990’s, but it carries significant recruiting implications for each of the big-3 programs.

And while veteran recruiting enthusiasts will be quick to rightly point out that no game makes or breaks a class, it could be the difference for a couple of prospects. Within the context of this article and the hotly-contested race for the top-10, that makes it a huge potential factor.

The Key Metric: Player rankings of the final additions – Once the FSU game is history and class spots begin to fill, the overall prospect rankings of those new commits will become a key factor in determining how far the class rises. That may seem painfully obvious, but there’s more to it than most realize at the moment.

Consider for example, the difference between adding 4-star DL Derick Hunter and 4-star DL Nathan Pickering. Both are big-bodied blue-chip prospects at a position of need for the Gators and the addition of either would be celebrated by fans. But the difference in the way the two prospects would impact the overall class score is significant.

In the scenario mentioned earlier, where UF adds Zipperer, Summerall, Wright, Elam, and Steele, the further addition of Hunter (#281 overall prospect) only raises the class score from 256.05 to 258.61 (a difference of 2.56 points). By instead adding Pickering (#59 overall prospect) on the other hand, UF’s class score would rise from 256.05 to 264.22 (a difference of 8.17 points).

As it pertains to the pursuit of a top-10 class, this disparity illustrates the importance of landing not only blue-chip prospects, but those who are at a minimum, on the higher end of the 4-star band.

But, if we really want to see the class score make a big move, it sure would be nice to see Mullen land a 5-star prospect for the first time since 2015. These true elites, which have made AP All-SEC teams 63% of the time at UF (vs 4% of UF’s 3-star signees), provide a huge point boost to class score totals.

Consider for example, that adding 4-star RB Nay’Quan Wright to the class today would raise the score from 215.77 to 222.42 (an increase of 6.65 points). Adding 5-star Trey Sanders on the other hand, would elevate the score all the way up to 231.21 (a difference of 15.44 points, triple the value!). Landing at least one 5-star would prevent 2019 from becoming UF’s first ever roster without one and go a long way toward securing a top-10 finish.

The Key Positions: CB & DL – While 5-star RB Trey Sanders may be UF’s best chance for single-player impact on the class score, I believe the CB & DL classes will go a long way in defining the class. That’s because UF still has multiple scholarships to offer at both positions, because they are chasing multiple highly-rated prospects at both positions, and because filling both positions with those prospects is no certainty.

At CB, UF currently looks to be in very good shape for both in-state prospect Kair Elam (Matt Elam’s nephew) & California prospect Chris Steele, who appears to be leaning the Gators’ way at present. Both are 4-star, national top-100 prospects who could wind up as UF’s next torch-bearers of the DBU legacy. They could also end up as the two highest-rated players in UF’s 2019 class and foundational to UF’s defensive rebuild.

But despite current optimism, landing the two shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion. UGA is lingering in the picture for Elam, leading to 3 recent 247 sports crystal ball projections in favor of the bulldogs. Steele is a slightly different situation, recently decommitting from USC and doing little to dispel the prevailing though that the Gators are surging in his recruitment. But he’s still from Bellflower California, a mere 2396-mile drive to the Swamp. Regardless of what he says now, don’t count on this one until he makes his first interception vs Tennessee.

Before everyone accuses me of being negative though, I think UF probably lands at least one of the two, with at least a 50/50 shot of signing both. Elam may be playing the game before ultimately following in Matt’s footsteps to UF, while Steele seems to really love UF. But if the Gators should somehow miss out on one or both, their path to the top-10 is going to take a big hit. That’s because barring a late surprise, they probably won’t be able to replace either with a prospect of similar caliber.

The DL situation is a little different in that the board is much deeper, but the odds of landing multiple big-time prospects seems a little steeper. While we’ve already mentioned Handy, Pickering, and Bogle (all top-100 prospects) as possibilities to join UF’s class, each would be considered surprises, if not major upset victories for Dan Mullen at this point.

So, while I won’t write off his chances to land one or more of them, it seems he has a better shot with guys like FSU 4-stars Quashon Fuller (#205 overall) and Derick Hunter (#311 overall). Adding any of them would be great for the class, but as I mentioned in the previous section, there’s a big difference in score impact between adding the higher and lower-end 4-stars.

Even that is optimistic though, since all of the aforementioned DL recruits except for Bogle are committed elsewhere. It’s entirely possible that UF ends up with a sleeper prospect like Brayden Monday at the position, which would significantly stunt the final class score. With 5 spots presumably penciled in already (Wright, Summerall, Zipperer, Elam, Steele) and the OL in likely position to add lower-end 4-stars at best, this further accentuates the importance of cashing in on the DL.

With only a handful of remaining spots, each one must provide a significant class score boost in order to make the top-10.

