2020 Recruiting Lookback
Demarckus Bowman, D.J. Lagway and the importance, and limitations, of recruits

Embed from Getty Images

2020 Recruiting Lookback

As we head into the middle of spring practice, a lot of emphasis has been put on the additions of 5-star recruits D.J. Lagway and L.J. McCray. But the recent news that former 5-star running back Demarckus Bowman has left Central Florida should provide some warning of putting too much emphasis on those two….or should it?

Bowman was a celebrated recruit in the 2020 class who first decided to go to Clemson, transferred to Florida and then transferred to UCF when playing time in Gainesville didn’t develop. But some folks have taken Bowman’s departure from UCF as an opportunity to point out that as a 5-star who washed out, he’s a warning sign for people who take star rankings as gospel. This might be true if folks who emphasize recruiting (like me) actually believed that. Unfortunately, it’s a misstatement of the position that people who look at the data actually hold.

That position is actually that stars don’t guarantee success on an individual level. But collectively, stars – particularly 5-star rankings – confer player success at a much higher rate than for lower ranked players on average. And given roster limitations, budgetary restrictions with NIL and the limited number of 5-star players available, that’s really important information to have when making resource allocation decisions.

Take the 2020 recruiting class that Bowman was a part of. If we break that class into three bins according to the 247Sports Composite rankings – players 1-30, 31-60 and 61-90 – we see a significant drop in success along the way.

This data has the caveat that not all players recruited in 2020 have left college yet (for example, current FSU QB D.J. Uiagaleilei) but even so, it still paints a stark picture. The players ranked 1-30 by the composite rankings sport almost as many first-round draft picks (9) as the number of players drafted who were ranked 31-90 (10). Sixty percent of players ranked 1-30 have already been drafted compared to 17 percent of players ranked 31-90.

This doesn’t mean that the players in that 31-60 bin were worthless. Far from it, as C.J. Stroud was 42nd overall and wound up the second pick in the NFL Draft. But what it confirms is that had an organization spent resources on players in that rating bin, they would have been looking at a 2/10 success rate rather than a 6/10 success rate for players ranked 30 spots higher. That doesn’t mean you don’t recruit and sign players ranked 31-90, but it means that you need to recognize that in order to get one player drafted into the NFL, on average you’re going to need 5 signees of that caliber to get that done.

That’s why the decommitments Florida experienced to its 2024 recruiting class on Early Signing Day were so significant this past year but not necessarily devastating. Florida was able to hold onto the two top players in the recruiting class in D.J. Lagway and L.J. McCray (ranked 7th and 20th in the composite, respectively). Those guys fit firmly within the 60 percent category and so Florida has a better than one in two shot that they both turn into NFL-caliber players.

The decommitments/flips of Xavier Filsaime (37th in the 247Sports Composite rankings), Amaris Williams (62), Jamonte Waller (94), Adarius Hayes (122), Wardell Mack (148), Nasir Johnson (107), Izaiah Williams (311) and Kendall Jackson (425) are not killers individually. But if you presume that around 20 percent of those players will end up drafted, that means Florida probably  missed out on at least two players who are going to be playing on Sundays.

As the NCAA Basketball Tournament started, Nick Knudsen and I put a question out on an episode of Stand Up & Holler about who the Final Four of Florida football players would be who are not QBs since 1990. As such, I went back to look at some of the All-Americans that Florida has had since then to see who I missed. Wikipedia conveniently has consensus and unanimous All-American lists and that’s where the dearth of recent elite play really jumped to the forefront for me.

O’Cyrus Torrence, Kyle Pitts and Vernon Hargreaves III are the only Gators since 2011 to achieve either consensus or unanimous All-American status. That’s a period of 13 years. The prior 13 years (1997-2010) produced 15 consensus or unanimous All-Americans. The reason the Gators are struggling is because they haven’t had truly elite players on the field in quite a while.

You can point to a guy like Bowman not living up to his potential, or you could even point towards 5-stars like Martez Ivey, Cece Jefferson or Antonneous Clayton in that same boat. But here’s what you see when you look at Florida’s recruiting between 2011-2021.

