I agree the class is underwhelming but the average ranking thing is mostly on the philosophy of the staff. You can literally drop 7 of our lowest rated players and it barely makes a dent in the class ranking points and the per recruit average goes up.
Staff have clearly missed on DL and CB and QB recruits and needs changes in staffs at those positions. Everything else is not better due to field performance which is also on the staff obv. but perspective also matters.
I try to break it down into its most simplistic form.
I think we can all agree Mario Cristobal isn’t going to out-coach anyone regarding X’s and O’s. I’m not even considering self-inflicted issues like poor timeout usage, lack of urgency on offense when trailing / under 2 min, the thing he did against GT that doesn’t need to be brought up again, etc. Just from a schematic standpoint, that’s not who he is. Doesn’t mean we can’t win with him at HC.
Ok, so if he’s not too bright with the X’s and O’s, how does he win games? Acquiring talent, and usually has an emphatic advantage over his opponents. That’s why I care about recruiting so much, because it’s the one area he was brought in to see consistent improvement. Elevate the talent in each and every room, sign stars, naturally win more games (even if it means losing 2-3 inexplicable ones), and become relevant on a yearly basis again. I’m not even talking playoffs, I just want 9-3 or 10-2 right now.
He did it last class, and it’s already paying off with guys like Bain, Francis, Fletcher and Damari. They were all Top175 guys. We had the 7th-ranked class and an average rating per recruit at 91.78, good for 6th. That’s a **** good class, and elevates the whole team substantially. A lot of positions got better talent, which is what he needs.
Now this current class (same amount of kids committed btw as last year), this current class is 11th overall, 19th per recruit (89.71 average rating). Contextually, no Top 15 class in 2023 finished below a 90 average.
That FSU high school class everyone likes to rag on for being trash…well I agree it was. They finished 19th overall and 89.81 average rating per recruit…so what does that make our current class? Are you going to tell me that ours isn’t theirs because they don’t have Alonso? Yeah…ok.
We are quickly finding out that no recruiting savant can consistently out-perform their performance on the field. He did it last year, he ain’t this year.
That’s why we aren’t seeing more whales jumping onboard. They’re cautious because they don’t fully believe in the product he’s selling. We have to win tomorrow.
