Can Washington compete nationally without 5 Star recruits?

[RoadDawg55]

An example is Wattenberg. He was a low four star recruit that if he played to his exact ranking would be a 7th round pick. To almost everyone, he’s a disappointment, but he’s really close to the level he was rated as on 247, but we see the four stars and expect more.

Love this take. 254 players got drafted to the NFL last year, and Watty was rated 295th in the composite. The natural equilibrium would expect him to go undrafted. Now consider that the vast majority of the players drafted were not 4 and 5 star recruits either (15/32 first round picks in 2019 were 3 stars or lower).[/b]

The elite recruiting prospects are hard to get for a reason, they pan out much more often than lesser recruited guys. It's important we get as many if them as possible. But the difference between being USC/Tennessee/Texas and actually competing for a Natty is how well you evaluate and develop the back half of your recruiting class with guys that not every school wants.

This argument can drive me bat shit crazy at times because people will say "STARS DON'T MATTER!!! STAN EMPO!!!!" The reason the vast majority of drafted players are 3 star or less is because there are a shit ton more of them.

True, but I do think politics and player’s initial rankings play a large role and their ratings are inflated because of it. Guys do drop in the rankings, but if they were initially ranked as a 5 star as a sophomore, there will be a 4 star at minimum when the final rankings come out.

Certain positions, mainly WR are so inflated. A ton of it has to do with 7 on 7 and their stats too. If the national guys develop a relationship with a kid, I think that can play a role in inflated rankings as well.

If you have a shitty high school QB, it’s hard to really produce as a WR. Spiker might turn out to be a good player, but he was an obvious guy that was ranked too high because his team threw the ball a ton and he had a D-1 QB throwing to him.

The story about Whittingham flipping out over Sidney Jones decommiting made me think that he must be pretty fucking good despite a low ranking.

If schools are dropping a guy, it probably is a sign that he’s overrated, but since he’s still ranked a 4 star, the team that ends up getting him gets excited. Oregon got the kid from Alabama that was dropped by them and they rose a couple spots in the rankings when Oregon signed him because he was still ranked fairly high. He very likely sucks.

Get elite guys and evaluate well to your scheme and fit after that. Pete did very good at that with his 2014 class. So many of those guys were lowly rated but ended up being great players. He was obviously amazing at it when he was at Boise. I wish he wouldn’t have changed except for get a couple elite guys here and there since he was at UW and now could.

 

[Neighbor2972]

An example is Wattenberg. He was a low four star recruit that if he played to his exact ranking would be a 7th round pick. To almost everyone, he’s a disappointment, but he’s really close to the level he was rated as on 247, but we see the four stars and expect more.

Love this take. 254 players got drafted to the NFL last year, and Watty was rated 295th in the composite. The natural equilibrium would expect him to go undrafted. Now consider that the vast majority of the players drafted were not 4 and 5 star recruits either (15/32 first round picks in 2019 were 3 stars or lower).[/b]

The elite recruiting prospects are hard to get for a reason, they pan out much more often than lesser recruited guys. It's important we get as many if them as possible. But the difference between being USC/Tennessee/Texas and actually competing for a Natty is how well you evaluate and develop the back half of your recruiting class with guys that not every school wants.

This argument can drive me bat shit crazy at times because people will say "STARS DON'T MATTER!!! STAN EMPO!!!!" The reason the vast majority of drafted players are 3 star or less is because there are a shit ton more of them.

True, but I do think politics and player’s initial rankings play a large role and their ratings are inflated because of it. Guys do drop in the rankings, but if they were initially ranked as a 5 star as a sophomore, there will be a 4 star at minimum when the final rankings come out.

Certain positions, mainly WR are so inflated. A ton of it has to do with 7 on 7 and their stats too. If the national guys develop a relationship with a kid, I think that can play a role in inflated rankings as well.

If you have a shitty high school QB, it’s hard to really produce as a WR. Spiker might turn out to be a good player, but he was an obvious guy that was ranked too high because his team threw the ball a ton and he had a D-1 QB throwing to him.

The story about Whittingham flipping out over Sidney Jones decommiting made me think that he must be pretty fucking good despite a low ranking.

If schools are dropping a guy, it probably is a sign that he’s overrated, but since he’s still ranked a 4 star, the team that ends up getting him gets excited. Oregon got the kid from Alabama that was dropped by them and they rose a couple spots in the rankings when Oregon signed him because he was still ranked fairly high. He very likely sucks.

Get elite guys and evaluate well to your scheme and fit after that. Pete did very good at that with his 2014 class. So many of those guys were lowly rated but ended up being great players. He was obviously amazing at it when he was at Boise. I wish he wouldn’t have changed except for get a couple elite guys here and there since he was at UW and now could. [/b]

I don't understand the notion that our evaluation process changed at all. The only thing that changed is that we got better at recruiting and got more of our top targets. Its not like those 3*s were our top targets in 2014. From what I can tell we just got really lucky with a lot of the 3*s we ended up with.

