Big Ten signing day overview (long)

[amarcott]

I've done this every year for a while now, a post-signing day overview of every team in the Big Ten and how Purdue compares to them.

This was a very good recruiting year for the Big Ten, I feel like everyone is legitimately thrilled with their class except Nebraska who are in a lame duck year, and maybe Illinois. The Big Ten's average recruit rating is 3.736 stars, which is second only to last year's 3.743 star average. I will note that I only track Big Ten recruits, so there's no way for me to check if there is a "rating inflation" going on or if the Big Ten is truly recruiting better. My guess is that we are all just recruiting better, the coaches in the Big Ten are much stronger than even just a few years ago. Just my opinion.

So Purdue. I have us with the 12th-best average rating per recruit, but we took the 5th-most number of players. In my points system that has us placing 9th. Rivals has us 7th. 247sports has us 9th. Several months ago I developed a projection for how many draft picks each class will have, and it has Purdue at 1.61 projected draft picks, which ranks 10th. So let's say Purdue's class is 9th-ish, and if you filter out some programs like Ohio State, Michigan, etc who will always out-recruit Purdue that's not bad. Better than it sounds.

Going purely off ratings this is safely Purdue's third-best class behind 2019 and 2020. Maliq Carr was our top recruit in 2020 so if we erase that top dot in 2020 there's maybe an argument for second place. But regardless, 2022 is a clear step above 2021 which presumably got our recruiting coordinator fired. The story of Brohm's recruiting at Purdue is that the "floor" has increased tremendously under Brohm while he's also been able to pick up some truly elite talent here or there that star early.

Here are my Big Ten rankings. Yeah, 1-7 are all East and 8-14 are all West is a thing. I prefer to use my Projected Draft Picks metric which gives the West quite a boost, but this does factor in how good a program has been in putting players into the NFL so it's maybe not "fair" in terms of comparing recruiting ratings. But I think this does tell a better story on who will take these recruiting classes and be "better" with them. So in order of Projected Draft Picks I'll do a little dive into each class:

