Does NIL make 3-star quarterbacks more valuable than before?

Embed from Getty Images

Preseason Magazine

Hey everyone! I know it’s been a while since we’ve had an article out, but that’s because we’ve been working on a special project: The Read & Reaction 2022 Florida Gators Preseason Magazine!

Every year, we buy the Lindy’s or Phil Steele’s magazines and they’re great products. But they only have a few pages dedicated to our favorite team. By contrast, our digital magazine is going to be 100+ pages dedicated to the Florida Gators and how they fit into the SEC this year. From schematic things that Billy Napier and Patrick Toney do, to historical markers under Spurrier and Meyer, to evaluation of returning starters and potential breakout players, we’re going to cover the team we love in a way that’s different than other preseason magazines.

It’s going to be out just before Memorial Day. If you sign up at the link below, we’ll send you a link to it when it’s available, as well as a 20% off coupon to go along with it as a thank you for letting us know you’re interested. Thanks for your support!

• 2022 Florida Gators Preview Magazine

The Article

When The Athletic released an article earlier this offseason that detailed an $8 million NIL deal for a particular recruit, it made people in the college football industry pause. That’s a lot of money to fly around for a recruit, even in a sport as flush with cash as college football.

What we’ve seen since then is an arms race of sorts, as various collectives and boosters put together war chests to help their schools succeed in this new NIL world. We’ve seen this at Florida as well, both with the formation of the Gator Collective, and then the formation of the Gator Guard. The latter – led by Hugh Hathcock and focused on getting big-time booster money involved – likely positions the Gators well for the upcoming recruiting battles that are on the way.

But the specter of all of this money leads to another question: How do you make sure you spend it wisely?

After all, there are going to be trade-offs now. It didn’t cost anything (allegedly) to sign 7 five-star recruits in the past. But if each of them requires an $8 million deal, there is going to be a cap to what any one program is able to do. Ostensibly this might help level the playing field on the recruiting front, regardless of what Nick Saban is saying.

But if there is essentially a cap to what any one program’s collective is able to dole out, then the successful programs are going to be those who figure out how to optimize the application of NIL dollars to maximize talent.

So the question then is this: how do you best optimize your dollars to build a winner in this era?

Most Valuable

Nobody doubts that the quarterback is the most valuable player on the field. We’ve seen it over and over again that teams with elite QBs are able to cover holes that poor or average QB play just cannot.

That can certainly be offset with talent elsewhere as we saw last year with Georgia. Bulldog QB Stetson Bennett’s stats looked good last year, but he was not an elite QB. Yet Georgia was able to finish as the SEC runner-up despite that because the defense was so ferocious that he didn’t need to be.

But that works both ways as well. The 2010 Auburn Tigers won the National Championship with the 53rd ranked defense in points per game (24.1). That mirrors the Tigers finish in yards per play allowed against FBS opponents, where they finished 47th. What that says it that Auburn was an average defense, but that having Cam Newton under center can offset that.

The NFL clearly understands this concept. If you look at the highest paid 10 players and their average salaries by position, QBs make, by far, the most money. In fact, at $36.4 million on average, the only position that makes more than 54 percent of that total is edge rushers ($21.7 million). What this suggests is that an elite QB recruit is almost two-times as valuable as an elite edge rusher.

But more than that, what this suggests is that the falloff is significant when we’re talking about tight ends, running backs, guards and even right tackles. Those players just don’t have the same value as the edge rushers, wide receivers, left tackles or interior defensive linemen.

I think this is a good starting point for valuation of elite recruits. If you can get an elite left tackle and an elite interior defensive linemen for less than an elite QB, then it might be worth it. But if the NIL price for each is essentially the same as for a QB, then you’re better off overspending a little bit for the QB.

Application to recruiting and transfers

None of this is neurosurgery. Everybody knows that QBs are more important than defensive linemen when it comes to winning. The nuance is in then applying the recruiting rankings to understand how important each entity is to winning, thus allowing us to put a valuation on each recruit.

