The Five-Three Theory: A different approach to maximize Dan Mullen’s recruiting

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Oliver is here

I had the idea for this article a couple of weeks ago as I was going over some recruiting numbers. But as often happens when you do this sort of thing as a passion project, life got in the way. Normally that means my engineering work, but in this case, the life that got in the way was the birth of my son, Oliver.

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I do very much appreciate your support. It means a lot that you all consistently read my thoughts on the Gators program. Now, on with the show!

Market Inefficiencies

Back in 1997, Billy Beane was hired as the general manager of the Oakland Athletics.

Beane took the traditional route to the GM office, starting as the first overall draft pick of the New York Mets and then working his way up through the organization as a scout who eventually made it to the highest levels of the front office.

But Beane completely changed the way baseball rosters were constructed because of his work as GM. Part of that is because he is a really smart guy. But part of that is because constraints were put on him by ownership that asked him to compete with teams that were capable of spending way more money than Oakland was capable or willing to spend.

The result – as documented in the book and movie Moneyball – was the true birth of the analytics movement in baseball that would make Oakland a consistent contender with a miniscule payroll, and eventually would lead to Beane acolyte Theo Epstein helping end the World Series curses of both the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs.

In 1996, the New York Yankees won their first World Series since 1978. From that point on, the Yankees decided to spend to win championships, whether that money was on Chuck Knoblauch, Hideki Irabu, or Roger Clemens. By 2001, the Yankees had a nearly $110 million payroll compared to just $34 million for Oakland.

Yet those 2001 Oakland A’s won 102 games compared to 95 for the Yankees. There clearly was another way to compete.

That way to compete was to find hidden value in players that other organizations were overlooking. In the case of baseball, it was looking for players who got on base a lot because that translated to runs, which obviously, is the point. But the industry was still focused on batting average and power.

That’s how Beane was able to coax 3.3 wins above replacement (WAR) from second baseman Frank Menechino for $225,000. Or trade for outfielder Terrance Long, who contributed 2.0 WAR for $241,000. Or sign amateur free agent catcher Ramon Hernandez (2.3 WAR) for $245,000.

That’s nearly 8 wins for less than 7 percent of what the Yankees paid Roger Clemens in 2001.

So why am I talking about baseball? That example is what comes to mind when I think of Dan Mullen and Florida competing with Alabama on the recruiting trail. Nick Saban has built a behemoth of a program that not only dominates the SEC, but casts a shadow across the landscape of the entire sport.

Just like the Yankees in 2001.

So are there any market inefficiencies that Mullen can exploit in recruiting to help even the playing field, much the way Beane focused on on-base percentage back in 2001?

I think there are.

Measuring Recruit Success

If you’re read my articles for any length of time, you know that I believe that recruiting matters.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out. After all, Alabama is the elite-of-the-elite when it comes to recruiting and just finished off their sixth National Championship since Saban took over in 2007. You have to pay attention to how it’s being done when a team is winning 46 percent of the titles in any sport.

But it’s not just Saban and Alabama anymore. Clemson is now repeatedly among the elite recruiting teams and, perhaps not coincidently, continues to make the College Football Playoff. The same can be said for Ohio State as well. Even the teams that have broken the complete stranglehold of the Tide have done so as elite recruiting teams (LSU in 2019, Georgia in 2017 (before choking)).

It’s also become pretty clear that Dan Mullen isn’t going to be able to go toe-to-toe with the recruiting behemoths as the head coach at Florida. There was hope that he might be able to elevate recruiting either by virtue of being at an elite blue-blood program or by winning early and often.

Well, he’s won a lot (29-9) in his first three years, and he’s done so at a program that has dominated the SEC in the not-too-distant past, yet his recruiting classes have averaged a player ranking (according to 247Sports) of 90.75, 90.56, 90.74 and now 90.38. That’s good recruiting, but it’s nowhere near the level of Alabama (95.00 in 2021).

So for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that recruiting is necessary for winning. And let’s also stipulate that Florida isn’t going to recruit at the level of Alabama, or even Georgia and LSU. What’s Florida to do?

Well, if you’re going to find some sort of hidden inefficiency, you first have to understand how to measure recruit success. There are lots of ways to do that, but they are each problematic.

