Recruit Rating -> NFL Draft update (data!)

amarcott · Jul 17, 2021

I do this every year but I'm super late this year considering the NFL Draft was like 3 months ago.

I run a site that does composite recruit ratings, and the basis of how I calculate them is by looking at which players wind up getting drafted and those that don't. The hypothesis is that the higher the recruit rating the more likely they are to be drafted, and that has overwhelmingly been proven true. Now that another year has passed and I can close out the 2016 recruiting class on whether or not those players wound up drafted, the data has become even more accurate:

Before this previous NFL Draft there used to be a couple outliers, like 3.4-star recruits had a higher draft rate than 3.6 stars. Now there are really only two: The very lowly-rated recruits are very rare to be signed by Big Ten programs at all, but yet a handful of them wound up drafted. (When I update this next year for the 2017 class Derrick Barnes will become the 1st 2.4-star recruit drafted in the Big Ten.) And also, 3.2-star recruits get drafted at a 9.27% rate, but that falls a minuscule amount to 9.25% at 3.4-stars. Other than that, the higher the rating = the more likely to be drafted across the board.

Draft Rates:

2-Star Recruits: 3.98%
3-Star Recruits: 9.67%
4-Star Recruits: 27.43%
5-Star Recruits: 100.00%

The 2016 Big Ten class ended up being a record-setter for the conference: The highest % of players being drafted:

2011 Big Ten Recruits: 10.14% Drafted
2012 Big Ten Recruits: 11.95% Drafted
2013 Big Ten Recruits: 11.95% Drafted
2014 Big Ten Recruits: 12.63% Drafted
2015 Big Ten Recruits: 11.33% Drafted
2016 Big Ten Recruits: 13.85% Drafted

Unfortunately no thanks to Purdue who did not have a single member of their 2016 class drafted.

New Feature

I haven't truly updated my website (besides the data) in probably 6 years. Now I think I've come across the absolute best way to rank recruiting classes: Projected NFL Draft Picks. If I know the odds of each player getting drafted, then I should be able to accurately guess how many players in a recruiting class are going to get drafted, right?

Here are past Purdue classes, the number of players expected to be drafted using the exact data from above, and the number of players who were actually drafted:

2011 - 1.00 Players Expected to be Drafted - 0 Actually Drafted
2012 - 2.05 Players Expected to be Drafted - 1 Actually Drafted (Anthony Brown)
2013 - 1.79 Players Expected to be Drafted - 2 Actually Drafted (Danny Etling, DeAngelo Yancey)
2014 - 1.40 Players Expected to be Drafted - 1 Actually Drafted (Ja'Whaun Bentley)
2015 - 1.66 Players Expected to be Drafted - 2 Actually Drafted (Markus Bailey, Brycen Hopkins)
2016 - 1.13 Players Expected to be Drafted - 0 Actually Drafted

I am floored by how close these are. For just about every Big Ten school they are never more than about a player off. It's stunning. Full disclosure though: This kind of falls apart with Ohio State and kinda Penn State. They recruit on such a different level, most of their classes are expected to have 4-6 players drafted but in reality they put out 7-9. Just me guessing: I *think* that is because if say you're a WR and go to Ohio State you get the benefit of probably a 5-star QB, some 5-star linemen, etc so it's probably easier to showcase your skills there than anywhere else. (May be why so many OSU players bust in the NFL too...) But outside of that this is eerily accurate.

Projected NFL Draft Picks in Purdue classes where the jury is still out:

2017 - 1.58 Players Expected to be Drafted (Derrick Barnes already)
2018 - 2.41 Players Expected to be Drafted (Rondale Moore already)
2019 - 3.15 Players Expected to be Drafted
2020 - 2.39 Players Expected to be Drafted
2021 - 1.33 Players Expected to be Drafted
2022 - 1.28 Players Expected to be Drafted (and class is still growing obviously)

Note on 2021: We only took 14 players that year as opposed to the usual 20-25. The number of players you take obviously has an effect on how many draft players emerge from that class.

But why stop at Purdue? What if we used this as a basis of ranking where we're at in the 2022 recruiting class? (Ratings taken from a couple of days ago.)

Ohio State - 4.67 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 16 Commits
Penn State - 3.17 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 17 Commits
Michigan - 2.01 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 14 Commits
Rutgers(!) - 1.91 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 13 Commits
Indiana - 1.53 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 11 Commits
Wisconsin - 1.35 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 11 Commits
Northwestern - 1.28 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 12 Commits
Michigan State - 1.28 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 13 Commits
Purdue - 1.28 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 13 Commits
Minnesota - 1.27 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 13 Commits
Illinois - 1.06 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 12 Commits
Maryland - 1.04 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 10 Commits
Iowa - 0.83 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 7 Commits
Nebraska - 0.67 Projected NFL Draft Picks - 7 Commits

That logjam at 7-10.

I am very strongly considering having this metric replace my arbitrary class rankings points system. There's no "game aspect" in terms of a points system or any subjectivity to this, it relies 100% on what has actually happened and applies that data going forward.

The Thunderdome

I have the expected # of draft picks and the actual number of draft picks from 2011-2016. So... who is the best at actually developing players into NFL Draft picks based on the talent level they bring in?

Ex: Ohio State had 49 players drafted from 2011-2016 (jeez). They were expected to have 34.68 players drafted. 49 - 34.68 = +14.31 (with some rounding)

Ohio State | +14.31 Draft Picks
Penn State | +11.01 Draft Picks
Iowa | +4.28 Draft Picks
Michigan | +3.17 Draft Picks
Minnesota | +1.50 Draft Picks
Wisconsin | +0.87 Draft Picks
Indiana | -1.84 Draft Picks
Maryland | -2.38 Draft Picks
Purdue | - 3.03 Draft Picks
Northwestern | -4.37 Draft Picks
Michigan State | -5.04 Draft Picks
Illinois | -5.55 Draft Picks
Rutgers | -5.58 Draft Picks
Nebraska | -7.33 Draft Picks

I don't know whether to title that "Exactly why recruits would literally kill someone to get into Ohio State/Penn State" or "Why to never commit to Nebraska". Considering 2011-2016 covered half the Hope era and the entire Hazell era Purdue did not fare too badly. (Of course our bar was the lowest with only 9.03 players expected to be drafted in those 6 classes, 6 of them actually being drafted).

Tl;dr
**** Indiana.

I'm going to go outside now.

BoilerBulldog · Jul 17, 2021