How often do highly ranked recruits work out and what does that mean for Florida’s 2019 season?

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In my review of the Gators 2019 recruiting class, there was one chart that jumped out at me, and I wasn’t sure how to interpret.

Dan Mullen was able to exceed the total number of blue-chip recruits brought in by Ron Zook and Will Muschamp in their first full recruiting classes and came up just one short of matching Urban Meyer. This would seem to bode well for Mullen’s future, right?

But the issue nagging at me is the 5-star column. Zook had six, Meyer and Muschamp had three while Mullen and McElwain had none. Anytime you’re matching the illustrious record of Jim McElwain on the recruiting trail, that’s an issue.

Broken down further, the numbers reveal something else.

Zook, Meyer and Muschamp had a lot more top-100 players than either McElwain and Mullen. The place where Mullen beats McElwain in recruiting is with players ranked between 201-300.

So that leads to the natural question: how successful are players in each category? And further, what does that mean for Florida when compared to its rivals?

How does recruiting ranking correlate to on-field success?

The first thing we have to do is define how to measure success.

Previously, I’ve looked at Heisman Trophy winners and first-team All Americans versus star ranking. Those results showed that 5-star recruits are significantly more likely than 4-star recruits to accomplish each. But 5-stars are typically the first 30 or so players in the rankings while 4-stars are typically ranked from 30-300, which isn’t the division we’re looking for.

Instead, the quickest – and perhaps the best – way to measure success is in relation to the NFL Draft. I understand that some players who excel in college will not get drafted, but that’s pretty rare. Typically if you’re in the top-300 players in the country coming out of high school and perform, you’ll get a significant look in the pros.

Thus, I went back to the 2013 and 2014 247Sports Composite recruiting rankings and noted each players’ ranking and whether and where he was drafted. By doing this, we can get an idea of how those rankings correlate with on-field success.

The above chart really tells the entire story. I’ve divided the rankings into 15-player bins (1-15, 16-30, 31-45, etc.) for both 2013 and 2014 recruits and plotted that versus the percentage drafted by the NFL.

As you would expect, top-15 players are drafted significantly more often than any other ranking. But what I wasn’t expecting was how significant of a drop-off there was not just between 1-15 and 16-30, but especially by the time you get to the 46-60 and 61-75 bins.

This data suggests (at least for these two cycles) that there was little difference in success rate from a player rated 80th coming out of high school versus one rated 200th (at least from an NFL Draft perspective).

It also suggests that recruiting 5-star recruits (top-30 players nationally) may be significantly more important than having a more balanced class. Certainly it suggests that to be dominant requires more top-100 players than top-300.

In other words, blue-chip percentage sounds good, but top-end talent appears to matter much more.

Comparing Florida to its Rivals

So what does this mean for Florida when comparing to its rivals? Well, for the 2019 recruiting class, it’s a big of a mixed bag.

Florida finished ranked 5th in the SEC, behind Alabama, Georgia, Texas A&M and LSU. The Gators finished just ahead of Auburn and Tennessee 247Sports score-wise. But the Vols got commitments from two top-30 players and four in the top-61. Likewise, Auburn received commitments from two of the top-33 players in the country.

So while Florida may have more overall depth from this class, an argument could be made that both Tennessee and Auburn may slightly edge out the Gators just because of top-end talent.

Additionally, LSU has three of the top-32. Georgia has five of the top-26. Alabama has five of the top-43. Florida has two top-50 ranked recruits, in Chris Steele and Kaiir Elam.

But that’s just one cycle. If we want to compare top-end talent, then we need to look at the past four seasons.

This is what is meant when people talk about the gap between Alabama and Georgia and the rest of the SEC. If Nick Saban can get NFL-quality play from half of his top-100 players, he’ll almost be able to fill an entire roster with NFL-quality players, and that’s without considering the rest of his signing class.

Takeaway

I’m as happy as anyone that Dan Mullen’s 2019 class was able to finish in the top-10 of the national recruiting rankings based on how it started. But as I wrote back in November, top-10 hasn’t historically been good enough to win the SEC, let alone the national championship.

I wish the data was different, but it’s not. Yes, Rivals was recently embarrassed by having a fictitious player ranked as a 3-star. Yes, recruiting services miss on some players. But apparently they don’t miss too often on top players, because those guys make it to the pros at a much higher rate.

You can have very successful seasons with top-300 talent. You may even be able to squeak a conference championship out of it, especially if one of your high-end recruits is a QB who turns out to be a star.

But to rely on that kind of talent distribution is going to typically deliver solid, but not spectacular results.

Mullen is building something in Gainesville. His 2020 and 2021 recruiting classes thus far attest to that. But anyone expecting a year like Urban Meyer had in 2006 or even Kirby Smart had in 2018 is likely misguided.

Urban Meyer had Percy Harvin and Tim Tebow in his bump class (both top-21 talent), and those guys became transcendent stars. Kirby’s bump class had Jake Fromm (41) and D’Andre Swift (33) added to Mecole Hardman (12) and Isaac Nauta (14) from his transition class.

What this means is that it is going to take Mullen more time to compete with the big boys on the field consistently. That doesn’t mean he won’t be able to catch Georgia or even Alabama every once in a while, particularly if Georgia doesn’t get better in-game coaching.

But looking at the 2019 schedule, Florida will have to go through LSU (in Baton Rouge), Georgia (in Jacksonville) and Alabama (in Atlanta) to win the SEC. Add to that a neutral site game versus Miami and home games versus Tennessee and Florida State and it’s a big ask for Florida to make it out of that schedule unscathed.

This isn’t an indictment of Mullen, but a recognition of the realities of how talent correlates to winning in college football.

But Mullen has proven me wrong before. Hopefully he can again.

Featured image used via Creative Commons license courtesy Photo-Gator