Scenarios

Ok, so now you know about a lot of the guys UF is pursuing and you know some of the key factors that will impact where the class will end up. Now, let’s dive into some mock class scenarios to see how the dominos might fall:

Scenario #1: The Terminator Gun Shop class – Let’s start this thing off with a finish that assumes UF takes recruits like Arnold took guns in this scene:

1) RB – Trey Sanders – 5-star

2) WR – Jeremiah Payton – 4-star

3) TE – Keon Zipperer – 4-star

4) OL – Deyavie Hammond – 4-star

5) DL – Nathan Pickering – 4-star

6) DE – Khris Bogle – 4-star

7) OLB – Lloyd Summerall – 4-star

8) CB – Kair Elam – 4-star

9) CB – Chris Steele – 4-star

10) S – Jordan Battle – 4-star

Class score – 291.47 – This class would move the Gators all the way up to #1 currently, would’ve finished #5 last year, and averaged a ranking of 4th over the past 5 years. It represents UF going 10/10 with blue-chips to fill the class, flipping 3 prospects from their current commitments (Payton from Miami, Pickering from Miss St, and Battle from Ohio State), beating Alabama for Sanders, and winning virtually every recruiting battle down the stretch. It’s also me homering out to an extreme degree, because this is VERY unlikely.

Scenario #2: The floor – Now let’s reenter earth’s atmosphere and establish a mildly pessimistic floor for the class. This scenario is probably about the worst UF fans should reasonably expect, barring any academic casualties who end up not signing:

• RB – Nay’Quan Wright – 4-star
• WR – T.J. Jones – 3-star
• TE – Keon Zipperer – 4-star
• OL – Deyavie Hammond – 4-star
• OL – Kamaar Bell – 3-star
• DL – Derick Hunter – 4-star
• DE – Brayden Monday – (unranked, likely will end up a 3-star)
• OLB – Lloyd Summerall – 4-star
• CB – Chris Steele – 4-star

Class Score – 258.07 – This mock finish assumes Sanders to Bama, only 1 flip (Hunter from FSU), Elam to Georgia, and a finish of only 9 prospects. Sometimes it’s hard to find that last guy or two, so not filling up is a possibility to consider. The class would’ve ranked 16th in 2018, but on average, would’ve finished 12th over the past 5 years. This goes to show exactly how hard it is to fall out of the top-15. When people claim “FSU/UF/Miami” wont even finish top-20” they usually don’t understand that doing so usually takes a class score of 235 or less. It’s really hard to recruit that badly at the Big-3.

Scenario #3: UF’s most-likely path to the top-10 – This third scenario is fairly optimistic but avoids major reaches as I give you what I think is UF’s best shot to earn a #10 ranking.

• RB – Nay’Quan Wright – 4-star
• TE – Keon Zipperer – 4-star
• OL – Michael Tarquin – 4-star
• OL – Deyavie Hammond – 4-star
• DE – Khris Bogle – 4-star
• DT – Quashon Fuller – 4-star
• OLB – Lloyd Summerall – 4-star
• CB – Chris Steele – 4-star
• CB – Kair Elam – 4-star
• S – Aaron Beasley – 3-star

Class Score – 272.28 – This class would’ve ranked 10th last year and an average of 9th over the past 5 recruiting cycles. With 7 teams already at or above the previously established 266-point threshold, it appears this could be one of those years when a few extra points are needed to make the top-10. And while there are teams out there lurking which could force a new record high for the mark (Tennessee, UF, etc.), I’ll roll with the historical trend and predict this score to make the cut for now. No #10 class has ever eclipsed 274 points, so I believe this class would provide UF with a great shot at that position in the rankings. It includes 2 flips (Tarquin from Miami, Fuller from FSU), but both are very reasonable outcomes at this point. Bogle seems like the biggest reach on the list at the moment, but the in-state power vacuum could deliver him to UF… if they can hold off Tennessee and Alabama.

Conclusion

With the mock finishes in writing, I guess it’s time for me to go on record and provide my best answer to the question that prompted this article. Will UF, FSU, or Miami land a top-10 class? As of now, I’ll put UF’s odds at 49%, with both FSU and Miami slightly lower at 35%.

I seriously doubt any of the three surpass any of the top 8 teams, while at least one of Ohio State (if Urban stays), Auburn, or Tennessee could make major moves. If one does and Michigan adds another quality prospect or two, it could be a tall order for any of the Big-3 to achieve the mark.

But again, recruiting is extremely fluid. All it takes is for FSU to beat UF then land Thibodeaux, then they’ll be a serious threat. UF could pull the upset with Trey Sanders, then ride the momentum to a spot even slightly higher than 10. Miami, likewise, could land Haselwood, win the next two games, then make a late charge.

Like I told you from the start, I didn’t write this article to out-predict anyone. I wrote it to give you a factual framework through which to filter out the nonsense. I encourage you guys to try out the 247 sports class calculator for yourselves and come up with your own predictions. I’d love to read them in the comments section below and it would be great to dialogue on twitter (@realbsikes).

Regardless, thanks to all the Gator, Nole, and Cane fans for reading! Go Gators!