This week Nic Caraway went from unranked on Rivals to #105 nationally. TOS just updated their rankings and Caraway went from #967 nationally to #183 nationally. I don't do national rankings so I'll fall to TOS's composite rankings where he went from #748 overall to #217 nationally. Caraway remains a mid-3-star on ESPN and I'm not sure if they're updating ratings for the 2022 class again.
In my weighted average Caraway went from 3.626 Stars to 4.262 Stars. That is good for Purdue's 4th highest-rated recruit since 2011 when I began tracking these things.
Although it is just one player, I've noticed over the years that really highly-rated players can be significantly more impactful than IMO class rankings seem to suggest. So in my class rankings system I award more points to a class for having a player like Caraway, and I also developed a "Projected Draft Picks" stat that uses raw data to rank classes. Since Caraway has blown up to an elite recruit, this bump alone has shifted Purdue's class pretty significantly considering it's just a change to one player:
You can't tell, but there are actually two dots at the top of 2022. Brady Allen is 4.270 Stars, Nic Caraway is 4.262 Stars.
Before the Caraway update I said this was pretty safely Brohm's third-best class. Now there could certainly be a case for this being Brohm's second-best. (Especially if you don't count Maliq Carr in 2020 since he transferred before doing anything anyway.) 2019 is still king with Karlaftis and Bell headlining that class as Purdue's #1 and #2 overall recruits, but 2022 now has #3 and #4 along with some pretty good depth, although from a ratings stand-point maybe not as much as 2019 or 2020.
In my weighted average Caraway went from 3.626 Stars to 4.262 Stars. That is good for Purdue's 4th highest-rated recruit since 2011 when I began tracking these things.
Although it is just one player, I've noticed over the years that really highly-rated players can be significantly more impactful than IMO class rankings seem to suggest. So in my class rankings system I award more points to a class for having a player like Caraway, and I also developed a "Projected Draft Picks" stat that uses raw data to rank classes. Since Caraway has blown up to an elite recruit, this bump alone has shifted Purdue's class pretty significantly considering it's just a change to one player:
- Purdue moves from 9th in the Big Ten to 8th in my class points system, leaping Iowa.
- Purdue moves from 13th in Avg Stars per player to 12th, leaping Minnesota and in basically a near virtual tie with Nebraska who we are only 0.025 stars per player behind. Purdue's average of 3.550 Stars per player is our third-best ever, just behind 2020's 3.588 Stars which was good for 7th that year.
- Purdue moves from 11th in Avg Stars per DL recruit to 9th. Purdue took the most total DL recruits at 4, and rank 4th in class points at DL before and after the Caraway updates.
- Purdue moves from 11th in Projected NFL Draft Picks at 1.61 to 9th at 1.77. I'll take the Over.
You can't tell, but there are actually two dots at the top of 2022. Brady Allen is 4.270 Stars, Nic Caraway is 4.262 Stars.
Before the Caraway update I said this was pretty safely Brohm's third-best class. Now there could certainly be a case for this being Brohm's second-best. (Especially if you don't count Maliq Carr in 2020 since he transferred before doing anything anyway.) 2019 is still king with Karlaftis and Bell headlining that class as Purdue's #1 and #2 overall recruits, but 2022 now has #3 and #4 along with some pretty good depth, although from a ratings stand-point maybe not as much as 2019 or 2020.
