Can the Florida Gators achieve a top-5 recruiting class in 2018?

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The early signing period was a win for Florida Gators coach Dan Mullen.

Not only did he beat out Willie Taggart and Urban Meyer for 4-star QB Emory Jones, he also beat out Nick Saban for 4-star safety Trey Dean. Add to that his ability to keep the majority of the class assembled by previous head coach Jim McElwain in place, and there is a foundation for a highly-ranked recruiting class, even with the coaching transition.

But Gators fans aren’t just satisfied with a win in the early signing period. They experienced the immediate talent influx that led to a national championship in Urban Meyer’s second year. That’s the standard.

So can Mullen meet that standard in year one? And what does this year’s recruiting class mean for the program moving forward?

Where do things stand right now?

To start with it’s helpful to define where we are currently. The last four transition classes at Florida have achieved an average national ranking of 13.5. But that drops to 11 if you eliminate Jim McElwain’s 21st ranked class in 2015.

Note that all the charts and figures contained in this column use the 247Sports composite ranking, which is essentially an average of the ratings of the major recruiting services.

Comparison of year one recruiting for the last five Florida Gators head coaches based on star ratings. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

The above table shows where McElwain fell short, as he signed 16 3-star prospects and only 5 blue chip recruits (4 or 5-star) in his first class. This pales in comparison to 9 blue chips for Ron Zook, 7 for Urban Meyer and 11 for Will Muschamp.

Mullen compares favorably on the blue chip metric, as he already has 7 signed with 4-star offensive tackle Richard Gouraige making 8 as a hard verbal commit. Where Mullen is falling short at this point is the total number of recruits, and that is why the class is currently ranked 17th in the 247Sports composite team rankings.

Of course, not all blue chip recruits are equal. Typically there are somewhere between 250-350 recruits who are deserving of a 4 or 5-star rating.

That is how Urban Meyer could “only” sign 7 blue-chip players, but signed 15 top-300 players. And again, this is an area where McElwain was deficient, signing only 4 top-300 players in his first class.

Comparison of year one recruiting for the last five Florida Gators head coaches based on top-300 recruits. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

This is a metric that Mullen needs to improve in February. He would need one more top-300 player to tie Ron Zook, but he’ll need 7 to tie Meyer. More likely he’ll fall somewhere in-between, but it is a really good sign that he is much closer to the coaches considered elite recruiters than to the struggles of McElwain.

Each player receives a composite ranking from 247Sports for both his overall national ranking and his ranking by position. The figure below shows the average national ranking (left) and average positional ranking (right) of the players in each coaches’ transition class.

Comparison of year one recruiting for the last five Florida Gators head coaches based on average national and positional ranking. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Mullen again makes out well with these metrics, outperforming Zook and McElwain and coming in just behind Meyer and Muschamp. And remember that this is just the 15 commits thus far in the class, and it is already comparing favorably to Meyer and Muschamp.

One concern many had with Mullen was whether he could be an elite recruiter. He is quickly answering this question in the affirmative, and  the way his first class looks signals that he is much more like the elite recruiters Florida has had in the past than what Florida has experienced the past three seasons.

This is critical because it also tells us something about what to expect in 2019.

Comparison of the second year of recruiting for the last four Florida Gators head coaches. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Zook, Meyer and Muschamp each delivered classes ranked in the top-3 nationally in their second year. Interestingly, if you look at the number of blue-chip prospects, there isn’t much of a difference between those three. It’s only when you look at top-300 recruits that it starts to indicate why Muschamp may have struggled more than Meyer.

But the key takeaway from this chart is that the coaches who put up top-11 classes were able to significantly raise recruiting in year two. McElwain actually showed a similar improvement (21 to 12). The problem is that he stayed there in year three as well (11).

This suggests that if Mullen can close the 2018 class strongly, Florida fans should feel pretty comfortable that an elite class is on the way in 2019.

Where will the 2018 class end up?