From a pure percentage basis, Florida’s 5-stars have delivered at a very similar percentage to what we saw in the stats above for the 2020 class overall. If anything, the Gators recruits ranked 31-60 have overdelivered and those ranked 61-90 have delivered just about exactly as we should expect. That’s true when we look at on-field performance as well, as four seasons from players ranked in the top-30 have received All-American honors versus zero from players ranked 31-90.

The bigger problem here is one of volume. That is 11 recruiting cycles that I’ve tallied and Florida has averaged one top-30 player and 2.7 players ranked 31-90 in each cycle. Georgia signed 16 top-30 players in the 2018-2020 cycles, 13 of whom were drafted (note: it’s 11 if you don’t count transfers Justin Fields and Cade Mays).

Being a 5-star talent is not a guaranteed ticket to superstardom. But pointing out that one failed to live up to the hype doesn’t prove anything other than even a 60-percent chance of success means failure four out of ten times.

And those are way better odds than anybody else in the rankings.

Transgender Day of Visibility (Happy Easter)

Years ago I read the book “unChristian” by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons from the Barna Research Group. In it, they make the case that Christians have lost the culture by being perceived as judgmental, hypocritical, too political and sheltered. Whether that is the reason or not might be up for debate, but the fact that Christians have lost the culture really isn’t at this point.

I say that because the Biden Administration decided to declare March 31, 2024 (you know, Easter Sunday) as Transgender Day of Visibility and to ban religious Easter decorations from the White House. This certainly has X/Twitter in a tizzy and the declarations of hurt and anger from Christians that their Holy Day is being co-opted in this way are certain to be loud. But you won’t get that from me.

Last year, I was on a flight home during Florida’s game against Missouri. I watched the game on the plane but we landed right as things were getting interesting in the fourth quarter (for those who don’t remember, Florida’s backup QB Max Brown led a go ahead field goal drive but then Florida’s defense allowed a game winning field goal drive right after that included a fourth-and-17 conversion. While all this was going on, I was at the rental car counter with four kids jumping around me. Needless to say, I didn’t see the result live.

Given my position within the Florida football community, my phone told me the results of the game before I got to my mother-in-law’s house and could watch what happened. But an interesting thing happened at that point. Once I knew how the game would end, any anxiety about the result that I normally feel while watching live had completely melted away. I was still disappointed by the result, but since I knew how it ended, I was watching to understand why it ended that way rather than stressing over the result.

Therein lies the beauty of Easter. Christians who truly believe that Jesus Christ died via crucifixion and then was resurrected have been told how this story on Earth ends. We aren’t guaranteed that the United States will prevail, or that things will be easy, but the Bible is incredibly clear that Jesus came to Earth to defeat death for all sinners.

That “all sinners” part is important. There will be a natural instinct to lash out at the folks who have decided to purposefully poke Christians on Easter, but the Bible has something to say about that too. The Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 1:13-23 that he tried to destroy the church, but eventually he became one of the greatest supporters of the faith, so much so that he wrote nearly half the New Testament.

After his conversion, Paul writes in 1 Peter 4:12-14, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.”

What that points at to me is that the proper response to the White House’s declaration is not to whine and complain about the slight. It is to use the slight as a reason to increase the volume and frequency of your declarations of faith. After all, we already know how this particular game ends. That provides me a level of peace that supercedes anything any government can undermine. It also means that whether Easter decorations are up at the White House is really immaterial.

But more importantly, there are other Paul’s out there. These are people who God loves, but who today are either disengaged from or actively interested in destroying the church. These people are winnable and are also highly influential, which means they’ll bring the message of the Gospel to many if they are met with open arms by those who already have embraced the message of Jesus.

So don’t get upset. Get loud. Express your faith openly, honestly and with a love that is easy to see. And invite that person you’ve been feeling nudged to invite to church today for Easter so they can experience a peace that transcends all understanding….a peace that comes from knowing how this game is going to end.

Happy Easter!