You could look at games played, but that doesn’t necessarily say anything about the quality of those games. You can look at stats, but how do you compare an offensive tackle to a running back? Instead, I think the only real way to compare success of recruits based on their rankings is to look at how often they are drafted into the NFL, and also how high they are drafted when they are selected.

Basically, the supposition is that if you are drafted and if you are drafted at a higher position, you have shown more on the field in college than your contemporaries.

So I went and looked at the top-500 recruits as ranked by the 247Sports composite for the 2013, 2014 and 2015 classes. I then looked at how often they are drafted and in what round, breaking the data up into 30-player segments (i.e. 1-30, 31-60, 61-90 and so on).

And I think this shows pretty clearly where there are some inefficiencies.

First the percentage drafted. What we see initially shouldn’t be much of a surprise. The top players get drafted a lot more often, but the degree to which that is true is pretty staggering. The top-30 players in the country are usually the 5-star recruits and 20 of the top-30 players were drafted in each year that I examined. Basically, you have a 67 percent shot of getting drafted as a 5-star recruit.

The drop-off is significant if your ranking drops to between 31-60, as those players “only” get drafted 39 percent of the time. That’s still a really good shot of getting drafted, but it pales in comparison to the top-tier guys.

The drop-off then occurs again very quickly and by the time we get to the 200th best player, there really is no difference in draft frequency for those players and players ranked in the lower 400s. The raw numbers really drive home the point. 56 players ranked 151-270 in those three seasons were drafted, compared to 49 ranked 271-390 and 48 ranked 391-510.

So once you get past the top-tier guys, there’s very little difference between a mid-tier 4-star recruit (ranked 200-300) and a high-end 3-star recruit (ranked 400-500).

But what about where they are drafted? Surely those mid-tier 4-stars get drafted much higher than the high-end 3-stars, right?

Well, not so much.

Again, what we see is exactly what we would expect for the elite-ranked players. Those guys go early in the draft, with an average round taken of 2.7. This is where the players ranked 31-60 also start to differentiate, as they are taken with an average draft position of 3.1. But interestingly, there really is no difference in draft position from that point on.

The implications of these two charts are pretty significant.

What this suggests is that the areas where development can make the most difference is from somewhere around the 150th-200th ranked players and up. It also suggests that talent takes over for higher-ranked players, especially as you get to the elite-of-the-elite.

So a guy like Kaiir Elam (ranked 48th overall) has enough raw ability that he’s going to the league whether his coach is Dan Mullen or me. But Lamical Perine’s draft chances (ranked 493rd overall) rely heavily on his coaches’ abilities to maximize his potential.

Exploiting Market Inefficiencies

So this is where it gets interesting for me.

If you’re Dan Mullen and have supreme confidence in your ability to develop players, but you also can’t compete in the recruiting game on a player-by-player basis, how do you exploit this data?

I think you shift your resources to maximize the payoff, because just like the A’s under Beane as I described above, Florida is resource limited.

It’s not to the degree of the A’s, but Florida has worse facilities than teams like Alabama, Georgia and Clemson. The Gators spend less on a yearly basis than those teams too. It’s also pretty clear that spending correlates with recruiting, particularly at the highest levels.

In the 2017-2018 fiscal year, Florida came in ranked 12th in spending on recruiting at $1.15 million. Three teams that finished in front of the Gators that year in spending in the SEC? LSU ($1.2 million), Alabama ($2.3 million) and Georgia ($2.6 million). The Bulldogs and Tide were ranked #1 and #2 nationally  in spending and the gap has only grown since then.

Getting into an arms race with those two is just suicide, at least if you want to compete on a consistent basis. That means you have to do something different.

What is that something? Well, it’s what I’m calling the 5-3 Theory (because of its focus on 5-stars and 3-stars exclusively) and really just has to do with allocating resources in the most efficient way possible to make sure you get the most out of your recruiting program.

It consists of three rules:

1. Dedicate 80 percent of your recruiting resources to the top-60 players in the country (Zone 1 players).
2. Completely ignore anyone ranked 61-299 (Zone 2 players).
3. Offer every player ranked 300-600 within a 300-mile radius of Gainesville (Zone 3 players).

Let’s go through the rules one-by-one.

