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For some reason I can’t sleep. So rather than toss and turn, I decided to look at recruiting rankings in the ACC and see if they hold water to the on field results. This is going to have a lot of charts for a forum post.
Quick Takeaways
• No one does less with more than Miami.
• VT always does more with less.
• Duke last year was the ultimate “coach ‘em up”
• We lead the bottom third in recruiting, we are a bottom third team on the field, no surprises.
• I’m not sure if GT’s projection is as accurate as others, since they run a unique offense that requires unique players
• Based on projections, we would go 3 – 3 vs the real ACC this year. (win vs. GT, BC, and Wake & lose vs. FSU, Clemson, UNX)
o Currently 0 – 1 in a game we have better talent (BC) and 0 – 2 in games we have lesser talent (FSU and Clemson).Now to some data. Recruiting rankings were pulled from 247Sports and go back to 2006. One the field results come from 2010. I pulled back to 2006 to try and capture the whole team for each on the field season, i.e. the previous five recruiting classes were used to make a projection in any give year, to include redshirt players. Since tables are a pain in the rear, and I’m starting to get lazy, I’ve made photos of each table.
Until get a Frank Beamer type coach, who can coach consistently above the talent level he recruits, we should probably give DD a chance to actually build a recruiting network, since the one he inherited was actually non-existent. I’m in wait and see mode. Relationships with coaches and recruits take time to build. It would be very nice to make a bowl this year, but until we get more depth and better recruits consistently, it’s an uphill battle. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to win today, but hanging DD out to dry today because he wasn’t able to build depth over the course of one and a half recruiting cycles is just crazy. But then again, our fanbase seems to ooze crazy and conspiratorial. We need to win the battles on Fridays, to actually have a chance to win on Saturday.
Everything I’ve seen so far from DD has us pointed in the right direction. Based on the downward trend in our win loss column, as TOB’s lack of recruiting becomes more evident, the only direction to go is up.
Everything I’ve seen so far from DD has us pointed in the right direction.
What game are you watching?
At least we can agree the only direction to go is up.
I was watching a game that featured
-A TOB recruited offensive line, doing TOB offensive line things. I.e. Not giving the QB enough time to make smart decisions.
-A two deep that was 7 Freshmen / Redshirt Freshmen / Sophomores on offense and 10 on defense (38.6% total, 31.8% offense, 45.5% defense)
-A team that hasn’t had a Saturday off since 8/23.
-A team that got physically beat down by both FSU and Clemson in the previous two weeks. I think we all know the kind of athletes FSU and Clemson are – superior to us. That’s just the realistic cold hard facts on the field. Yes, we played with glimmers of greatness in the first quarter vs FSU, but once the adrenaline wore out, so did we.
-An opponent that was coming off a bye, that had previously held So Cal to 20 rushing yards and was averaging 316.8 rushing yards per game coming into Raleigh.
I really think the loss to BC is more a function of the bye week than anything else. I think the team is beat down, both physically and mentally.
Sucks to say, but we’re about to face another good D in terms of efficiency before heading into the bye week.
At this point, I think the realistic goal is to go to Louisville, not get hurt, not get blown out, and go into the bye week to regroup.
The fact of the matter is this, DD inherited a dumpster fire in terms of talent. TOB had two top notch NFL quality QBs (and a few others like Nate) and the best he could do was a couple of low end bowl games and beating UNX 5 times. Other than that he accomplished NOTHING! He recruited NOTHING! He sat in his office and expected top talent to come to him, that’s where we are today. DD may be in over his head, MAY be. Until we have “some” talent we won’t know. And from what I’ve seen he is beating the bushes. When this season started how many actually thought we’d be 4 – 0 with FSU coming to town? And we did give them a game. Had Clemson not had Watson we’d have probably done better against them, they have struggled badly without him. To me the BC game was a match up problem more than anything. Our weaknesses against their strengths. We may not get to a bowl this year. And yes, I share some of the frustrations with the coordinators, but by the same token Clemson is paying big bucks to their OC and look at how successful he has been without Watson. Everything isn’t the fault of the coaches we have on the sidelines, a good bit goes back to how young our team is and how badly we recruited in the past 7 years.
If you want to look at some really bad numbers, look at UNX in those charts. In the top 4 every year for talent and consistently finishing well below their projected finish. Talking about poor performance. To me that is worse, having top end talent and getting low end results. Those charts should list the teams in terms of results vs. recruiting success.Smarter than the average bear
Nice Work.
No one does less with more than Miami.
The same thing could have been said for FSU for a good long while starting towards the end of Bowden’s tenure. The single biggest issue with FSU during that time period was the QB play. You can have a world of talent overall, but a substandard QB definitely puts a ceiling on your success.
I’m glad jrcox posted this and did the research as it supports my thoughts on Doeren so far. I think we need to ride this out and see where we stand at the end of the year next year. If we see any signs of improvement…we should continue forward with Doeren. It’s not like we’ve got a choice right now anyhow, we have to keep Dave for at least another season and a half.
That being said, I feel as if progress is being made on the recruiting trail.
The mention of Miami is on point. Wow are they underperforming!?! The other team noted is UNC, to put their failure into perspective…they’ve recruited almost evenly with CLEMSON over the time frame referenced. Chew on that one for a minute…
They’ve recruited at a Clemson level even with the heavy penalties from the NCAA. *sarcasm*
Thanks jr. The “game” to watch at this point is the recruiting game and you and you set that game up good. And thanks for the supporting comments, Yogi.
