With the 2022 draft over we can now look at the "results" of the 2017 recruiting class. We know who got drafted and who didn't, and I actually use this data as the backbone for my entire website. I can evaluate how the Big Ten did as a whole in 2017 compared to past years, how each school did in 2017, which school puts the most players in the NFL compared to expectations, which site is most "accurate", etc. This is my favorite thing to do each year so this is going to be a lengthy read, lol.
Conference as a Whole
After a record-high 14.67% draft rate in the 2016 class the Big Ten had another strong year with 13.84% of 2017 recruits getting drafted. This is the second-best in my date range of 2011-2017. This was done even with three programs scrambling with new head coaches before signing day: Purdue, Indiana, and Minnesota. The Big Ten's lowest rate in my date range was in 2011 when the Big Ten introduced 5 (!) new head coaches.
As has always been true, there is a statistically significant relationship between higher recruit ratings and winding up drafted to the NFL. (Read: Recruit ratings actually do matter!) The higher of a rating you have, the more likely you are to be drafted. The draft rates from 2011-2017:
Breaking down the ratings further shows the exponential growth in chances of being drafted:
What jumps out to me here is that there is really not much of a difference between low 3-star recruits and mid 3-star recruits. So a Rivals 5.5 vs a Rivals 5.6 is negligible. Higher 3-star ratings start to boost a recruit's odds of being a draftee around 3.6 stars and then another leap at 3.8 stars. Recruits who cross that 4.0-star barrier are drafted at twice the rate of 3.4-star players. Crossing 4.2 stars is another huge leap in draft rate, and the beginning of an elite tier in my mind. Purdue has seen that with recent draftees Rondale Moore, David Bell, and George Karlaftis being >4.2 star recruits themselves. (Other players above that threshold on Purdue's roster: Milton Wright, Nic Caraway, and Brady Allen.)
The low-two-star ratings appearing to outperform 3-star ratings is a fluke. For example, there are only 9 players in this date range that had a rating between 2.0 and 2.2 stars and 1 of them happened to be drafted. If the Big Ten took more of that caliber of recruits I imagine there would still only be 1 that was drafted. Good on Minnesota's Cedric Thompson though, a weighted average of 2.200 stars from 2011.
A note on 5-star players' 100% draft rate: To get a 5.000-star average rating you need to have a 5-star rating from ALL services, so these are the elite of the elite, and why there are only 6 total from 2011-2017. There are three in 2018, with Micah Parsons and Nick Petit-Frere already drafted. We'll see on Penn State's Justin Shorter who is now a receiver at Florida.
Individual School Performance
A reminder on Purdue's 2017 class: This was Brohm's first class, one he had to put together in about a month. He Creaned a lot of Hazell's commits and instead brought in a bunch of players who were originally committed to him at Western Kentucky. Notable players for Purdue in this class were Derrick Barnes, Dedrick Mackey, Terry Wright, and Isaac Zico. Other than that... not a very noteworthy class. That being said, given the Big Ten average and Purdue's performance against that average, I projected 0.96 draft picks in this class and basically nailed that with Derrick Barnes being a 4th round pick in the 2021 draft.
Purdue met (low) expectations. Who didn't: Penn State's class was wound up being the lowest performing. I projected 5.23 draft picks and they only had 3. That -2.23 differential was the worst in the Big Ten in 2017 with Maryland having the second-worst performance at -1.71 (2.71 picks expected, only 1 taken). IU was third-worst at -1.52. Wisconsin, Iowa, and strangely Illinois were the big winners, beating expectations by more than 1 player: Wisconsin had 5 picks from an expected 2.75, Iowa had 5 picks from an expected 3.28, and Illinois had 3 picks from an expected 1.48.
The raw numbers are when I take the school completely out of the equation. If let's say 20% of 4.000-star Big Ten players get drafted, and a school has 5 players all exactly 4.000-star recruits, then I project there will be 1.00 draft picks from that class. The adjusted numbers are where I say OK, but Ohio State puts x% more players into the NFL than expected each year, so let's adjust their number by that percentage for a more "accurate" prediction. And now that I'm adding 2017 data into the equation, Iowa's and Wisconsin's projected draft picks will generally go up for future projections while Penn State, Maryland, and Indiana will decrease.
In my opinion it's only noteworthy if a school did better or worse than their projection by a whole number. So Ohio State missing their projection by 0.11 doesn't mean anything bad to me. They still had 10 players drafted, lol. My takeaway here is that Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and basically Northwestern did well with their 2017 classes. Indiana, Maryland, and Penn State did not. Everyone else did about as expected.
