Gators August Recruiting Roundup

It’s finally August.

I’ve been writing for a while that this is the point where we’d really have an idea of whether Florida under Billy Napier was going to be able to recruit with the big boys. Certainly things are looking up after the commitments of wide receiver Aiden Mizell (ranked 72nd nationally), wide receiver Andy Jean (ranked 332nd nationally), corner Ja’Keem Jackson (ranked 168th nationally) and safety Jordan Castell (ranked 202nd nationally).

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For sure, those are important additions to this class. But do they move Florida up into the category of the elite recruiters in the country?

Well, to answer that question, we have to dive into the numbers for comparisons to past classes as well as the classes of rivals in 2023 as well. That’s exactly what we’ll do here on the Gators August recruiting roundup.

Will things change?

The reason I’ve targeted August 1 as the deadline for making recruiting determinations is pretty simple: things don’t change much from this date until national signing day.

That doesn’t mean teams don’t add more commitments. Of course they do. What it means it that the quality of the commitments who join after August 1 essentially matches the quality of the commitments before August 1. So if you’re Alabama and 50 percent of your class consists of top-100 players (yes, this is true), then you can expect the same percentage when the dust clears in February.

Back in April when I wrote about this, I showed the following graph.

This shows what I’ve said above, namely that there is little change in the overall ranking of a class once the seasons starts. So the idea that a team with an average player rating of 91 is going to push that rating to 94 with a flurry of signings in January just isn’t backed up in the historical data.

That means we can start to make determinations of where this class is going to finish for Billy Napier right now.

The Sikes Standard

Back in 2018, my colleague Bill Sikes wrote a fantastic article looking at the second – or “bump” – class recruiting of future SEC Champion coaches. Here’s what he wrote.

The 6 future SEC Championship coaches hired since 2005 saw the following during their bump class:

An increase of 8.2 spots in the national rankings

An increase of 2.3 spots in the conference rankings

An average of 2.3 5-star recruits

An average national ranking of 4.7

An average of 16.8 blue-chips (4 or 5-star recruits) in the class

Anyone taking an objective look at the data could have told you that Florida was in for an uphill climb with its last two coaches after looking at those metrics.

That’s a lot of red in those two charts. McElwain’s only green comes from the fact that his 2015 transition class was so bad (ranked 21st, only 4 blue chip players) that his bump class had to be better. When it came to the raw numbers (5-stars, blue chips, national ranking), he fell way short.

Mullen didn’t have that problem, as he had a pretty good transition class. He just wasn’t able to build on that, basically treading water with the exact same recruiting class as his transition class and then replicating that year after year.

Napier’s transition class ranked 17th overall and 7th in the SEC. That means he should be able to reach the first two metrics fairly easily and the proof in the pudding will be whether he can meet the last three. Let’s take a closer look at each of them and whether I think Florida will achieve the metric.

8.2 spot increase in the national rankings – Chances (60%)

This metric would put the Gators at a national ranking somewhere between 8th and 9th when everything is said and done at the end of the year. This looks doable right now, but certainly isn’t a lock.

The reason I say that is because Napier’s class currently has an average player rating of 91.14, which ranks 14th in the country. However, Oregon ranks 8th in the country with an average player rating of 92.02. That’s close enough that with the right signings (cough….Cormani McClain….cough), Florida can catch up.

This is where it gets really interesting though. The fifth ranked class in the country last season was Texas’ with a 247 average player rating of 91.17, but right now there are 13 teams with higher player ratings than that currently. This is likely partly because of NIL and perhaps the money is being spread out a little bit more evenly amongst the second-tier recruiting schools.

But I also think it has a lot to do with a lot of the schools not ranked as high as Texas going through transition years.

Florida wasn’t the only school to go through a coaching change last season. Notre Dame (7th nationally, 91.82), Oklahoma (8th nationally, 91.55), LSU (12th nationally, 91.62), Oregon (13th nationally, 90.78) and Miami (16th nationally, 91.79) all had high overall player quality (higher than Texas) but signed smaller classes, something that often happens in transition years.

But this year, those five all have commit lists with the same high quality but now higher volume as well (except for Oregon): Notre Dame (1st nationally, 93.31), Oklahoma (7th nationally, 91.61), Miami (9th nationally, 92.32), LSU (10th nationally, 91.73) and Oregon (23rd nationally, 92.02).