VaWolf82 said:
Nice Work.
Agreed. Also agree on the underperformance of FSU toward the end of Bowden’s tenure. Interesting to see the dynamics at play there: clearly someone in the administration or the big boosters (or both) saw what was happening and did whatever was necessary to remove a Hall-of-Fame coach from his seat. Although it took a couple of years, that show some serious influence. Recent headlines suggest that the FSU football machine has LOTS of influence.
Great post. Nice reading a rational, well-thought and composed piece like this. I’m not ceding an automatic win to L’ville this weekend, even though the odds are not in our favor. Hope our guys play hard and smart and somehow get some breaks to steal a win.
Those charts should list the teams in terms of results vs. recruiting success.
Yogi, I wanted to approach it from the other direction and use the recruiting rankings to determine a projected final ACC ranking, by number of wins, then took the difference between the final results and the projection to see how teams overachieved/underachieved/met expectations. The table below shows, by year, the difference between State’s final ranking, as ranked by number of ACC wins, vs our projected ranking. I feel like differences of one or two are not as significant, since I didn’t consider things such strength of schedule, home wins, away wins, etc.
2010, by this metric, we really overachieved.
Only because we lucked up with 2 NFL caliber QBs. Take that away and give us someone on the order of Jay Davis and we would have REALLY been pitiful.
Smarter than the average bear
No disagreement here. It just sucks because as a fan, I want nothing more than 8/9/10 win seasons to be the norm. I think everyone in the fanbase wants that. However, the reality, based on recruiting, is we are a below average ACC team on the field. At that #Statement doesn’t include the newcomers. Once you factor in the new comers, we get pushed down even further because Louisville and Pitt consistently out recruit us. It’s tough to say, but it’s time we as fans accept that we as a program aren’t exactly where we many of us, myself included before I started looking hard at the data, think we are. Accept isn’t the right word. Maybe understand is. Once we understand where the program realistically is, we can set realistic goals, expectations, and milestones to get the program where we all think it should be.
We won’t win a national championship with DD. Heck, he may not even put together a squad that wins an ACC title. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we sure as heck aren’t Auburn (SEC worst to first last year).
Since it seems I have nothing better to do, I’ve kept digging a bit. This time, I pulled Department of Education reporting information from ACC teams from 2010 through 2012 and was able to come up with the following charts.
Disclaimer: The files were not organized very well, but I think I got it. There was one column with operating expenses and another with just expenses. I found a Forbes article that had similar info, but only for preseason 2013 top 25 teams (Clemson and FSU), and adding the operating expenses column with the expenses column got me pretty close, but not exact, to the Forbes numbers.
This time, I used the teams by expenses to generate a projection, and compared the projection with results to determine overachieve/underachieve/meet factors, by simply getting the difference between the rankings.
It doesn’t seem the link between expenses and results correlates as nicely as recruiting, but there’s a big difference between being last in spending and outperforming by 2, than it is to be #4 in expenses and outperform by 2, like Clemson.
I’m interested to see the 2013 data, but if I had to guess, FSU and CLemson would be two of the top ACC teams in terms of expenses. Money talks. Especially to coaching talent.
Is that AD expenses or just football? As for slicing and dicing data that’s what I do for a living. I’m not about to go out and start gathering data that is tied to my “enjoyment” in life, there are enough things robbing me of that as it is…LOL. Good job jr, what I was asking for was just how recruiting matched up against final results. I wish there was some kind of central data bank with this kind of data that could be easily tapped. Unfortunately there isn’t, you have to mine it, and that’s just too much work for my taste. I do enjoy reading others results though.
Smarter than the average bear
I pulled Department of Education reporting information…
One of the most interesting websites that I ever ran across. I did a multi-part series several summers ago comparing the financial info from the (old) ACC. If memory serves, that series mostly got lost amongst the Marvin Austin Tweets and cupcakes.
Is that AD expenses or just football?
I selected the option to download just football related financial reporting and sifter though to get the total reported football expenses. I had some revenue data in there too, but for figuring out how well a team could do would, IMO, have more to to with how much you spend.
what I was asking for was just how recruiting matched up against final results.
I think you and I are losing something. It’s probably on my end not really getting what you’re asking for/me adequately explaining what I’ve done, but probably both. If we are on the same page, then I’m sorry for the discussion I’m about to write up using State in 2013.
Since we have two divisions, I just ranked the teams by number of ACC wins in a given season. I.e. 2012, FSU had an ACC Finish ranking of 1, and we had a ranking of 6. For each season, I took the aggregate recruiting classes of the previous five classes to determine a preseason ranking. I sorted the aggregate ranking in ascending order to get integers for rankings, 1 and 8, for FSU and State, respectively, not 1.2 and 7.6. Then I took the ACC Finish Ranking and subtracted the Projection Ranking to see how each team did on the field relative to the recruiting projection. In 2012, we had a score of +2, meaning we had a ACC Finish Ranking two spots higher than recruiting projected. Positive outperforms, negative underperforms, zero meets expectations. Sorry if we were on the same page, and I just didn’t realize it.
One of the most interesting websites that I ever ran across.
Yeah, it’s definitely clunky to use, but it is a wealth of data. Do you have the link? I’d be interested in reading it again.
5 part series starting here.
Financing College Sports – Part One (Major update & additions 10:30am)
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