I use this data to update future projections, but it gets a little more complicated than just looking at how each individual school performed. Since this was a bad draft for 3-star recruits in the Big Ten as a whole and Purdue mostly gets 3-star recruits, Purdue's projections actually generally went down a bit after this draft. But since this was a weirdly nice draft for 2-star recruits, and our 2017 class had a bunch of 2-star former WKU commits, a retroactive look on 2017 with the new algorithm projects 1.08 picks, up from 0.96. Point is, looking forward it's not a simple "this school will do better/worse" each year. Looking at the rest of the future Purdue classes:
Rating Service Performance
Using this data to "grade" the rating services is an interesting idea, and I actually do factor in "accuracy" of each site when I come up with my weighted average. However, there isn't a crazy difference between the services. All of them are statistically significant in the notion that a higher rating means a player is more likely to be drafted.
Generally, over the 2011-2017 draft classes:
An aggregate proves to be the most statistically significant relation between rating and draft rate, whether that be my weighted average or the 247sports composite score. I would recommend paying attention to those over any individual rating. If you are going to look at Rivals ratings, don't get too excited from a 5-star rating. If you're going to look at 247sports ratings, don't get disheartened by a 2-star rating. ESPN is that teacher that gives everyone Bs.
Tl;dr:
Conference as a Whole
After a record-high 14.67% draft rate in the 2016 class the Big Ten had another strong year with 13.84% of 2017 recruits getting drafted. This is the second-best in my date range of 2011-2017. This was done even with three programs scrambling with new head coaches before signing day: Purdue, Indiana, and Minnesota. The Big Ten's lowest rate in my date range was in 2011 when the Big Ten introduced 5 (!) new head coaches.
As has always been true, there is a statistically significant relationship between higher recruit ratings and winding up drafted to the NFL. (Read: Recruit ratings actually do matter!) The higher of a rating you have, the more likely you are to be drafted. The draft rates from 2011-2017:
- 5 Stars: 6/6 (100.00%)
- 4 Stars: 101/353 (28.61%)
- 3 Stars: 135/1437 (9.39%)
- 2 Stars: 15/286 (5.24%)
Breaking down the ratings further shows the exponential growth in chances of being drafted:
What jumps out to me here is that there is really not much of a difference between low 3-star recruits and mid 3-star recruits. So a Rivals 5.5 vs a Rivals 5.6 is negligible. Higher 3-star ratings start to boost a recruit's odds of being a draftee around 3.6 stars and then another leap at 3.8 stars. Recruits who cross that 4.0-star barrier are drafted at twice the rate of 3.4-star players. Crossing 4.2 stars is another huge leap in draft rate, and the beginning of an elite tier in my mind. Purdue has seen that with recent draftees Rondale Moore, David Bell, and George Karlaftis being >4.2 star recruits themselves. (Other players above that threshold on Purdue's roster: Milton Wright, Nic Caraway, and Brady Allen.)
The low-two-star ratings appearing to outperform 3-star ratings is a fluke. For example, there are only 9 players in this date range that had a rating between 2.0 and 2.2 stars and 1 of them happened to be drafted. If the Big Ten took more of that caliber of recruits I imagine there would still only be 1 that was drafted. Good on Minnesota's Cedric Thompson though, a weighted average of 2.200 stars from 2011.
A note on 5-star players' 100% draft rate: To get a 5.000-star average rating you need to have a 5-star rating from ALL services, so these are the elite of the elite, and why there are only 6 total from 2011-2017. There are three in 2018, with Micah Parsons and Nick Petit-Frere already drafted. We'll see on Penn State's Justin Shorter who is now a receiver at Florida.
Individual School Performance
A reminder on Purdue's 2017 class: This was Brohm's first class, one he had to put together in about a month. He Creaned a lot of Hazell's commits and instead brought in a bunch of players who were originally committed to him at Western Kentucky. Notable players for Purdue in this class were Derrick Barnes, Dedrick Mackey, Terry Wright, and Isaac Zico. Other than that... not a very noteworthy class. That being said, given the Big Ten average and Purdue's performance against that average, I projected 0.96 draft picks in this class and basically nailed that with Derrick Barnes being a 4th round pick in the 2021 draft.
Purdue met (low) expectations. Who didn't: Penn State's class was wound up being the lowest performing. I projected 5.23 draft picks and they only had 3. That -2.23 differential was the worst in the Big Ten in 2017 with Maryland having the second-worst performance at -1.71 (2.71 picks expected, only 1 taken). IU was third-worst at -1.52. Wisconsin, Iowa, and strangely Illinois were the big winners, beating expectations by more than 1 player: Wisconsin had 5 picks from an expected 2.75, Iowa had 5 picks from an expected 3.28, and Illinois had 3 picks from an expected 1.48.
