I didn't think we'd have less 4*s on 247 than the composite.
Garbers and Redman are 3* on 247. The trend in the past have been the other way around where our guys had 4* on 247 but dropped to 3* in composite due to ESPN rankings (Cam Williams, Jackson Sirmon).
Yeah, Gaard is also ranked ridiculously low on 247
That's one of the things where rankings don't fucking matter. The dude slaughters people, has every measurable in the book, and has like 30 fucking offers.
One of the gripes with recruiting services in pretty much every recruitable sport is the lack of focus on lesser recruited areas or classifications. The Washington services all want to look at 3a and 4a (for good reason, that's where the best players are). The flip side is that lower classification guys get ignored. That's not to say the levels of talent in, say, 1a baseball are close to 4a, but the 1a guys actually get completely ignored even when there are legitimate division 1 caliber guys there. The only saving grace is showcases that cost a shit ton.
It's similar with the national recruiting services lile 247 or ESPN. 247 is much better about it, but the focus is still on the areas with more talent, similar to the focus on higher classifications. So Idaho, which is basically a 1a football state in this comparison, gets essentially ignored. There may be legit high 4* caliber guys like Gaard, but the focus isn't there, so often they are rated far too low.
And, similar to the Washington recruiting comparison, that isn't to say that the recruiting services are necessarily wrong to focus on California and Texas over Idaho. The talent levels aren't close and the ratings are actually often a very good guide for how teams in CFB will do.
But it still remains very possible for a guy like Gaard to slip through the cracks. I'm not saying that recruiting services don't matter. They do! Ratings are overall very important on a full class basis in terms of average. It's simply that there will be misses that seem obvious in retrospect.
Taylor Rapp and Trey Adams are obvious examples.
Edit: TL;DR Gaard is good