1. Ohio State - I never know what to say about OSU's recruiting because they honestly do not compare themselves to the rest of the Big Ten, they are comparing themselves to Alabama and Clemson. I do not track Alabama or Clemson so I have no idea how they're doing there. But this is the 12th year in a row that OSU has finished 1st in average rating per player, out of the 12 years that I have data. The only thing maybe noteworthy about this class is that it's the second-least number of players they've taken in this span, maybe a sign of them leaving room for transfers under the new transfer rules.
2. Penn State - Penn State's class is led by three Army Bowl All-Americans: QB Drew Allar, RB Nicholas Singleton, and DL Dani Dennis-Sutton. All 3 are the top recruits in the Big Ten at their positions, and it's usually noteworthy when any recruit at all is the top Big Ten player at a position and they're not an Ohio State commit. Penn State was able to lock down their state by taking the top 4 Big Ten recruits from Pennsylvania, 7 four-star recruits from Pennsylvania alone, and 10 of their 23 signees are from Pennsylvania. James Franklin has to be hoping this injection of talent will see early results as this is Penn State's 3rd-highest rating per player ever, and 2nd-highest among offensive players only.
3. Michigan - Kind of an oddball class for Michigan, although everyone is obviously highly rated. They're only taking 2 OL, but they're taking 2 QBs, 2 TEs, and 6 DBs (that is a ton). They have the #2 and #5 DB commits in the Big Ten, 4 of the top 11 in conference, and 5 of the top 17. Will Johnson is their top DB and is Michigan's 6th-highest rated recruit ever. This is the 3rd year in a row of a slight decline in average rating per player, but emphasis on the word "slight", I don't think this is concerning. And I'm sure we'll see a decent bump next year with Harbaugh finally getting past Ohio State and making the playoffs.
4. Iowa - They only took 17 players so their ranking isn't super high, but their average rating per player is high and Iowa is one of the best schools in the country in developing NFL players so they perform really well in my projected draft picks metric. Honestly, it's a pretty typical Iowa class except for two extremely highly-rated players that are somehow both from Iowa, a state not really known for producing high-4-star recruits: DB Xavier Nwankpa (4.844 stars) and DL Aaron Graves (4.422 stars).
5. Indiana - Despite a 2-10 season IU put together by far their highest-rated class ever, which ranks somewhere around 20th nationally depending on which site you look at. They did well in the states of Indiana and Florida in particular. IU has 12 recruits that have at least 1 4-star rating from a service, and I'm not even going to look up how that compares to their previous years because that has to absolutely shatter their previous best. But, and I'm going to try not to sound like a Purdue homer as much as possible, this has got to be the strangest collection of 4-stars I have ever seen. You've got two very highly-rated DBs in McCullough and Mullen, both with family ties to the program, but if you're IU you don't care about that at all. But you have WR Omar Cooper and RB Gi'Bran Payne who suffered injuries that caused other programs to back off. You have OL DJ Moore that a lot of programs backed off from for some reason, Purdue included. IU flipped two Tennessee recruits who apparently Tennessee wasn't going to sign anymore, one of them being a 4-star with a final 3 of IU, UConn, or Marshall. Just saying, I think a lot of these touted 4-star guys are maybe not the real deal, and IU actually does have a history of getting 4-star guys who go on to do basically nothing for them. But the DBs McCullough and Mullen are legit.
6. Minnesota - Like Iowa they've done a good job at putting guys into the NFL, lower-rated guys in particular. This class is actually Fleck's lowest average rating in his tenure. Fleck's classes are usually pretty scattered around the country, but there are only 3 states where Minnesota took more than one player: Florida (5), Minnesota (4), and Texas (2). And even in Minnesota they only landed one of the top 4 recruits committed to a Big Ten school. Just a wild-ass take: I wonder if Fleck's recruiting style is burning too many bridges. However, this class is still solid for Minnesota and led by two 4-star defensive linemen: Anthony Smith and Trey Bixby who rank 7th and 11th among Big Ten DL commits.
7. Maryland - Locksley has somehow made it a thing where he'll flip a bunch of recruits on signing day and did not disappoint this year. 4 flipped to Maryland on signing day, 6 in the last two days. 3 of those 6 have 4-star ratings. Their class is headlined by the Big Ten's #3 LB Jaishawn Barham who was committed to South Carolina a couple of days ago. Maryland will want to lock down the state a bit better going forward though, only 2 of the top 6 players in the state are going to Maryland. Michigan and Penn State were able to pick up some talent in the area. IMO next season will be pivotal for Maryland, I don't think they'll be able to keep flipping these 4-star guys if it appears the program isn't going anywhere. They did make a bowl game this year so there's at least some momentum.
8. Wisconsin - I don't know Wisconsin's scholarship situation but I'm assuming it's pretty restrictive as they only signed 13 players, which is their lowest since 2012. However, this is their 4th-highest average rating ever, and all of their top 4 are in the last 4 years. (Wisconsin would not be the first program where a consistent increase in talent is not resulting in more wins, but that's a different analysis for a different time.) This is a particularly good class on defense where this is Wisconsin's second-highest average ever. Good news for Purdue: No RB in this class.
9. Rutgers - While I have Rutgers down at 9th they should still be doing backflips over this class. This is their highest average since 2012, which was the last time Schiano was coaching Rutgers. And if that stat sounds familiar it's because it was also true last year. They did a great job recruiting their state as 5 of the top 7 NJ kids committed to Big Ten programs are going to Rutgers, and Rutgers signed 8 NJ kids total. They signed seven offensive linemen - no mystery on where Schiano thinks they need to improve - but also signed the #4 OL recruit in the Big Ten. They also got the #5 QB who actually joined the team right before the start of the season somehow.
10. Purdue - We all know this class is headlined by Brady Allen and Joe Strickland. Allen is tied with MSU's QB for the 3rd-best in the conference, while Strickland ranks as #8 at DL. Nic Caraway will also be Purdue's 7th player in the US Army All-American Bowl. This is Purdue's 3rd-highest rated class ever, and is pretty balanced as breaking it down by offense and defense has both ranked 3rd as well. Like Rutgers, Purdue went absolutely nuts with offensive linemen, although "only" signed 5. Purdue's offensive line only ranks 10th in average stars (which actually isn't bad) but by sheer volume they ranked 3rd in class points at the position, and 5th in projected draft picks.
11. Michigan State - Right off the bat, they rank this low because at the end of Dantonio's tenure they signed a whole bunch of risky 4-star guys (see: IU) who all busted which tanked them in this metric. So no, this isn't really the 4th worst class in the Big Ten, no one metric is perfect. I think it's actually pretty similar to Penn State's class where they're headlined by a QB, a RB, and a defensive lineman, but just a step below Penn State across the board. But that's still really good. MSU has to be thrilled with how they did in the state of Michigan, landing 4 of the top 5 recruits. And almost half of their recruits from outside of Michigan are from Georgia so they've established a pipeline in a talent-rich state as well. And of course, Mel Tucker is establishing MSU as a popular transfer destination as well, so there's a lot of talent being added to MSU that doesn't show up in these rankings.
12. Illinois - Kind of a pedestrian class, which is a little bit concerning since new coaches tend to get what I call "new coach hype" in their first full recruiting cycle. Illinois's class is basically identical to their last two classes on-paper. This is the 3rd year in a row Illinois has not signed a 4-star player. And most concerning is that their home state got absolutely raided by the rest of the conference, only 1 of the top 10 Illinois recruits are going to Champaign and the Illini rank 9th in average rating of Illinois players... out of 9. This class is oddly lopsided with 14 offensive recruits (and seven offensive linemen!) to just 5 defensive recruits, although there are 3 "athletes" who could play on either side of the ball.
13. Northwestern - Every year I have no idea what to say about Northwestern. They recruit the same kind of class every single year. This year they are weirdly only signing one defensive lineman, and only got a QB very late who was going to walk on at Notre Dame. I don't know how Northwestern isn't recruiting QB better and instead have to keep relying on transfers, it's a pretty QB-friendly program. But the rest of their class is solid, particularly at OL and LB.
14. Nebraska - Just a disaster of a class for them, which how could it not be when everyone knows Scott Frost is only going to be around for one more year (if that). I could generate 100 stats on how this is their worst class ever, but I don't think you need much convincing. Luckily for the next coach it will be much easier to rely on transfers while trying to rebuild this mess.

 

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