The raw numbers are when I take the school completely out of the equation. If let's say 20% of 4.000-star Big Ten players get drafted, and a school has 5 players all exactly 4.000-star recruits, then I project there will be 1.00 draft picks from that class. The adjusted numbers are where I say OK, but Ohio State puts x% more players into the NFL than expected each year, so let's adjust their number by that percentage for a more "accurate" prediction. And now that I'm adding 2017 data into the equation, Iowa's and Wisconsin's projected draft picks will generally go up for future projections while Penn State, Maryland, and Indiana will decrease.
In my opinion it's only noteworthy if a school did better or worse than their projection by a whole number. So Ohio State missing their projection by 0.11 doesn't mean anything bad to me. They still had 10 players drafted, lol. My takeaway here is that Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and basically Northwestern did well with their 2017 classes. Indiana, Maryland, and Penn State did not. Everyone else did about as expected.
I use this data to update future projections, but it gets a little more complicated than just looking at how each individual school performed. Since this was a bad draft for 3-star recruits in the Big Ten as a whole and Purdue mostly gets 3-star recruits, Purdue's projections actually generally went down a bit after this draft. But since this was a weirdly nice draft for 2-star recruits, and our 2017 class had a bunch of 2-star former WKU commits, a retroactive look on 2017 with the new algorithm projects 1.08 picks, up from 0.96. Point is, looking forward it's not a simple "this school will do better/worse" each year. Looking at the rest of the future Purdue classes:
- In 2018 I'm projecting 1.60 draft picks, down from 1.74. We already have Rondale Moore drafted, so we only need one of Cory Trice, Payne Durham, or Lawrence Johnson to beat expectations. Or anyone else if they emerge this season.
- 2019 was our touted top-25 class and I'm projecting 2.35 picks, down from 2.50. We already have George Karlaftis and David Bell drafted. Milton Wright and Jalen Graham are more obvious potential players to get drafted. Cam Allen, Mershawn Rice, and Garrett Miller are other players that could make noise with a productive season. This class could be a huge help to our recruiting pitch.
- 2020 is expecting 1.71 picks, down from 1.84. Maliq Carr was our top recruit that year, so it's up to Michigan State to develop him into an NFL player for that to help our numbers (yes, that's how that works). DaMarcus Mitchell as a JUCO transfer unfortunately did not get drafted this year. It's probably too soon to guess on any other player being a draft prospect.
- 2021 is expected to have 0.80 picks, down from 0.96. This was the fire-Eron-Hodges and mid-COVID, no-visits class.
- 2022 is expected to have 1.72 picks, down from 1.82. Brady Allen, Nic Caraway, and Joe Strickland are the headliners of this class.
Rating Service Performance
Using this data to "grade" the rating services is an interesting idea, and I actually do factor in "accuracy" of each site when I come up with my weighted average. However, there isn't a crazy difference between the services. All of them are statistically significant in the notion that a higher rating means a player is more likely to be drafted.
Generally, over the 2011-2017 draft classes:
- Rivals tends to give out more 5-star ratings to Big Ten players that don't age well.
- ESPN gives out very few 5-star or 2-star ratings, which makes their relation between ratings and draft rate weaker than Rivals or 247.
- 247sports gives out too many 2-star ratings to future draft picks that get 3-star ratings on other services, to the point where there is hardly a difference between the draft rate of their 3-star and 2-star ratings.
An aggregate proves to be the most statistically significant relation between rating and draft rate, whether that be my weighted average or the 247sports composite score. I would recommend paying attention to those over any individual rating. If you are going to look at Rivals ratings, don't get too excited from a 5-star rating. If you're going to look at 247sports ratings, don't get disheartened by a 2-star rating. ESPN is that teacher that gives everyone Bs.
Tl;dr:
- Higher recruit rating means it's more likely that player will be an NFL draft pick.
- 2017 was a good class for the Big Ten as a whole.
- Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Northwestern did well with their 2017 classes. Indiana, Maryland, and Penn State did not.
- Now that we can start looking past the Hazell era Purdue is starting to do well in this regard, although my projections for Purdue will go down a smidge after the 2017 class because 3-star players (who Purdue typically gets) had an off year.
- Look at my weighted averages or 247sports' composite ratings. Not individual site ratings.