Napier has seen a similar increase (12th nationally, 91.14) and a bump in player quality as well (88.88 last class), but the bump has basically just kept pace with the programs that were essentially even with Florida last season.

2.3 spot increase in the conference rankings – Chances (20%)

This one is again doable, but only barely. Florida ranked 7th in the SEC last year – behind recruiting stalwarts Missouri and Kentucky – and so to meet this metric would only have to place 4th in the conference.

The problem with that is that Alabama and Georgia are way too far ahead to catch, and the only way Florida beats Texas A&M is if the Aggies (average player rating of 93.54) decide not to sign very many players.

That means that the battle for fourth in the conference is between Florida and LSU (91.73 average player rating). The Tigers are going through the same transition that Florida did, having moved on from Ed Orgeron and bringing in Brian Kelly. Kelly was able to beat out Napier for 5-star linebacker Harold Perkins on signing day last year and so it’s important that Florida one-ups the Tigers this year.

That’s particularly important considering that the Gators player the Tigers every year, and those games are almost always incredibly close. That shouldn’t be a surprise given that both entities appear to have very similar talent levels.

And as close as 91.73 and 91.14 seem, consider this. If Florida were to get the commitment of Cormani McClain (the 3rd overall player in the country), that would only increase the Gators’ average player rating to 91.65. What that means is that Florida has to out-recruit the Tigers from here on out, not including getting McClain to commit as well.

That’s a pretty tall ask.

2.3 5-star recruits – Chances (1%)

Go look at the prospect list for Florida. The only 5-star in the entire list is McClain.

There was a little bit of chatter a while back that perhaps Napier could convince Notre Dame commit Keon Keeley (8th ranked nationally, edge rusher out of Tampa) to flip, but that noise has died down considerably recently.

Even if Napier were to pull that off and get McClain to commit, he’d still need another 5-star recruit to commit to the Gators to reach that metric and I just don’t see it. Every year there are around 30-32 5-star recruits. Last cycle only four programs had more than three 5-star commits and 18 of the 5-star commits ended up at SEC schools.

Florida is competing in shark-infested waters when it comes to these players. There are only 34 composite 5-star players in this cycle and 22 of them (65 percent) have already committed. Most of the others are heavy leans towards one or two schools, McClain included.

I just don’t see any way this metric is met.

Average National Ranking of 4.7 – Chances (5%)

I have this at five percent just because I don’t want to end up too depressed, but here’s the main issue. Florida currently has 16 commits and 9 of them are in the top-300. Normally, that would translate to a class ranked 7th. But Florida also only has one top-100 commit (Mizell, 72nd), which is lower than you would normally expect.

I mean, compare Florida’s player rankings to its rivals.

Yes, Florida is in front of Tennessee and FSU, but the Gators are much closer to those two than they are to A&M, Georgia and Alabama. That means that ending up with a top-5 class means beating out two of the recruiting behemoths from other locations as well.

That isn’t Ohio State, who is having another great year recruiting in the Midwest. And it isn’t Miami either, given that the ‘Canes have beaten Florida for all of the players who would have shifted that story around. USC is humming with Lincoln Riley in charge of recruiting. Clemson is still formidable. And now Notre Dame is kicking butt (93.31) under new head coach Marcus Freeman.

This is another metric that Napier is going to miss. In many ways, that’s because recruiting has become so top-heavy, but it is the reality of the situation.

Average of 16.8 blue-chip recruits – Chances (100%)

This is one the Napier should – and has to – nail. Currently, his class 14 4-star commits and 2 2-star commits. You figure that he’ll probably bring in 25 players, which means to meet this metric, only 3 of the remaining 9 commits need a 4 or 5-star in front of their name.

That should be simple.

I’m not sure whether it’s been strategic or not, but Florida has focused very heavily in the 100-400 range of the rankings. In some ways this may be a response to NIL rules, as those player are likely not going to tie up as many resources as some of the truly top-tier recruits. But what it also suggests is that this staff knows how to bring in that caliber of player.

One thing to note in this analysis though is that there has been what you might call “star creep” in the recruiting rankings over the years. In 2007, Mike Pouncey was a 3-star recruit but was the 279th player nationally and the 15th ranked guard. This year, Knijeah Harris is a 4-star recruit but is ranked 398th as the 23rd best interior offensive lineman.