For example, we know that recruiting rankings correlate with winning. We see that year-after-year, especially in the SEC. But one thing that I haven’t seen is figuring out how much of that winning is attributable to a particular position.

For instance, if we look at how 247Sports builds its recruiting rankings, it values Walter Nolen (a defensive tackle and the number two player nationally) at 29.98 points but values Conner Weigman (a QB and the number 22 player in the country) at 24.84 points. That five points may not seem like much, but it suggests that the rankings say that Weigman is going to be less important to winning for the Aggies than Nolen.

This actually makes sense for most positions and we can see that in the NFL valuations. Because there is more of a drop from QB to edge rusher ($14.7 million) than from QB to center, essentially what it is saying is that you want elite talent at each of those positions, but they’re all going to contribute roughly equally to winning.

But I think what this says is that the QB position contributes disproportionally, which means that there should be more emphasis on bringing in a truly elite signal caller, even if that means sacrificing elsewhere.

The NFL Edge

Joe Burrow has an average annual salary of $9 million. That’s a far cry from the $36 million dedicated to a top-10 QB, which means that Cincinnati is getting excess value from the QB position. Essentially, the Bengals can spend elsewhere because they don’t have to pay Burrow that $27 million differential.

In a league with a spending cap, that’s a really big deal.

Compare that to the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers has no doubt earned his money, but he’s going to make $42 million in 2022, $59.5 million in 2023 and $49.3 million in 2024. Because of cap gymnastics, Rodgers deal “only” costs the Packers $28.5 million against the cap in 2022, but that means that Green Bay still has a $19.5 million disadvantage to Cincinnati.

So why am I bringing this up? Well, the same principle may end up applying in college football.

The $8 million NIL deal that was reported in The Athletic was not a signing bonus. Instead, it was a contract that incentivized the player to stay at the school for three years to maximize earnings. The NIL deals stayed with the entity giving out the contract, meaning the transfer portal wouldn’t be able to be used to negotiate more funds.

So imagine if you were a savvy coaching staff. What if you could find a 3-star QB who you were sure was going to be a star? For whatever reason, that player was undervalued by other programs but the upside was that the player could turn into a star. And let’s say your collective could structure a contract similar to the one proposed in The Athletic, but that it had a significantly lower overall dollar amount.

You’d now have the exact advantage that the Bengals have over the Packers. Essentially, you would have freed up money that normally you’d have to allocate towards an elite QB and instead would be able to allocate that money to multiple edge rushers, wide receivers and left tackles.

The converse is also true. Let’s say your collective executed the $8 million NIL deal as proposed in The Athletic. That 5-star QB came your way, but he just wasn’t either very good or wasn’t good enough to send your program over the top. In the meantime, all of the other elite players went to other schools who didn’t lock up all of their collective dollars into a QB.

Real-Life Examples

You don’t have to look too far to see some real life examples.

Bo Nix went to Auburn as the 5-star savior. He was the 33rd ranked player nationally in the 2019 class and had offers from Alabama, Clemson and Florida. He ran a 4.60 40-yard dash and could make every throw.

But upon closer inspection, there were some areas of concern when you looked at the high school stats I like to focus on. His senior year of high school, he only completed 59.7 percent of his throws for an average of 8.5 yards per attempt. Overall in high school, he had a completion percentage of 56.2 and also averaged 8.5 yards per attempt.

Those aren’t great numbers. For frame of reference, Feleipe Franks completed 58.9 percent of his throws his senior year but averaged 12.0 yards per attempt. Joe Burrow completed 72.3 percent of his throws and averaged 12.8 yards per attempt.

Not surprisingly (and this isn’t revisionist history, I predicted Nix would struggle back in 2019), Nix has been a below average QB at Auburn, posting a completion percentage of 59.4 percent and averaging 6.9 yards per completion. His career QB rating of 126.2 is lower than Treon Harris (127.1). Maybe Nix will excel at Oregon this year in a different scheme, but that stats don’t suggest a breakout is coming.

