NCAA rule change signficantly increases Florida’s odds at a championship

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A couple of weeks ago, the NCAA passed legislation that will grant an extra year of eligibility for players who participate in fall sports, regardless of whether they compete this fall.

To say it was a surprise to me is a significant understatement, considering that the NCAA rarely takes the best interests of the players into account. Of course, with players opting out hanging over the proceedings, it made sense from a business perspective to have this pass as well.

Obviously, the rule means that players like Kyle Trask and Tedarrell Slaton could choose to come back for an extra year in 2021. It also means that coaches would have to be a fool to leave true freshmen on the bench when they can get in-game experience and essentially get a free redshirt.

But I think there’s one other thing that needs to be considered too.

With this rule in effect – combined with the NCAA stating that returning seniors will not affect scholarship limits – Florida just got a big bump in recruiting.

I say this not because Dan Mullen just got better at bringing in high-level recruits. He has consistently had classes that average right around 90.0 using the 247Sports ratings and he’s there again for the 2021 class.

Instead, I say this because Florida just got an extra recruiting class to pull from moving forward, and that recruiting class is going to make a much larger difference for the Gators than it will for the teams Mullen is trying to catch in the SEC.

The Percentage Game

My arguments tied to recruiting have never been that a 2-star or 3-star recruit can’t be great. It’s that they turn out great at a much lower rate than elite-level prospects do.

This has been reflected in various studies, but I think was summed up nicely by 247Sports’ Chris Hummer, who looked at percentages of players with each star ranking and how often they are drafted into the NFL for the 2013 and 2014 recruiting cycles.

Here’s how often players with each star rankings were drafted:

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

Clearly, there’s an advantage to having 5-star guys on the roster, but this says it’s a pretty substantial advantage. After all, if they’re getting drafted more often, chances are their college production was significant.

What this means is that if all you ever recruited was nine 5-star recruits every year and nobody else, you’d likely be able to field an entire team of NFL-level players over a 4-year period (36 players at 61.8% equals 22).

Of course, nobody actually recruits this way. And lots of 5-star recruits leave after only three years to go the pros. But the point is, you’d need 94 4-star recruits over a 4-year period to have the same certainty of NFL-level talent in the starting 22.

That’s a big difference.

Florida and its rivals

What that has meant for Dan Mullen when compared to his rivals is that he is significantly behind.

It’s not that Mullen has recruited at a terrible level. It’s just that his main opponents at LSU, Georgia and Alabama have all recruited better than him since he has arrived in Gainesville.

From 2018 to 2020 (since the 2021 class isn’t complete yet), Georgia has averaged 5.3 5-star recruits, Alabama has averaged 3.0 and LSU has averaged 2.3. Florida has averaged 0.3 (Gervon Dexter). In those same years, Georgia has averaged 15.0 4-star recruits, Alabama has averaged 17.7 and LSU has averaged 12.0. Florida has averaged 15.7.

Putting that in table form means the following:

Expected NFL-level players from 4 recruiting cycles. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Based on the percentage cited above, Georgia will end up with 11 more players over a 4-year period going to the NFL than Florida. Alabama will end up with almost 8 more. LSU – who has recruited at a level lower than either Georgia or Alabama – will end up with only 1.9 more.

Not coincidently, Florida has been extremely competitive with the Bayou Bengals under Mullen. They should be as the levels of talent are about equivalent. In 2018, Joe Burrow wasn’t good enough to carry LSU to victory. In 2019, he was.

But the non-competitive games against Georgia aren’t a coincidence either.

*Quick note: Don’t let the 7-point margin of victory fool you, Georgia dominated the 2019 game. They outgained the Gators 398-278, held Florida to 21 yards rushing and owned time of possession (35:48 to 24:12).

The reality is that exactly what should have happened the last two years has happened.

The Mullen Effect

I wrote an entire article about this last summer, but Dan Mullen does appear to show an ability to get more out of his players – particularly his 3-star recruits – than others.

From 2007-2015, he had 169 3-star recruits come through Starkville at Mississippi State. Fourteen of those recruits were drafted, or 8.3 percent. That’s way higher than we would expect based on the 247Sports study I cited above.

If you make the big assumption that he’s good for that same percentage increase for 4-star recruits as well (raising their draft percentage from 23.3 to 25.7%), you end up with 19.1 NFL-level players every four years.