That isn’t to denigrate Harris, but it is to suggest that getting 17 “blue-chips” on your roster was a lot more difficult in 2007 than it is now, simply because there are 100 more of them per cycle. That’s why I focus on top-300 players more often, because that keeps the definition the same for different eras.

And by that metric, Napier is going to have to hit on a lot of guys to reach the 16.8 barrier. That’s because right now he has 9 top-300 commits, with five 4-stars who rank between 320 and 406. What that means is that to reach the 17 threshold (and assuming 9 more commits), Napier would need to have 8 of the 9 be in the top-300.

If he does that, he’s going to get up to that 7th or 8th national ranking that I said is a long shot currently. It also means he’ll fly in front of LSU to get to 4th in the SEC. But that’s a tall order to ask for a coach who has thus far only brought in 56 percent of his players in that top-300 tier.

Takeaway

All is not lost when it comes to the story of Billy Napier’s bump class and his ability to recruit at Florida.

Jim McElwain’s average player ranking from 2015-2017 was 88.36 with a high of 89.11. Napier’s class this year will blow both that average and best out of the water. Similarly, Dan Mullen’s best recruiting class from a score perspective was his transition class (90.75) and he had an average of 90.59 in his time in Gainesville.

The story for McElwain was that he started out recruiting so poorly in 2015 that his modest improvements in 2016 and 2017 just weren’t enough. The story for Mullen is that his transition class was his best class from a score perspective and then recruiting basically just stayed there. In both cases, that left Florida fans with little hope that either was going to make the jump necessary to end up with a long-term successful program.

Napier actually underperformed Mullen with a transition class at 88.88. Yet still, he was able to garner confidence by breaking through at IMG Academy and strafing Mullen’s class to bring his personalized class back together at the transition. And unlike McElwain or Mullen, Napier is on track to improve on his 2022 player rating by almost 2.5 points. If he can bring 3-4 elite 5-star recruits next year to supplement this type of class, his score would jump up there with the big boys.

So is that possible? Well, Clemson is often brought up as an example, but I don’t like it as one. The Tigers were in the ACC and so were able to finish second in the conference repeatedly before really breaking through on the field. Swinney was also able to hit repeatedly at the QB position, which isn’t something you can rely on long-term.

Perhaps a better example is Texas A&M. Jimbo Fisher came to the Aggies, and here is his national recruiting ranking, average player rating and number of 5-stars for each of his recruiting classes thus far:

What you can see is that in Fisher’s first three seasons, he didn’t have a class ranked higher than Napier’s is right now based on average player rating. Things were just increasing incrementally until the 2022 class rolled around. So what happened?

NIL.

That’s the thing that has me holding out hope for Florida to turn things around under Napier. There’s no doubt that he believes in systems and processes. Anybody around the program will tell you that it is night and day when it comes to their football operations and how they’re reaching out and maintaining relationships with recruits compared to the previous regime.

But the jump we see on that chart – from Fisher signing five 5-star recruits in four years to signing 8 in one class – means that the way in which you bring elite recruits to your program has changed.

Perhaps Florida was slow to adjust to that reality. Or perhaps Florida has decided to invest in depth in the 2023 class with an understanding that they’ll go whole hog after elite players in 2024 and 2025 who they’ve had more time to evaluate.

I know that historically that would have been a poor way to build a recruiting pipeline. But it does feel like we’re at a time where some historical metrics likely are going to change. One thing that hasn’t changed is that the team with more elite players is going to win more often in head-to-head battles on the field.

But the A&M example shows us that adjustments and improvements can be made on the recruiting trail in the SEC even with the Georgia and Alabama machines humming.

The question is going to be whether those sorts of adjustments are a one-time deal and can’t be replicated, or whether Florida can find a way to springboard a class like this one into truly elite classes in the future.

I would prefer that Napier’s bump class answer those questions, but the reality is that it just isn’t going to. I’m not left where I was with Mullen: with no hope that things would ever improve. But I’m also not where I want to be: knowing that Napier is going to build a behemoth the likes of which only exist in Tuscaloosa and Athens.

The Mullen era was about answering the question of whether a team with sub-elite recruiting could be developed to consistently beat teams with elite recruiting pipelines. The answer to that question was a resounding no.

It looks like the Napier era is going to be about answering a different question. Can he take advantage of NIL to help position the Gators for elite recruiting beyond just a massive bump class?

Stay tuned.