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Is talent down in CFB this year?

AlexCane

AlexCane

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So, in the middle of the 2nd quarter during the Dolphins game I was looking at 2026 NFL mock drafts to see what my Fins might grab in the top 5 lol. I didn't recognize a lot of players. Is talent down? There are some surefire studs (Smith, Downs, Love, Ryan Williams) but I don't see as much surefire NFL talent as I did several years ago. Am I alone in this assessment? I am sure some kids will rise to the surface as the season progresses but talent seems down this year.

Is there something underlying this? The game has lost Saban, Harbaugh, and Urban who recruited and developed talent. Then with the transfer portal maybe some kids aren't getting the development and coaching they need. Or is this just a down year and no actual reasoning behind it?
 
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AlexCane said:
So, in the middle of the 2nd quarter during the Dolphins game I was looking at 2026 NFL mock drafts to see what my Fins might grab in the top 5 lol. I didn't recognize a lot of players. Is talent down? There are some surefire studs (Smith, Downs, Love, Ryan Williams) but I don't see as much surefire NFL talent as I did several years ago. Am I alone in this assessment? I am sure some kids will rise to the surface as the season progresses but talent seems down this year.

Is there something underlying this? The game has lost Saban, Harbaugh, and Urban who recruited and developed talent. Then with the transfer portal maybe some kids aren't getting the development and coaching they need. Or is this just a down year and no actual reasoning behind it?
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The Fins pure mierde meng.

They 80s Tampa Bay bad.

CIS can only fix one progrum at a time.
 
AlexCane said:
So, in the middle of the 2nd quarter during the Dolphins game I was looking at 2026 NFL mock drafts to see what my Fins might grab in the top 5 lol. I didn't recognize a lot of players. Is talent down? There are some surefire studs (Smith, Downs, Love, Ryan Williams) but I don't see as much surefire NFL talent as I did several years ago. Am I alone in this assessment? I am sure some kids will rise to the surface as the season progresses but talent seems down this year.

Is there something underlying this? The game has lost Saban, Harbaugh, and Urban who recruited and developed talent. Then with the transfer portal maybe some kids aren't getting the development and coaching they need. Or is this just a down year and no actual reasoning behind it?
Click to expand...
I was thinking about this the other day. Teams like Bama and UGA used to look like they were playing a different sport than everybody else, especially on defense, but this no longer seems to be the case.

I can't really articulate it but I agree, the game looks different than it 5 years back or so.
 
AlexCane said:
So, in the middle of the 2nd quarter during the Dolphins game I was looking at 2026 NFL mock drafts to see what my Fins might grab in the top 5 lol. I didn't recognize a lot of players. Is talent down? There are some surefire studs (Smith, Downs, Love, Ryan Williams) but I don't see as much surefire NFL talent as I did several years ago. Am I alone in this assessment? I am sure some kids will rise to the surface as the season progresses but talent seems down this year.

Is there something underlying this? The game has lost Saban, Harbaugh, and Urban who recruited and developed talent. Then with the transfer portal maybe some kids aren't getting the development and coaching they need. Or is this just a down year and no actual reasoning behind it?
Click to expand...
Last few years there have been some COVID players, that stayed around and got older and more developed before hitting the league. Now they are all gone and younger, less known players are replacing them.
 
COVID year could be culprit. Obviously didn't affect 3 and out players, but gave an extra year of development to a lot of players. That's pretty much over except in outlier cases

H/t @TomAce
 
I think the decline can be attributed to the portal. Guys are just transferring to schools where they can start at vs grinding out to get better. Their is still an upper echelon, but schools aren't hoarding talent the way they used to.
 
I also think talent has been spread far more towards the defensive side, which makes football as a whole more unspectacular.
 
It’s harder to find the talent when it’s spread out the way it is now thanks to the portal and NIL.
3 years ago all we had to do was watch the SEC championship game and see 10 1st round picks. Now that same game may still have 4-5, but the rest could be playing at any P4 school.
It’s a better game now and a less regional game. Despite ESPN, I don’t think people outside the southeast enjoyed watching 3-4 teams (and OSU) playing for the championship every year.
 
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AlexCane said:
So, in the middle of the 2nd quarter during the Dolphins game I was looking at 2026 NFL mock drafts to see what my Fins might grab in the top 5 lol. I didn't recognize a lot of players. Is talent down? There are some surefire studs (Smith, Downs, Love, Ryan Williams) but I don't see as much surefire NFL talent as I did several years ago. Am I alone in this assessment? I am sure some kids will rise to the surface as the season progresses but talent seems down this year.

Is there something underlying this? The game has lost Saban, Harbaugh, and Urban who recruited and developed talent. Then with the transfer portal maybe some kids aren't getting the development and coaching they need. Or is this just a down year and no actual reasoning behind it?
Click to expand...
I think talent is just distributed across more teams, before you could just know a few teams and you would know a lot of the top talent, which isn’t the case anymore.
 
Agree with all of the above.
I will add that there's still 4 months left for "surprise" talent to emerge.
 
WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING TALENT !

stinking.jpg
 
supersaiyanshel said:
There's talent every draft. You just have to do you evals correctly. You'll always have guys who are way better pros than than College Players.
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I'm not really referring to NFL careers more so collegiate careers. There just doesn't seem to be as much high-end talent as we've seen in prior seasons.
 
There’s plenty of good players out there.

Also, it’s early in the season. Lots of guys aren’t in the lot current system for as long due to the portal. It’ll get less sloppy as the year season progresses.
 
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AtlAtty said:
It’s harder to find the talent when it’s spread out the way it is now thanks to the portal and NIL.
3 years ago all we had to do was watch the SEC championship game and see 10 1st round picks. Now that same game may still have 4-5, but the rest could be playing at any P4 school.
It’s a better game now and a less regional game. Despite ESPN, I don’t think people outside the southeast enjoyed watching 3-4 teams (and OSU) playing for the championship every year.
Click to expand...

Everything you say is true. But there is still just as much talent, it’s just more spread out versus being highly concentrated in just a small handful of schools as it was during the bag era not that long ago.

If you just look at it from a statistical standpoint, the sample size is so huge that it’s nearly impossible for there to be any meaningful or statistical difference year
-to-year in terms of talent.

If there’s any (probably small) difference at all due to Covid years, then that’s what you would classify as an outlier. Vary atypical if you take the last 50 years into consideration.
 
OriginalCanesCanesCanes said:
Everything you say is true. But there is still just as much talent, it’s just more spread out versus being highly concentrated in just a small handful of schools as it was during the bag era not that long ago.

If you just look at it from a statistical standpoint, the sample size is so huge that it’s nearly impossible for there to be any meaningful or statistical difference year
-to-year in terms of talent.

If there’s any (probably small) difference at all due to Covid years, then that’s what you would classify as an outlier. Vary atypical if you take the last 50 years into consideration.
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It may be more spread out, but do you see high-end talent this year? I'm not seeing it. Again, small sample size but I'm not seeing a lot of guys that you'd see and know he's a first rounder for example.
 
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