Rashada flips to the Gators

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You didn’t really think I’d let the news of Jaden Rashada flipping from Miami to Florida go without comment, did you?

Gator booster Hugh Hathcock was teasing those of us who follow him on Twitter on Thursday night, and by the time we woke up Friday morning, it was official: Rashada is coming to Gainesville.

All Good!!!
Just a little longer!!!

— Hugh Hathcock (@HughHathcock) November 10, 2022

Hathcock’s involvement implies that there is a significant name, image and likeness (NIL) deal associated with the commitment of Rashada. That shouldn’t be a surprise given the narrative surrounding Rashada’s original commitment to Miami.

I’m not sure that matters all that much. The minute NIL became law of the land, it became clear that elite players were going to get paid. This just confirms what needs to be true for Florida to compete with the big boys: the Gators are officially in the NIL business.

None of that wins football games though unless Rashada turns into an elite player. So that’s what I’m going to try to answer here: what are the chances that happens?

Elite QB Prospects

Rashada is ranked the 57th best player in the country and the 7th best QB. That seems like a very good profile, but how good is it really?

To answer that question, I went back and looked up all of the players ranked between 1-100 at the QB position from 2015-2020 to see what becomes of players in this general range. This isn’t a perfect comparison, but I think it is instructive as it gives us an idea of the average production we can expect from a player like Rashada and his chances of becoming elite.

There are 48 players who fit the description above. Of those players, 7 went in the first round of the NFL Draft (14.6%). Another 6 were drafted into the NFL at all (13 totol, 27.1%). So what that means is there is likely a one in four chance that Rashada gets drafted into the league and a one in seven chance he ends up a first rounder.

Those aren’t great odds. But there are other things we can look at with these comps to project what portends success.

For example, 8 of the 48 prospects had high school completion percentages their senior season below 60 percent. If you’ve read my stuff for any length of time, you know I think that stat – more than others – translates from high school to college pretty well.

Indeed, that’s what we see for those eight prospects, as only one (Sam Howell) got drafted and he was a fifth round selection (though I suspect Bo Nix will get drafted late this year). Beyond that, you have a bunch of busts (Hunter Johnson, Malik Henry, Blake Barnett, Deondre Francois) with Feleipe Franks the third best behind Nix and Howell. Overall, those players completed less than 62 percent of their throws in college for 7.8 yards per attempt.

If we go to the next rung of prospects, there were eight players with completion percentages greater than 60 but at or less than 62 percent in high school. This is also a list of busts excluding one player – Dwayne Haskins of Ohio State – with Brandon Peters, Shea Patterson and Emory Jones on the list. Overall, these players completed less than 62 percent of their throws in college for 8.0 yards per attempt.

But the next rung, this is where we start to see some significant success. Eight players who had completion percentages between 62-64 in high school include five players who were drafted, including three first rounders. Those players were Matt Corral, Tua Tagovailoa, Josh Rosen, Jake Fromm and Justin Fields. Overall, these players completed more than 64 percent of their throws in college for 8.5 yards per attempt.

Interestingly, that 62 percent completion percentage in high school appears to be the dividing line. There are certainly players who were more accurate in high school who have succeeded in college (Kyler Murray, CJ Stroud, Trevor Lawrence and Bryce Young among them), but there have been busts up there as well (Phil Jurkovec, Brandon Wimbush, Harrison Bailey and Ricky Town).

Overall though, 11 of the 13 players drafted have come from the 62 percent-or-above in high school club, with Stroud and Young likely added to that list. That means that a player who meets that benchmark has a chance to be drafted at somewhere between an 11 to 13 in 32 chance, or somewhere between a 35-40 percent chance.

Gators QB Prospects

Why do I lead with that specific analysis? Well, because we can look at Jaden Rashada’s high school stats to understand where he compares with the players in my little study.

