NFL Draft: Crunching the numbers
For the third straight year, OrangeBloods.com publisher Geoff Ketchum found
himself logging the entire NFL Draft, pick by pick, with the purpose of better
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understanding what's working and what's not working as it relates to developing
players at the collegiate level.
Getting started
From 2010-12 (the three classes that made up the 2014 NFL Draft Class almost
exclusively), Rivals.com rated on the average 3,754.67 prospects -- high school,
prep school and JUCO -- per year. The average number of prospects slotted in each star ranking is shown
above.
With those numbers serving as the foundation of the average Rivals.com
recruiting class numbers over a three-year window, let's break down what the
numbers look like over the course of all seven rounds of the 2015 NFL Draft.
Crunching the numbers
We will get to the specific, nitty-gritty rankings in a moment, but this is a
generic sense, based on star rankings, of how likely it is for a prospect to be
drafted. More than half of all five-star prospects were drafted in the first two
days of the 2015 NFL Draft, and nearly 70 percent of all five-star prospects had
their name called at some point during the proceedings.
The fall down from each star ranking is steep and dramatic, as just 19.3 percent
of all four-star prospects were drafted, 7.1 percent of three-star prospects and
a microscopic 1.7 percent of two-stars.
The success among the truly nationally elite in recruiting and the rest of the
pack is stunning. The results among five-star prospects in this year's draft (16
in the first three rounds!), along with the high four-stars was so overwhelming
that the reality is that Rivals.com probably needs to add a sixth star, with the
five-star prospects getting bumps up to six-stars and the four-stars that make
up the rest of the top national 30-60 prospects getting bumped up to-five-stars.
Nothing about the data from the last few drafts suggests that bottom half of the
four-star rankings are really on the level of their upper-half counterparts. The
success rate of those two recruiting groups is as close to guaranteed success as
it gets in college football recruiting.
Deep dive
I've said it about 1,000 times over the last few years, but my favorite
recruiting tier in the Rivals.com rankings is the high three-star (5.7) recruit
and the data this year showed that ,as it relates to producing top-end NFL Draft
prospects, that ranking outperformed the more celebrated mid- and low-four stars.
Why is this happening? I have a few theories that, when added together, might help
explain why the high three-star prospect is the most underrated commodity in all
of recruiting:
In an era when
the ranked recruits are as closely evaluated as ever before, many of the
players in this category end up being players that analysts really like, but
haven't scouted enough in person to have a truer evaluation.
History
suggests that prospects that have a major issue or two (injuries, academics, off-the-field, etc.)
get slotted into this category.
This is
frequently a spot where very
raw and unrefined prospects get slotted.
It's a great
recruiting landing spot for the prospect that possesses five-star production but three-star physical
tools or vice versa.
Regardless, one
of these days more and more people that follow recruiting will start to follow
my lead, and they'll begin to love the high-three star ranking.
As it relates
to producing NFL-level talent, the 5.7 ranking simply doesn't take a back seat
very often to the low- and mid-four stars and what that means at its most basic is that
there's actually not much difference between a prospect that's ranked No. 101
versus a guy that is ranked No. 400 or even No. 700.
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