As with any star rating discussion, percentages matter most. More guys outside the top 20 panned out as top 10 talents than QB’s within the original top 10 because there’s way, way more of them. QB’s ranked in the 80’s, 90’s, and even several ranked in the 100’s at the position that year signed with D1 schools.
There are 2 in a class of their own who will likely be the first two overall picks in the upcoming draft (Young & Stroud). 1 won a Heisman and the other was a two-time Heisman finalist. Both led their respective team to a playoff appearance.
2 of the top 10 were 5*’s (Young & DJ)
3 of the top 10 were 4*s (Stroud, Richardson, & TVD)
5 of the top 10 were 3*’s.
Only 2 QB’s were 5*’s in the 247 composite that year.
The 4* hit rate that year was very low at 3 of 25, which I assume is a bit lower than the norm. 12%.
The 3* hit rate was even more like finding a needle in a haystack, though, when you look at how many of them there were. If approximately 70 3* QB’s signed with D1 schools that year, which seems like a fair estimate based on 247’s signee page, 5 out of 70 is just a 7% hit rate.
I think the takeaway is, at least for me, the very elite kids, let's generously say the top 5, have a solid hit rate (in this case it was 60%). And almost anyone can identify them. Scouts, coaches, fans, the grandmas selling the raffles, etc. After that its a crapshoot somewhat. I do understand your point of their being a bigger sample size in my example of #'s 20+ but my point would be the coaches are far and away better equipped to evaluate these kids than the website flunkies are, and they need to trust their evaluations and ignore the internet rankings. If a coach hits at the "percentages" he's losing his job. Because outside of the top 40 5* and borderline 5* type kids, the percentages say you lose. A coach can land a solid 4* QB every cycle but he better be good at picking the right ones, because if he's throwing a dart at a bag of 4*s he's in trouble. They don't succeed at an alarming percentage. And even with those top kids, you better get it right. So they, and thus we, need to look deeper.
Look at where NFL starting QB's were ranked in HS and you will see a trend. And it's not about randomly picking a 3-star and praying. It's identifying which ones have a good chance and developing into a good QB because the websites sure as **** can't. The internet hacks admittedly really don't project development. They are more WYSIWYG. They are also gun-shy af and look for built-in excuses for why they rank a kid so high or so low so they can defend their mistakes.
Our OC just lit up the field with a QB who was a low 3-star with an 85 rating coming out of HS who was rated #827 in the country, and frankly even in college he had accuracy problems and is projected at best to be a developmental day 3 flier of a take in the draft. Clayton Tune really isn't even that good and Dawson was able to generate a ton of offense with him. Brown, Emory and Judd all have much better tools and arms and much higher upside than he did. I think its as important to identify what highly rated kids to pass on as it is what lower rated kids to take, especially since you're probably going to be pointing NIL at them, and these highly rated QB's flame out at an alarmingly high rate, and they are probably more likely to transfer out at the first sign of adversity. In another thread I did some rough math that pointed towards 80-90%+ of 4 and 5 star QB's never living up to their hype and contributing meaningfully at the first school they committed to. This accounts for flips, flameouts, and transfers. It's hard. Which is why the portal has become a sanctuary for QB fixes these days.
Anyway, stack tools, develop them and play the numbers. The more live arms in a program the better these days.
