Average Recruiting Class of Playoff Teams
TVH posted this on Twitter earlier. I have to assume he's using the ESPN rankings. Here are the average rank of the recruiting classes for the last 4 years of each playoff team.
Okla - 14.75
Clemson - 8.5
Georgia - 6.75
Bama - 1.25
Average of all 4 Teams - 7.81
(UM - 17.5)
(OSU - 5)
The bad news is UM is still well behind the current playoff teams average. The good news is that Harbaugh's only two full classes to date average #6. 2015 and 2014 really dragged down our average, which means the vast majority of our talent is in the freshman and sophomore classes.
Conclusions: Going by recruiting alone, if UM continues to recruit at the pace Harbaugh has in his only two full recruiting classes, one could guess that's good enough to get into the playoffs. The bad news is that might not be good enough to win the conference as OSU is still not only ahead of us, but also ahead of the average playoff team at #5.
December 6th, 2017 at 11:40 AM ^
December 6th, 2017 at 11:47 AM ^
Our recruting is going just fine. We have and will continue to have enough talent to win and contend for B1G and CFP. Just gotta do it on the field. I think we can and next year will be the start of being in the conversation every year for the foreseeable future.
GO BLUE!!
December 6th, 2017 at 12:01 PM ^
I've been reading this site for years, and it was so frustrating that no one, ever, posted something about how recruiting success typically correlates to on-field success.
Thanks for the novel work, OP and TVH. And great job with the math stuff. Doing complex math like "averages" is way above my skill level.
/s(!)
December 6th, 2017 at 12:10 PM ^
Recruiting rankings can be a leading indicator of success, but there is so much more that goes into a successful team having a "great" season (I would consider making the playoff a "great" season), and that includes a healthy dose of intangibles such as leadership, toughness, playmaking ability, and, like it or not, a fortunate bounce of the ball here or there or what could otherwise be constued as just plain luck.
December 6th, 2017 at 2:48 PM ^
Agreed, but those are much harder to assess.
December 6th, 2017 at 12:15 PM ^
December 6th, 2017 at 12:29 PM ^
December 6th, 2017 at 1:03 PM ^
December 6th, 2017 at 3:30 PM ^
Drew Stanton - 4-star #171 overall (247)
Brian Hoyer - 3-star #408 overall (247)
Kirk Cousins - 3-star 70 individual rating (247)
Connor Kirk - 3-star 76 individual rating (ESPN)
Brian Lewerke - 4-star 81 individual rating 270 overall (ESPN)
MSU has absolutely had better luck in recent years with developing their talent in their system. This is both a credit to MSU's coaching staff and highlights the importance of continunity. UM has been through 3 coaching changes in 8 years and Brandon Peters is the first projected starter(since Chad Henne) to play his entire career in the system he was recruited for if both he and Harbaugh make it that far.
December 6th, 2017 at 7:01 PM ^
December 7th, 2017 at 2:49 PM ^
The way you word that "we're going into our 4th year of Harbaugh and we find ourselves praying that a transfer will come to our team" is a little misleading. Another way of saying that is that Harbaugh is not even done with his third year yet and he's already signed three 4-star Top 150 QBs (Peters, McCaffrey, & Milton) and his first one, whose only a RS freshman, is undefeated in his career and looks promising to be our next starter so much that a returning starter is transferring away.
December 6th, 2017 at 6:55 PM ^
December 6th, 2017 at 12:50 PM ^
When you stop and think about it, makes a lot of sense. Thanks !!
December 6th, 2017 at 1:03 PM ^
I did an analysis that looked at the overall composite ranking of each player from the 4 previous classes. No one (even Urban Meyer at OSU) is recruiting at Bama's level, but Clemson proved last year that you don't need to. You need to have a roster full of talented players and it very much helps to have a great QB, but you don't need 5 stars at every position. They were good enough at all other positions that having Deshaun Watson was enough for them to beat Bama. Michigan is trying to follow a similar model. By my analysis, Michigan this year was every bit as talented as Clemson was last year when the won the whole damn thing, albeit substantially younger. If Brandon Peters (or Shea Patterson) can provide an upgrade at that position, we're closer to theoretically being able to compete with OSU and Bama athletically than some would have you believe.
December 6th, 2017 at 1:29 PM ^
December 6th, 2017 at 2:45 PM ^
Clemson did not have an OL drought. The OL is what keeping Michigan back but this may not improve until 2019. But with a good QB next year and some improvement in the OL may allow us to be competitive in the east next season.
December 6th, 2017 at 8:43 PM ^
Wasn't there simply an unprecedented mass-exodus of like 6 or 7 highly touted OL recruits under Hoke and just as Harbaugh arrived?
Not to mention at MANY other positions? (which is STILL happening at this very moment)
Alsom UM's 2014 and 2015 class were horrendous by UM's standards. Does this speak to the strength of their 2016 and 2017 class bringing this overall average up?
I'd like to see much more data than this to draw a better conclusion.
December 6th, 2017 at 3:35 PM ^
Was either of Clemon's jr/sr classes ranked over 40 nationally? UM had the #40 class for the current seniors and the #18 for the juniors. It makes it hard to be successful when your upperclassman are not contributing.
December 6th, 2017 at 4:25 PM ^
Clemson's 2014 class (current seniors) was 16th nationally, and their 2015 class (current juniors) was 9th. And they lost their top two players of the 2014 class (Watson and Scott) to the NFL.
December 7th, 2017 at 7:08 PM ^
So, even though UM was just as talanted as Clemson on a per-player basis the majority of UM's talent was condensed in the fr/soph classes, whereas Clemson's talent was more spread out evenly allowing their jr/sr to contribute more than UM's. We've all seen how important experience and returning starters are. So, it's not quite the same thing even though the overall talent level is similar.
December 6th, 2017 at 1:23 PM ^
December 6th, 2017 at 1:35 PM ^
It's interesting that Oklahoma has the worst ranking among the four playoff teams, and also that one of the primary reasons they're even in the conversation is because of a player who doesn't count in recruiting rankings because he was a transfer. And even if he were to count, as a 3 star walk-on at Texas Tech, Baker Mayfield's star rating would do more to pull down overall recruiting measures for top teams. Yet without Mayfield, Oklahoma almost certainly would have lost at least one more, and quite possibly two or three more games this year and wouldn't be in the title conversation at all.
December 6th, 2017 at 3:33 PM ^
Yeah, he's a unicorn. I think he's the only power 5 walk on freshman qb starter ever.
December 6th, 2017 at 4:10 PM ^
December 6th, 2017 at 4:19 PM ^
Texas Tech is a power 5 school.
December 6th, 2017 at 4:22 PM ^
Was this a joke about the Big 12, or just a misunderstanding about which conference Texas Tech is in?
December 7th, 2017 at 6:55 PM ^
December 6th, 2017 at 2:38 PM ^
Clemson's recruiting was much like ours, in the mid teens. Winning the ACC and getting into the playoffs and winning a NC has surely helped. Harbaugh had rankings of 6 and 5 the past two seasons. Lets say we are 14 this season but 8 in 2019, so about 8 on average, right in the Clemson and GA ball park. So, I'm expecting playoffs in 2019.
December 6th, 2017 at 6:49 PM ^
December 7th, 2017 at 6:52 PM ^
December 7th, 2017 at 10:02 AM ^
December 6th, 2017 at 10:04 PM ^
December 6th, 2017 at 10:32 PM ^
Who needs a recruiting class when you have Ole Miss transfers?