Jaden Rashada high school stats

As you can see above, I would have been skeptical of Rashada coming into his senior season, but he’s upped his accuracy without sacrificing much on a per-completion basis. Still, isn’t a perfect profile.

If we look a little bit further into the players I detailed above who were drafted, here’s their yards per attempt in their senior season in high school.

• Matt Corral – 10.6
• Tua Tagovailoa – 9.8
• Josh Rosen – 10.2
• Jake Fromm – 10.2
• Justin Fields – 11.2
• Kyler Murray – 10.9
• Drew Lock – 8.7
• Trevor Lawrence – 12.9
• Davis Mills – 10.1
• Jacob Eason – 10.6
• Jarrett Stidham – 11.6

If we add in Young and Stroud (11.1 and 9.6), every single player except Lock exceeded where Rashada currently sits. That isn’t a guarantee that he’ll be a bust, but it does suggest that some of the points on his completion percentage may be empty calories.

But then you have to look at the alternative. In this case, that’s the statistical profile of the Gators other QB commit for the 2023 recruiting class, Marcus Stokes.

Marcus Stokes high school stats

Stokes has really struggled this season, completing 50 percent of his throws for a  6.6 yards per attempt average and more INTs than TDs. I haven’t followed him closely enough to know whether he is being severely hampered by his teammates or some sort of injury, but if we look at his junior season, he’s still at 58.9 percent and 8.0 yards per attempt.

Could Stokes be a great QB at the college level? Absolutely, as Sam Howell was able to prove. At the same time, there’s a reason he is ranked as the 394th player overall. There’s a significant amount of development needed there.

Interestingly, this analysis actually brought me back to the Gators current QB roster.

Anthony Richardson high school stats

While his senior year was disrupted due to injury, that’s the high school career of Florida’s current starter, Anthony Richardson. His senior year suggests an elite ceiling. His junior year suggests some accuracy problems that were ironed out between that junior year and his senior year. It’s also why the highs we’ve seen this year come with so much hope: one more year and Richardson may put the explosives together with the accuracy and the Gators offense will be unstoppable.

Of course, this looks a lot like Rashada’s statistics as well, just without the explosiveness through the air (11.3 yards per attempt vs. 9.2). I think what this suggests is that Rashada profiles as a good QB, but not a great one. Better than Emory Jones, but with a lower ceiling than AR. Note, that’s still a really good player.

But there are also QBs with good profiles on the Gators roster should Richardson decide to forgo next season for the draft.

Jalen Kitna, Jack Miller and Max Brown high school stats

For anyone wondering why it was Jalen Kitna who ran onto the field for garbage time against South Carolina, these stats might give you a clue. Kitna profiles as more accurate and with a better yards per attempt and yards per completion than transfer Jack Miller. I was doubtful of Miller as anything other than a stopgap coming into the year, and that looks to be the case.

But look at Max Brown’s profile. I wrote a much longer piece about Brown during the offseason and Brown played against inferior talent in high school in Oklahoma. But he’s the ideal size (6’3”, 200 lbs), can run the ball (ran for 1,343 yards on a 7.8 yards per rush clip his senior year of high school) while having an elite completion percentage and yards per attempt.

If you made me bet at gunpoint who’s going to be the guy who surprises in the next year or two, it’s Brown.

2023 Class Implications

None of this is meant to reduce the significance of Rashada’s flip.

Every single recruiting class needs an elite QB prospect. The data I’ve shown above should be proof why, as players ranked 1-100 only pan out 25 percent of the time. Projecting who is going to turn into an elite player is an inexact science, especially at the QB position. What that means is that if you bring in an elite prospect in every recruiting class, then you should be able to find a quarterback to make your offense hum.

If you go 0-4? Well, you’re going to be looking for a new job.

Billy Napier came into a bit of a unique situation this season. New coaches usually don’t get players of Anthony Richardson’s caliber dropped into their lap. If he can get Richardson to stay for one more year (and play more to his potential next season), he widens the timescale to find that elite QB.