I generally agree with your points, but just saying 'evaluate better' is not really a formula for success. Like, no shit it would be nice to have gotten all the 3*s that turned out to be good players. Every team is doing their best to evaluate and find under the radar players, you can't blame us for missing on someone when literally everyone else did too.

Assuming your evaluations are better than everyone else's is a bad strategy, as we see all the time with the NFL draft, where no team is really any better at it than any other team. Its why recruiting top 15 classes is the only way to reliably have a good team.

 

[RoadDawg55]

An example is Wattenberg. He was a low four star recruit that if he played to his exact ranking would be a 7th round pick. To almost everyone, he’s a disappointment, but he’s really close to the level he was rated as on 247, but we see the four stars and expect more.

Love this take. 254 players got drafted to the NFL last year, and Watty was rated 295th in the composite. The natural equilibrium would expect him to go undrafted. Now consider that the vast majority of the players drafted were not 4 and 5 star recruits either (15/32 first round picks in 2019 were 3 stars or lower).[/b]

The elite recruiting prospects are hard to get for a reason, they pan out much more often than lesser recruited guys. It's important we get as many if them as possible. But the difference between being USC/Tennessee/Texas and actually competing for a Natty is how well you evaluate and develop the back half of your recruiting class with guys that not every school wants.

This argument can drive me bat shit crazy at times because people will say "STARS DON'T MATTER!!! STAN EMPO!!!!" The reason the vast majority of drafted players are 3 star or less is because there are a shit ton more of them.

True, but I do think politics and player’s initial rankings play a large role and their ratings are inflated because of it. Guys do drop in the rankings, but if they were initially ranked as a 5 star as a sophomore, there will be a 4 star at minimum when the final rankings come out.

Certain positions, mainly WR are so inflated. A ton of it has to do with 7 on 7 and their stats too. If the national guys develop a relationship with a kid, I think that can play a role in inflated rankings as well.

If you have a shitty high school QB, it’s hard to really produce as a WR. Spiker might turn out to be a good player, but he was an obvious guy that was ranked too high because his team threw the ball a ton and he had a D-1 QB throwing to him.

The story about Whittingham flipping out over Sidney Jones decommiting made me think that he must be pretty fucking good despite a low ranking.

If schools are dropping a guy, it probably is a sign that he’s overrated, but since he’s still ranked a 4 star, the team that ends up getting him gets excited. Oregon got the kid from Alabama that was dropped by them and they rose a couple spots in the rankings when Oregon signed him because he was still ranked fairly high. He very likely sucks.

Get elite guys and evaluate well to your scheme and fit after that. Pete did very good at that with his 2014 class. So many of those guys were lowly rated but ended up being great players. He was obviously amazing at it when he was at Boise. I wish he wouldn’t have changed except for get a couple elite guys here and there since he was at UW and now could. [/b]

I don't understand the notion that our evaluation process changed at all. The only thing that changed is that we got better at recruiting and got more of our top targets. Its not like those 3*s were our top targets in 2014. From what I can tell we just got really lucky with a lot of the 3*s we ended up with.

I generally agree with your points, but just saying 'evaluate better' is not really a formula for success. Like, no shit it would be nice to have gotten all the 3*s that turned out to be good players. Every team is doing their best to evaluate and find under the radar players, you can't blame us for missing on someone when literally everyone else did too.

Assuming your evaluations are better than everyone else's is a bad strategy, as we see all the time with the NFL draft, where no team is really any better at it than any other team. Its why recruiting top 15 classes is the only way to reliably have a good team.

I get what you’re saying, but we can and should evaluate better. There is no reason why it can’t be done. We are going to have to in order to compete for a natty because we aren’t going to start getting top 5-10 classes. We are never going to have consistently have top 10 classes until we put together years of winning to where our program is seen differently.

There are NFL teams that draft way better than others. That’s a false statement to say no team is really better than others.

When everyone misses on a guy, it is stupid to act like the coaches completely fucked up. I used to think it was retarded when fans would bash Sark for missing out on Cooper Kupp. Everyone, including WSU and Oregon State did. Idaho even probably did.

That said, Amandre and a couple others over Evan Weaver could have and should have been avoided. A lot of the guys that Pete brought to UW with him from Boise were very good players. 95% of those guys wouldn’t get a sniff from UW in the later Pete years. He brought the guys he thought could play in the PAC 12 and some of those guys played large roles in 2016 and 2017.

He also had a bunch of other players from Boise State that were bonafied studs and high NFL picks. He was evaluating and developing at an extremely high level. They were beating good BCS schools and there wasn’t an actual talent gap in terms of talent in the field.

Either his evaluations and/or development had slipped in the next few years after that when he had more options to choose from. We aren’t a more talented team right now than a few years ago despite higher ranked classes.

I do think we should pay close attention to players that commit to lesser schools like Cal, Oregon State, Arizona, WSU, etc and poach the very best ones to fill out our classes. Like we did with Tryon and Sidney Jones in 2014.