Re-Ranking the 2018 Recruiting Class

[rsa coral gables]

Max Olson does a retrospective analysis of the recruiting rankings 4 years after the class was signed. It is fascinating to see which teams developed their players, who were busts, what the attrition rate was.

Georgia was the No. 1 class in 2018 and 4 years later remains No. 1, hence their national title. Cincinnati was ranked 49 at the time their class was signed up, but shoots up to No. 4 in the re-ranking. Alabama's 2018 class had a 48% attrition rate. Wow.

Miami? Initially we were ranked 8th. In the re-ranking? 21.

21. Miami​

Adjusted average: 2.56
Class rank in 2018: 8th
Four-year record: 28-21
Attrition: 48%

Top signees: DE Gregory Rousseau, TE Brevin Jordan, OL DJ Scaife Jr., DT Nesta Jade Silvera, TE Will Mallory

Miami was coming off a massive 10-win season under Mark Richt when this group signed. The Canes had only signed one other top-10 class in the past decade. So this group, assembled in a moment of real momentum, was a big deal and faced big expectations. Four years later, the results have been a bit disappointing.

Richt and Manny Diaz found and developed more than a dozen future starters in this class, which is a real positive. But this class didn’t yield the kind of star power you’d hope for beyond Rousseau, a first-round draft pick, and Jordan, an All-ACC performer and fourth-rounder. Their top signee, five-star running back Lorenzo Lingard, transferred to Florida after two seasons. Quarterback Jarren Williams was a big get and started 10 games, but he also left after his second year and is now on his fourth school. Diaz made up for the attrition in a few spots with portal recruiting.

But the expectations for a class like this were far greater than just one top-25 finish in four years.

It's a good read

Recruiting revisited: Ranking the top 25 in college football’s Class of 2018, four years later — the hits, misses and more

Georgia delivers, Cincinnati lays its foundation, and Buffalo rises more than 100 spots in Year 5 of our annual evaluations.

theathletic.com

 

[grover]

A lot of busts o rguys that underperformed vs. expectations in that class. Very frustrating.

p.s Link is gated. Can't see the article

 

[JD08]

Jarren Williams is one I'll never understand. The problem is all effort on his part. He could've been a lot better than he ended up.

 

[grover]

Jarren Williams is one I'll never understand. The problem is all effort on his part. He could've been a lot better than he ended up.

I don't think it was ever Jarren's dream. His father pushed him and handled him. Always worried about the hellicopter parent role with him. Which is something to watch with Garcia, as well. In that reality show about the Georgia HS team, his dad was in way too deep.

 

[JTKoval]

We never seem to do well in these looking back at recruiting pieces.

 

[TheOriginalCane]

Max Olson does a retrospective analysis of the recruiting rankings 4 years after the class was signed. It is fascinating to see which teams developed their players, who were busts, what the attrition rate was.

Georgia was the No. 1 class in 2018 and 4 years later remains No. 1, hence their national title. Cincinnati was ranked 49 at the time their class was signed up, but shoots up to No. 4 in the re-ranking. Alabama's 2018 class had a 48% attrition rate. Wow.

Miami? Initially we were ranked 8th. In the re-ranking? 21.

21. Miami​

Adjusted average: 2.56
Class rank in 2018: 8th
Four-year record: 28-21
Attrition: 48%

Top signees: DE Gregory Rousseau, TE Brevin Jordan, OL DJ Scaife Jr., DT Nesta Jade Silvera, TE Will Mallory

Miami was coming off a massive 10-win season under Mark Richt when this group signed. The Canes had only signed one other top-10 class in the past decade. So this group, assembled in a moment of real momentum, was a big deal and faced big expectations. Four years later, the results have been a bit disappointing.

Richt and Manny Diaz found and developed more than a dozen future starters in this class, which is a real positive. But this class didn’t yield the kind of star power you’d hope for beyond Rousseau, a first-round draft pick, and Jordan, an All-ACC performer and fourth-rounder. Their top signee, five-star running back Lorenzo Lingard, transferred to Florida after two seasons. Quarterback Jarren Williams was a big get and started 10 games, but he also left after his second year and is now on his fourth school. Diaz made up for the attrition in a few spots with portal recruiting.

But the expectations for a class like this were far greater than just one top-25 finish in four years.

It's a good read

Recruiting revisited: Ranking the top 25 in college football’s Class of 2018, four years later — the hits, misses and more

Georgia delivers, Cincinnati lays its foundation, and Buffalo rises more than 100 spots in Year 5 of our annual evaluations.

theathletic.com

All fair.

I'd also think about it in terms of...what were our other realistic chances?

QB - we "lost" Artur Sitkowski, but that was probably a bullet dodged. I think the only other guy we had a decent shot at was DTR, so that would have been the (20/20 hindsight) guy that we wish we would have signed.

RB - yes, we all would have preferred James Cook over Lorenzo Lingard, but we DID get Cam that year, so it wasn't a total loss.

WR - I think we can all agree that the coulda/woulda/shoulda guys are Anthony Schwartz and Elijah Moore and Tyquan Thornton. What a fuggin' disaster to take Pope and Wiggins and Hightower and Ezzard instead.