That actually helps explain Florida outperforming its talent level the past two years. In 2018, 247Sports had Florida as the 12th most talented squad in the country. The Gators finished 7th in the AP Poll and 6th in the Coaches Poll. The Gators talent level dropped to 15th in 2019, but again, they finished 6th in the AP Poll and 7th in the Coaches Poll.

The fact that he’s been able to do that with Feleipe Franks and Kyle Trask as his main QBs is a testament to his coaching ability and ability to maximize talent. But the issue remains that it just hasn’t been enough to be very competitive with the Bulldogs.

Effect of an extra year

I don’t suspect the NCAA anticipated what it was doing when it passed the legislation giving players an extra year of eligibility due to the coronavirus, but it just closed the talent gap between a bunch of teams, Florida included.

The addition of the extra year of eligibility is a game changer, not necessarily for 2020 but more likely for 2021 and especially 2022.

Remember the numbers I showed you in that chart earlier. The value for Georgia in having 28 players with NFL-level talent ready at any given time is it helps the Bulldogs withstand an injury or two. But there are only 22 players who can get on the field at any given time. Building much past that has limited value, especially in the transfer portal world in which we now live.

But for a team who’s recruiting wasn’t quite good enough to get to that 22 players mark, this is a huge deal.

Expected NFL-level players from 5 recruiting cycles. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

You can see it if we calculate the number of NFL-level players in a 5-year period instead of just four. Now, Florida almost has a full 22-man squad. And if you believe that Mullen really is better at development based on his track record, Florida’s number increases to 23.9.

Takeaway

I don’t think I can undersell this point: This isn’t a one-year phenomenon.

If Florida is willing to honor its scholarships, the Gators are about to have a significant period of time where they’re going to have an extra recruiting class compared to what they would have historically been allowed.

I wrote back in July about how Mullen has gone 11-11 since 2016 against teams with more talent than his team has, which is way higher than other coaches typically win those games (30-34%). His track record at Mississippi State is that he delivers player development that outpaces his peers as well.

The problem with Mullen is that he has always struggled to beat Alabama and LSU when he was at Mississippi State and Georgia since he’s been at Florida. One big reason for that is that his teams have always been at a severe talent disadvantage.

With the passing of this rule, the NCAA has either narrowed that disadvantage or completely eliminated it.

I write about recruiting fairly regularly because history says that certain benchmarks are necessary to win both SEC and National Championships. Even more significant than national recruiting is the very real correlation between conference recruiting ranking and win percentage.

That correlation exists because nobody – not even Dan Mullen – can completely coach himself out of having a huge talent deficit.

But the extra year of eligibility has changed that equation. From 2004-2007, every national champion has had a top-5 class in the four cycles prior. The average national recruiting ranking for those teams was 6.1, with an average conference recruiting rank of 2.1.

Consider it this way. Had COVID-19 hit in 2019, Florida would’ve gotten “free” seasons for Tyrie Cleveland, Feleipe Franks, Freddie Swain, Josh Hammond, Lamical Perine, all players who left the program after the season.

If you add those guys to the 2020 squad, how much better do you think the team is?

A huge question for this year is how the Gators will replace Hammond, Swain and Cleveland. Another is whether they can find a replacement for Lamical Perine in the passing game and the leadership department.

Next year, players like Trevon Grimes, Kyle Trask, Tedarrell Slaton, Zachary Carter, Kadarius Toney, Kyree Campbell and Marco Wilson could decide to come back for a 2021 run. And the year after, we’re talking about Jacob Copeland, Richard Gouraige, Emory Jones, Amari Burney, Trey Dean, Dameon Pierce and Kyle Pitts.

I fully expect many of those guys to go to the next level because they’re good enough to do so. But I also expect that Florida is going to have much stronger reinforcements because of the extra recruiting class.

I doubt this was something that was thought about when the NCAA was considering passing this rule. That extra class doesn’t mean a whole lot to Georgia and Alabama, who already had more NFL-level guys than slots available to play. But for teams like the Gators, Oklahoma, Auburn and Notre Dame, their rosters are about to see a boost in talent just because of the probabilities of success of each of those recruiting classes.

Dan Mullen has a track record that suggests he’s going to be able to take major advantage, like SEC and National Championship-level advantage. Because when the talent is equal, Mullen has shown that he is going to win.

And if the talent is equal, are you really taking the guy who called this?