How much better is Dan Mullen at developing players than his peers?

Last week, I examined how often highly-rated prospects get drafted into the NFL and what that means for Florida’s 2019 recruiting class.

That analysis wasn’t received too well by Florida fans. That’s because while the 2019 class has 17 blue-chip recruits, only four of those players are rated in the top-100 and only two are in the top-50. And since top-50 players get drafted at significantly higher rates than players rated 50-300, the inference is that this class will fall short of expectations.

The main critique to the analysis is that Dan Mullen is a supremely effective developer of talent. The narrative is that he can identify a 3-star candidate who is underrated or turn a 3-star candidate into an NFL-quality prospect through coaching.

The good news is that is a measureable narrative since he has a long track record at Mississippi State. So the question is, does Dan Mullen develop his recruits at a higher level than his peers?

How often are recruits drafted?

247Sports’ Chris Hummer performed an analysis of its rankings back in April of 2018. What he did was compare the number of 5, 4, 3 and 2-star recruits from the 2014 cycle and how many were drafted in 2018. He did the same for the 2013 cycle and the 2017 draft.

It’s not a perfect comparison, as sometimes players leave for the draft after three years or redshirt and stay longer. However, it’s a decent approximation of how often a player of a particular pedigree is drafted.

What that means is that we should be able to compare a coach’s draft record with Hummer’s analysis and determine whether he performs better or worse than his peers. The following are the percentages cited in the article for the 2013 and 2014 recruiting cycles compared to the 2017 and 2018 drafts:

• 2-stars: 1.3%
• 3-stars: 5.9%
• 4-stars: 23.3%
• 5-stars: 61.8%

This maps pretty closely to what I showed last week. The reality is that these services do a pretty good job of segmenting recruits based on likelihood of success.

Mullen’s development record

So how does Mullen’s track record compare? Well, if we look at the total number of 5, 4, 3, and 2-star recruits brought to Starkville from 2007-2015, then examine how many of those players were drafted, we should get a good idea.

I chose 2007 as the starting point because that gave Mullen two full years to develop those players. 2015 was chosen as the end point to try to be fair and not include a bunch of players who will be drafted but have not had the opportunity yet.

Percentage of Mississippi State recruits drafted in the NFL under Dan Mullen segmented by star rating. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

The first thing to note is that Mississippi State had a ton of 3-star recruits during Mullen’s time there. That’s the place we should really focus because it’s the largest sample size.

If we focus on just those 3-star recruits, Mullen’s players get drafted significantly more often than 3-star recruits overall. For those 169 recruits, that means 14 draft picks versus 10 for a typical program.

Additionally, Mullen has produced two 2-star recruits (Preston Smith in 2015, Pernell McPhee in 2011) who have been drafted out of only 12 2-stars on his roster. That percentage (16.7) is way higher than the typical draft percentage for 2-star recruits.

Now, likely Mississippi State has highly ranked 2-star recruits compared to some lesser programs. But to have a hit rate that high suggests that Mullen knows what he is doing.

The one place where you might be able to point out that Mullen has not been as successful is with his 37 4-star recruits. His 18.9 percent draft rate is lower than the 23.3 percent cited above. However, if we look a little bit deeper, this becomes more understandable, and perhaps even another feather in Mullen’s cap.

From 2007-2015, Mullen’s 4-star candidates averaged a national ranking of 197.1. Again, I go back to a figure from last week’s article to emphasize what this means.

Percent of players drafted by NFL versus recruiting ranking in 2013 and 2014. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Note how percentage of drafted players drops precipitously from a ranking of 46 (a high-level 4-star player) to 151 (a mid-level 4-star player). What this means is that while the 23.3 percent of 4-stars drafted is higher than Mullen’s draft rate, it is also skewed towards the higher-level 4-star players.

Indeed, if we use a logarithmic fit for the data, we get an estimate of how often a player ranked 197th should be drafted: 15.3%.

If we use the same fit to examine each player individually who came into Mullen’s program, it tells the same story.

To examine this, I looked at every top-300 player to enter the Mississippi State program from 2007-2015. Then, I added together the expectations that a certain level of player should be drafted based on his recruiting rankings. For example, 2013 recruit Chris Jones (18th nationally) would be expected to be drafted 55 percent of the time while 2012 recruit Chris Redmond (287th nationally) would be expected to be drafted 9 percent of the time.

If you add up the expected percentages for each player, we get 6.1 expected players to be drafted from Mullen’s MSU program from his top-300 recruits. Of that list, eight of those players have actually been drafted.

This also ignores players who may be drafted in the 2019 draft who haven’t had an opportunity yet like Jamal Peters, Leo Lewis and Jeffery Simmons. Simmons – despite a recently torn ACL – is going to be drafted, so if anything these numbers are underselling Mullen’s development skills slightly.

Takeaway

There’s no doubt that Dan Mullen’s 2019 recruiting class is light on elite talent if we’re looking specifically at 5-stars. There’s also no doubt that 5-star players get drafted much more often than 4-star players, even highly ranked ones. And drafted players point towards difference makers on the field who produce big-time while in college.

But it also appears that the development argument that so many use to argue with those who rely heavily on recruiting rankings also holds true. Mullen consistently delivered higher percentages of 2-star recruits and 3-star recruits to the NFL than his peers while at Mississippi State. And when digging into the data, he did so with 4-star recruits as well.

This may explain why Mullen was able to win 40 percent of his games against more talented opponents and 84 percent versus less talented opponents from 2015-2017 (compared to 30% and 61% for teams with similar recruiting profiles).

That certainly was true in 2018, as Florida went 3-1 versus teams with more roster talent and 7-2 versus teams with less roster talent according to 247Sports. Much of that can be attributed to the development of Feleipe Franks at QB and the veteran offensive line rather than just recruiting his way out of those problem areas.

Nobody who relies on recruiting rankings and is intellectually honest believes that recruiting is the only thing that matters. But anyone who exhibits the same honesty has to admit that development isn’t the only thing that matters either.

The reality is that the average national champion from 2004-2017 has averaged a national recruiting ranking of 6.1 and an average conference recruiting ranking of 2.1 in the four years prior to its championship season. But Auburn did win with an average national ranking of 14.8 and fans also repeatedly point to Clemson as another recent example.

The response to those examples is pretty simple: Cam Newton, Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence. The question is whether Mullen can add the name Feleipe Franks, Emory Jones or Jalon Jones to that list. That’s a tall task, as it doesn’t happen very often.

But Mullen’s track record suggests he has a better chance than his peers at delivering just that.

Featured image used via Creative Commons license courtesy Keith Allison