That leads me to the evaluation of 5-star Tennessee commit Nicholaus Iamaleava. Iamaleava has been the subject of much conjecture, as it has been rumored that he is the player to whom the $8 million deal was proposed. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I have no doubt that he has some sort of NIL deal set up (as he should).

That’s not really what I’m interested in other than if Iamaleava really is being compensated at that level – and if it turns out that he isn’t as good as the projections say he will be – then that’s a problem for Tennessee.

Greg Biggins’ 247Sports evaluation of Iamaleava is glowing:

“Has made huge strides over the last year in terms of his pocket feel, ability to throw on time and anticipate. He always had a big arm but can now change speeds, go through progressions and make accurate touch throws down the field look easy. He has exceptional escapability and is just as dangerous outside the pocket as he is throwing in it.”

Biggins has Iamaleava projected as a first round NFL Draft pick.

But now let’s look at the stats for Iamaleava that I cited above for Nix. Maxpreps has him at 60.3 percent completions in 2020 and then 59.6 percent in 2021. Not exactly the advancement in accuracy that was touted in the evaluation. He averaged 8.30 yards per attempt in 2020 and then 8.25 in 2021. Again, not exactly the step forward I was looking for.

For sure, Iamaleava still has his entire senior year to improve. Anthony Richardson took a huge step between his junior and senior year in high school. But what I see in these stats is a player with extreme physical gifts who hasn’t been able to harness those gifts into the productivity I want to see statistically.

Compare that to Max Brown, the much less regarded QB that Billy Napier signed late in the 2022 class. Brown completed 72.7 percent of his throws in 2020 and then 71.1 percent in 2021, so he’s highly accurate. On those throws, he averaged 13.8 yards per attempt in 2020 and 11.7 yards per attempt in 2021. This suggests that his accuracy wasn’t just on dinks and dunks, though in my evaluation of Brown, I suggested his film suggests he’s a bit of a developmental project.

Takeaway

Let’s look three years down the road. Iamaleava has been good-but-not-great for the Vols even though he started from Day 1. Brown is starting to fulfill that statistical promise on the field after Anthony Richardson helped keep the Gators respectable (and winning over the Vols) for the past two seasons.

But perhaps more importantly, Florida collectives were able to dole out NIL deals to players like Cormani McClain, Malik Bryant, Payton Kirkland and a whole host of elite non-QB players who didn’t require the same type of huge NIL deal that an elite QB demands. In that scenario, Florida is a more complete team and Brown is outplaying the 5-star QB recruit.

Look, I think stars matter about as much as anyone out there. But as significant money is getting attached to those stars through NIL, the calculation is going to change. Just like Joe Burrow is probably worth more on a per-dollar basis than Aaron Rodgers even if Rodgers is better, hitting on a 3-star QB like Brown is going to be worth its weight in gold for overall roster construction.

That’s a high variance strategy. The odds that Iamaleava is elite are much higher than the odds that Brown will be. But I have to be honest that I don’t see in the statistical profile a whole lot of evidence that Iamaleava is going to be a difference maker when he gets to Knoxville.

Tim Tebow completed 64 percent of his throws his senior year in high school. Kyler Murray was at 64 percent as well. Bryce Young was at 72. None of them averaged less than 9.7 yards per attempt and both Murray and Young were over 10.8.

The point isn’t that Iamaleava is going to be good or bad. It’s that QB evaluation is about to get really, really important because those spots are going to occupy big-time NIL dollars. Clemson hit on Tajh Boyd, Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence and Dabo Swinney won multiple championships. Jim Harbaugh has almost the same recruiting profile as Dabo, but has been saddled with Jake Rudock, Wilton Speight, John O’Korn, Shea Patterson, Joe Milton and Cade McNamara. Whether Iamaleava ends up like Lawrence or Patterson is going to go a long way towards determining the future of the Vols.

And if Brown turns into a star, the Gators are going to have a leg up in recruiting for years to come.