Rule 1: Dedicate 80 percent of your recruiting resources to the top-60 players in the country

The first rule is pretty straightforward. These are the guys everyone is after, and they’re the guys that you absolutely have to have to win big. And since you’re competing with the huge budgets of Georgia, Alabama and Clemson ($1.8 million in 2017-2018), you have to focus your resources here.

Mullen has already done this through the transfer portal with the additions of Justin Shorter, Brenton Cox, Lorenzo Lingard, Demarkcus Bowman and Arik Gilbert. Now he has to do it with more regularity at the high school level.

He’s not going to be able to do it on a more regular basis without spending more there. So the solution is to shift the vast majority of his resources to those particular players. You’re not winning a championship without those players anyway, so if you miss out on a lower-ranked recruit or two because you’re chasing a Zone 1 guy, so be it.

Rule 2: Completely ignore anyone ranked 61-299

This rule is definitely a radical shift.

But here’s the deal. You have to find the resources to chase the Gilbert’s, Bowman’s and Gervon Dexter’s from somewhere. And the place to find those resources is to eliminate the players who give you a limited bang-for-your-buck compared to the amount of time and effort you have to expend on them.

A top-100 recruit is seen as a big deal in recruiting circles. So is a guy ranked 200 or even 300 because they qualify as a “blue chip” player. Indeed, teams with more blue chip players do win more than teams with less. But I think what the data I showed earlier suggests is that the success we see with more blue chips is because if each program is recruiting using traditional methods, then the program that recruits Zone 1 players the best is also going to recruit Zone 2 players the best as well.

What that means is that you’re again competing with Alabama, Georgia and Clemson (and their budgets) for the same players. That hasn’t been a winning solution for most programs recently, including Florida.

Rule 3: Offer every player ranked 300-600 within a 300-mile radius of Gainesville

So that brings us to rule three.

Alabama signed 27 commits to its record 2021 recruiting class. Only three of those commits were ranked below 300. Georgia signed 20 commits to its 2021 class. Only six of those commits were ranked below 300.

So by specifically targeting players in Zone 3 (ranked 300-600), you’re escaping the shadow of those recruiting giants and competing on a more level playing field.

Let me give you an example. Simeon Price (Pensacola, FL) was the 566th ranked recruit and 81st ranked recruit in the state of Florida. He went to Mississippi State. Savion Collins (Miami, FL) was the 575th ranked recruit and 82nd ranked recruit in the state of Florida. He went to FIU. Carnell Davis (WR, Melbourne, FL, 599th ranking) committed to Rutgers. Chamon Mateyer (ATH, Miami, FL, 370) committed to Cincinnati.

There’s no shame in losing a recruiting battle to Alabama or Clemson. But if you can’t beat out Cincinnati and FIU for in-state guys who should want to be Gators, then you have bigger problems than the Tide.

And the whole point of this analysis is that these guys are just as likely to perform as the players ranked significantly ahead of them. So you lose very little by focusing on this segment of players, but you likely have a much higher percentage to land the player (because you’re not competing against the big boys) and you can dedicate less resources than you would need to dedicate to a player ranked 120th overall.

This ensures you can focus on the guys who truly make a difference, while maintaining the depth of your roster necessary to weather an SEC schedule.

Applying this to Florida

I wish Florida could compete directly with Alabama and Georgia, but that just isn’t happening using traditional methods.

In some ways, Florida has already made a shift towards this strategy in the transfer portal, bringing in Zone 3 players in defensive tackles Daquan Newkirk and Anthony Shelton and then Zone 1 players like Bowman and Gilbert.

But if we look at where Florida’s recruits have ranked since Mullen took over in 2018, there is a lot of emphasis in Zone 2.

The Gators have only brought in four Zone 1 players (top-60), but have brought in 41 Zone 2 players (61-299) and 27 Zone 3 players (300-510).

Florida has a pretty good batting average with the Zone 1 players, as Kaiir Elam is going to get drafted, Chris Steele will too (though not for Florida, unfortunately), Gervon Dexter showed promise in 2020 and Jason Marshall is expected to be a starter day-one in 2021.

The record is a lot more spotty for Zone 2, as we would expect. Even the highly-ranked guys from the 2020 class (Derek Wingo, Jahari Rogers) haven’t gotten on the field all that much. From the 2019 class, Ty’Ron Hopper, Jaelin Humphries and Michael Tarquin have seen limited action. Lloyd Summerall hasn’t played much and Keon Zipperer has been stuck behind Pitts.