Maybe that player is Brown. Maybe it’s Kitna. Maybe it’s Rashada. Or maybe it’s 2024 5-star prospect D.J. Lagway. When we say that stars matter, it isn’t a claim that every single 5-star prospect is going to work out. It’s a claim that if a recruit is viewed as a lottery ticket, you’re much more likely to hit with elite prospects than you are guys further down the rankings.

That doesn’t mean that a player like Brown can’t hit, but the probability of Brown or Kyle Trask hitting as an elite prospect is much lower than it is for Rashada.

The same is true of just about every position, though I would argue that positions that rest on pure physical skill (WR, DL) are even more skewed in that direction. You can actually estimate – and I’ve done this in previous recruiting articles – how many “draftable” players are going to come from a particular class. Rashada adds to those numbers for Billy Napier.

I like breaking up recruiting into three zones slightly different than 5-star, 4-star and 3-star. Zone 1 is players ranked 1-60, Zone 2 is 61-200 and Zone 3 is 201-600. Napier has cleaned up in Zone 2 but this class is lacking in elite players. That’s the place he needs to fix.

But as far as draftable players, Napier’s bump class is now ahead of Dan Mullen and Jim McElwain. If we look back at Mullen’s 2019 class, Kaiir Elam has already been drafted, but that class is going to struggle to get to the 4 players predicted.

Rashada’s commitment also gives Napier an outside shot of beating Urban Meyer’s 2006 recruiting class. I wrote when Cormani McClain decided to go to Miami that Napier was going to have to hit on everyone he was going after in Zone 1, but the addition of Rashada means he can miss on one.

He’s still going to need three more Zone 1 players, but there is now a path to get there. I don’t suspect he’s going to get that done, but we’re getting much closer to Meyer territory than we were last week.

Takeaway

You never want to judge a class based on one recruit. Instead, you need to take the entire class as a whole and then analyze based on what is necessary historically to win.

Napier’s class has clearly been strong but lacking in elite-level (i.e. Zone 1) talent. Rashada is the highest ranked player in this class, a Zone 1 player, and is a Zone 1 player at the most important position on the field. Napier still needs to add more players in that zone for this to be a truly successful bump class, but you can’t get to two until you get to one.

From a football perspective, what Rashada really serves as is a lottery ticket. You don’t know whether he’s going to be great any more than I do. What we do know is that if Napier is able to bring in a top-60 QB in every one of his recruiting classes, he is very likely going to find the next elite signal caller for the Gators.

Maybe he strikes gold with someone like Max Brown, but the Brown lottery ticket is much less likely to cash than the Rashada one over time. You build teams with recruits of Rashada’s quality, not Brown’s. A hit on Brown is like the Golden State Warriors hitting on Draymond Green in the second round. Green is a very good player, maybe even a hall of famer. But he’s nowhere near as successful without Steph Curry and Klay Thompson (both first round picks).

Finally, the commitment of Rashada does mean a little bit more because it means that Florida is finally in the NIL game. I watched the LSU/Arkansas game this weekend with Harold Perkins running all over the field and lamented what this Gators defense would look like had Napier been able to get Perkins to Gainesville in the last recruiting cycle.

When Rashada committed to Miami, the rumors were of a multi-million dollar deal to seal the deal. The idea that his price did anything but go up to make the switch from Miami to Florida is laughable. And the fact that Hathcock was tweeting about the flip before it happened suggests there was brokering going on late into Thursday evening.

That isn’t dirty. That’s the way recruiting is in this day and age. And the reality is that truly elite prospects are going to require NIL deals, and that fostering those deals is going to be a huge part of why a prospect chooses to commit or not.

That doesn’t mean Florida is going to win every recruiting battle. Other schools have war chests just as big as the Gators. And there will be times when the price gets higher than the staff’s evaluation on a player suggests is worth it. But Florida’s in the NIL game.

And Jaden Rashada is a Gator.