TE - Absolute perfection, no matter what Kyle Pitts did in Hogtown.

OL - If we missed out, it was on evals, not recruiting (in and of itself). I guess a couple of IMG guys went to Minnesota and a couple of Apopka guys went to North Carolina, but I'm not sure we could have done any better with the guys we offered and recruited.

DE - Would have been nice to get Andrew Chatfield from The Gaytor, but we got GR-15, so not a complete loss here.

DT - Similar to "would have been nice to get Dennis Briggs from F$U", but we got Nesta which seemed like a huge crib win at the time.

LB - Now we are getting somewhere, as we didn't seem to offer a lot of guys here, and even better, WE SIGNED NOBODY. You can't miss what you never had? How about Nik Bonitto and David Reese and Rosendo Louis?

CB - Entire books can be written on the loss of Patrick Surtain and tyson Campbell and Asante Samuel and Josh Jobe. And, yes, we signed Al Blade and Gilbert Frierson and DJ Ivey and Nigel Bethel. So can we pat ourselves on the back for a 75% retention rate? **** no, let's just move on.

S - We didn't offer many, we got Gurvan Hall and dodged a dud bullet on Randy Russell, who was injured and never played a down for The Gaytor. Tyreke Johnson or Amari Burney would have been nice, as we would have taken Randy Russell if he hadn't spurned us.

K - Evan McPherson (of the Super Bowl Halftime Show) spurned us and we took Bubba Baxa. Couldn't have turned out much worse for us.


Failing grades: WR and LB and CB and K
Did great: TE
Coulda been better: everywhere else

The positions where we failed had a HUGE impact on us, up until today, with the exception of K, thanks to the Borregales family.

 

[AUcane]

Max Olson does a retrospective analysis of the recruiting rankings 4 years after the class was signed. It is fascinating to see which teams developed their players, who were busts, what the attrition rate was.

Georgia was the No. 1 class in 2018 and 4 years later remains No. 1, hence their national title. Cincinnati was ranked 49 at the time their class was signed up, but shoots up to No. 4 in the re-ranking. Alabama's 2018 class had a 48% attrition rate. Wow.

Miami? Initially we were ranked 8th. In the re-ranking? 21.

21. Miami​

Adjusted average: 2.56
Class rank in 2018: 8th
Four-year record: 28-21
Attrition: 48%

Top signees: DE Gregory Rousseau, TE Brevin Jordan, OL DJ Scaife Jr., DT Nesta Jade Silvera, TE Will Mallory

Miami was coming off a massive 10-win season under Mark Richt when this group signed. The Canes had only signed one other top-10 class in the past decade. So this group, assembled in a moment of real momentum, was a big deal and faced big expectations. Four years later, the results have been a bit disappointing.

Richt and Manny Diaz found and developed more than a dozen future starters in this class, which is a real positive. But this class didn’t yield the kind of star power you’d hope for beyond Rousseau, a first-round draft pick, and Jordan, an All-ACC performer and fourth-rounder. Their top signee, five-star running back Lorenzo Lingard, transferred to Florida after two seasons. Quarterback Jarren Williams was a big get and started 10 games, but he also left after his second year and is now on his fourth school. Diaz made up for the attrition in a few spots with portal recruiting.

But the expectations for a class like this were far greater than just one top-25 finish in four years.

It's a good read

Recruiting revisited: Ranking the top 25 in college football’s Class of 2018, four years later — the hits, misses and more

Georgia delivers, Cincinnati lays its foundation, and Buffalo rises more than 100 spots in Year 5 of our annual evaluations.

theathletic.com

Paywall. Anyone Copy paste?

 

[grover]

Failing grades: WR and LB and CB and K
Did great: TE
Coulda been better: everywhere else

The positions where we failed had a HUGE impact on us, up until today, with the exception of K, thanks to the Borregales family.

TOC, You're being too generous, sir. Baxa tanked Enos in more than a couple games, so I'd say that was a huge impact, too. And I would call QB (that was player on player recruiting to get Williams at the last minute, nothing J Richt did) and OL recruiting failures, too.

 

[TheOriginalCane]

TOC, You're being too generous, sir. Baxa tanked Enos in more than a couple games, so I'd say that was a huge impact, too. And I would call QB (that was player on player recruiting to get Williams at the last minute, nothing J Richt did) and OL recruiting failures, too.

To clarify, I was saying that the Borregales brothers have SHORTENED the impact of the horrible 2018 recruiting year for kicker. I'm not saying there was not a huge impact in Year 1 or 2, but that the Borregales boys have made things better. But at the other positions, we have suffered TO THIS DAY from the massive misses in 2018. And while Rambo and Stevenson helped to stop the bleeding last year, they both still play a position with more than one starter, so they were not able to single-handedly reverse the bad years, though the Borregales brothers could.

As for QB, we missed at that position for many, many years, not just 2018. And DTR took a number of years to come into his own, thus I don't feel that he would have stabilized things for Miami as much as, say, 2018 signee Trevor Lawrence did for Clemson.