Mohamoud Diabate, and perhaps Khris Bogle, are the only players I would predict to get drafted from the eight Zone 2 commits in 2019, so somewhere between 12.5 and 25 percent (right where we would expect).

Compare that to the Zone 3 players, of which there were five. We have no idea what Dionte Marks can do and Jalon Jones and Chester Kimbrough are already gone. But I think Jaydon Hill (ranked 323rd nationally) has a chance to make it to the league.

Takeaway

The point isn’t that these guys are bad players. Far from it. Mohamoud Diabate is outstanding and I’m glad he’s on the Gators defense in 2021.

The point is that the hit rate on guys in Zone 2 isn’t appreciably higher than guys in Zone 3. Yet I guarantee you that the resource allocation is higher for Zone 2 players than it is for Zone 3 players.

And if you’re truly a great developer of talent like everyone suggests Mullen is (and I think his record suggests), then you should be able to get just as much out of Zone 3 players compared to Zone 2.

The real key here is that Florida isn’t getting enough Zone 1 players to compete with the big boys. Whatever the reasons for that are, it has to change. No amount of Zone 2 players is going to be enough to overcome the significant top-end talent advantage that the SEC elite have on the Gators year-to-year.

Sure, Florida may be able to compete every once in a while when the stars hit just right and they are able to cluster a highly-skilled set of recruits, but sometimes those clusters don’t happen and you end up with an elite offense and a defense that can’t stop anyone.

Better facilities might be a long-term panacea, but we’ve been hearing about facilities improving recruiting since before Jim McElwain came to town. The best the Gators have finished in recruiting in that time is ninth nationally and fourth in the SEC. The average finish over that time is 12.7 nationally and 5.9 in the SEC.

Mullen has only slightly improved those numbers, with a national average of 11.3 and an average finish in the SEC of 5.0.

Glass-is-half-full fans are right when they hear criticism of Mullen and ask those who criticize him who Florida coule replace him with who is better. The answer is, on the field I’m not sure there is anybody. But to fully take advantage of that requires a shift in thinking in the recruiting room.

I really admire what Vanderbilt has done this offseason. They went and hired Barton Simmons – who has overseen 247Sports rankings process since 2017 – as its general manager. Whether this works of not for the Commodores, they are trying something different understanding that Vandy has shown over multiple decades that it will struggle to compete just trying to rely on superior coaching with less talented players.

Florida is not Vanderbilt. But right now, the Gators aren’t all that close to Alabama either. To close that gap is going to require some creativity. It’s going to require thinking outside the box to ensure it is able to put the best team on the field.

That means focusing on – and landing – multiple 5-star commits each recruiting cycle. I think that also means de-emphasizing focus on 4-star recruits almost completely. And I think it means ensuring that every highly-ranked 3-star near the state of Florida is a lock for the Gators well before early signing day.

This will mean a break from traditional recruiting metrics. The services that rank overall classes aren’t going to speak highly of the Gators classes using the Five-Three Theory. In fact, a recruiting class like that will rank very similarly to the 21st ranked class that Jim McElwain secured in 2015 (2 5-stars, 2 4-stars and 17 3-stars).

But Antonio Callaway (341) was drafted. So were Chris Williamson and Jabari Zuniga. Kylan Johnson, Fred Johnson, Nick Buchanan, Rayshad Jackson and Luke Ancrum all played significant snaps for the Gators.

Nobody spoke all that highly of Billy Beane’s teams back in the early 2000s either. Moneyball picks up right after that aforementioned 2001 season, with the departures of Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon to free agency. Beane signed Scott Hatteberg (.374 OBP) for $900,000 as a free agent (and 3.3 WAR), providing almost as much production as Damon for more than $6 million less.

The A’s decided to do something different. The 2001 team with Giambi and Damon won 102 games. The 2002 team won 103 and Billy Beane had a book written about his methods.

Dan Mullen has a choice. He can continue to lose two out of three games to Georgia, continue to struggle against Alabama when he does get past Georgia and continue to try competing in an arms race that he isn’t capable of winning. Or he can try something different. I think it makes sense to give the Five-Three Theory a try.

Hopefully he’ll let me write the book about how well it worked out.