The good news is that based on the players that Mullen is pursuing, it appears that he could finish pretty strongly. Some of the players reported to be at least considering Florida are the following:

Potential recruits for the Florida Gators in 2018. Players highlighted in red are leaning towards Florida according to 247Sports. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Petit-Frere, Barnes and Watkins are currently predicted by 247Sports to be leaning towards Florida. Mullen has secured the official visits from a few of these players as well, including wide receiver Jacob Copeland, linebacker Quay Walker, cornerback Olaijah Griffin and defensive tackle Coynis Miller.

Not all of these players are going to commit to the Gators, but we can guess which ones might and how that impacts the class ranking.

247Sports has a calculator that assigns points to each player. The formula is fairly complicated, but the goal is to rank classes both on size and quality. The point totals are fairly consistent from year-to-year and so we can gauge where Florida is right now and where they would go as they add some of these recruits to the fold.

As it stands right now, Florida currently has 226.2 points. For reference, Jim McElwain’s classes totaled 227.5, 261.0 and 251.2 points in 2015, 2016 and 2017, respectively. What that means is that Mullen already has a class of identical quality to McElwain’s first class after just the early signing period.

I’ve defined some scenarios that might occur on signing day. Worst case is that Barnes and Watkins commit, but Petit-Frere decides to go elsewhere and nobody else commits.

A more realistic scenario is that Petit-Frere, Barnes and Watkins all commit, and are joined by Jacob Copeland and Quay Walker. The home run scenario includes all the players from the realistic case, but adds Tommy Bush, Xavier Peters and Olaijah Griffin. If Mullen pulls that off, he’s a miracle worker.

Potential recruiting outcomes for 2018 based on 247Sports points system. (Will Miles/SEC Country)

In the chart above are the point totals for each scenario, along with the national ranking that point total would give based on the average point totals from 2015-2017.

The good news for Gators fans is even in what is likely a worst-case scenario, Florida finishes with a top-15 class. That class rises to 9 in the realistic case I outlined above. But this also says that it’s going to take an absolute miracle finish for Mullen to pull out a top-5 class. It just isn’t likely to happen.

This is in-line with what we should expect from a transition class at Florida. Recall the table I had earlier showing the number of top-300 players in a class for each coaches’ transition class?

Potential recruiting outcomes for 2018 compared to Urban Meyer and Will Muschamp’s first classes at Florida. (Will Miles/SEC Country)

Well, under the realistic scenario Mullen comes in slightly worse than Meyer but better than Muschamp. But he would outperform both of them in top-100 level talent, and those guys are much more likely to pan out than someone ranked 299.

Takeaway

And that’s the key here. Not all of these players are going to be superstars. Likely only 6 or 7 of them are going to be major contributors to the program. But if you string together multiple classes with 6-10 contributors, and you have both elite starters and significant depth.

McElwain’s transition class only had 4 top-300 players who could turn into contributors. Instead, he relied heavily on 3-star recruits, many of whom have turned out to be very good players. But we saw the talent drop-off in 2017 when the injuries started to mount.

That’s because the lifeblood of any program is elite recruiting. There’s a reason that Alabama is consistently competing for national championships and Georgia looks like a monster going forward. There’s also a reason why lately Florida has not.

The early returns from Dan Mullen’s recruiting show that he is already ahead of McElwain’s full first year after just the early signing period. And with a strong close, he’s likely going to secure a class that just makes it inside the top-10 nationally.

That kind of result would be impressive given that the team is coming off a 4-7 season. But more importantly, it is on-par with the success of previous coaches on the recruiting trail, save McElwain. That kind of success in an initial class has been a marker of the ability to bring in a truly elite class in year two.

Then it comes down to Mullen’s ability to extract the most out of those recruits. Based on his track record at Mississippi State and his creativity, I’m optimistic.

And at a bare minimum, at least Mullen has already assured us that a dental student won’t be kicking extra points.

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