More competition is good for the recruiting market
Bud Elliott
247Sports invests a ton of time and energy into its recruiting rankings, which are captained by a specific scouting team. Thousands of hours of travel, film study, meetings, data analysis and furious debate goes into the process each year. The goal: To identify the most talented football recruits.
But how do we know if we are doing a good job? Freshman All-American teams are great, but they are largely based on playing time and early opportunities. All-Conference or All-American honors have some signal, but even these awards are based on playing time, schedule strength and schematic philosophies.
Because our goal is to judge talent, and not scheme-dependent usage or college stats, the ultimate metric used to grade the recruiting industry is the NFL Draft. The collection of NFL general managers and scouting departments that spend countless man-hours literally grading the college careers of the high school prospects we once projected is the best way to check our work.
Every year, we look at how our recruiting department did. This undertaking entails a pick-by-pick analysis of the draft to see how 247Sports stacks up against the others in the recruiting services, specifically Rivals and ESPN. On3 will join this analysis with the 2025 draft. On3 did create some recruiting rankings for this draft class, but multiple players were graded after their spring game performances, and some of the rankings were released as late as August of 2021, which is when On3 launched.
METHODOLOGY
We graded how accurately each site ranked every NFL Draft pick that was named as a 4-star or better coming out of high school. We did this based on the former prospect's draft order. This will let us to know which site most accurately projected his potential. We also awarded a bonus point if a site had the player at a level above the other two (a 5-star while the other two had the player as a 4-star) and assessed a penalty to a site if it was the low outlier.
This method was created by Barton Simmons, the former Director of Scouting, in 2018. Simmons is now the general manager at Vanderbilt.
Out of the 257 draft picks, 113 (44%) were rated 4-stars out of high school by at least one recruiting service. That might not seem impressive, but 4- and 5-star players make up just 9.4% of the scholarship player pool on an annual basis.
Four- and 5-star prospects are about 30-times more likely to be first-round picks than all other D1 scholarship recruits.
It should be noted that this draft was slightly worse for the entire recruiting industry than normal, due in part to the evaluation process being hampered by many states not playing football in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Evaluators need something to evaluate. The absence of a larger sample size hurts recruiting rankings, and the 2021 recruiting class will likely suppress recruiting ranking performance in the 2025 and 2026 drafts as well to some extent.
The correlation between high recruiting rankings and NFL Draft success, in addition to college team success, remains strong.
FIRST-ROUND RESULTS
247Sports: 64 points
Rivals: 46 points
ESPN: 43 points
This is the sixth consecutive year that 247Sports has been the most accurate scouting entity among the recruiting industry when it comes to evaluating first-round prospects.
Only seven prospects of the 32 first-round picks had a grade of three stars or lower from all of the services. Of the remaining 25 players identified as likely NFL talents, 247Sports had the best grade on 14 of them which is slightly more than half..
FIRST-ROUND WINS
247Sports has some significant successes in the first round. It was the only site to rank Drake Maye, Chop Robinson,and Terrion Arnold as 5-star prospects. It was also the only site to rank Joe Alt, Byron Murphy, Troy Fautanu, and Xavier Legette as four-star prospects.
FIRST-ROUND LOSSES
It wasn't all perfect. 247Sports had the worst grade on players like Bo Nix, Marvin Harrison Jr., and Xavier Worthy.
COMPETITOR WINS
ESPN had the best grade on JJ McCarthy, Bo Nix, Amarius Mims and Xavier Worthy. Rivals had the best grade on Caleb Williams, Michael Penix Jr., Olu Fashanu, and Dallas Turner.
FULL DRAFT RESULTS
247Sports: 260
Rivals: 226
ESPN: 208
Of the 113 drafted players who were rated 4- or 5-stars by at least one service, 247Sports was the best grade on 50, the middle grade on 36, and the worst grade on only 27. 247Sports had the best grade on 44% of prospects, which is down from its ridiculous 47% mark from the 2023 draft (the highest in six years).
247SPORTS' FULL DRAFT WINS
In addition to the first-round wins, 247Sports took a stand on and was best in its evaluation of Cooper DeJean, Chris Braswell, Trey Benson, Matt Goncalves, Marist Liufau, Cedric Gray, Decamerion Richardson, Bucky Irving, Jacob Monk, Logan Lee, and Nick Samac.
247SPORTS' DRAFT LOSSES
247Sports had by far the worst grade on Zak Zinter, Kamren Kinchens, Joe Milton and Devin Leary. The full accounting of the smaller misses include: Kool-Aid McKinstry, Renardo Green, Blake Corum, Jalen McMillan, McKinnley Jackson, Payton Wilson, Troy Franklin, Theo Johnson, Javon Baker, Cam Hart, Kris Abrams-Draine, Jarvis Brownlee, Spencer Rattler, Jaylin Simpson, Keilan Robinson, Walter Rouse, Jaden Davis, M.J. Devonshire, James Williams, and Cornelius Johnson.
COMPETITOR'S DRAFT WINS
Rivals had by far the best grade on Adonai Mitchell, Tykee Smith, Kamren Kinchens, Layden Robinson, Jarvis Brownlee, Walter Rouse, and M.J. Devonshire.
ESPN took a stand and hit big with Kool-Aid McKinstry, Maason Smith, Mike Sainristil, Renardo Green, Luke McCaffrey, Cam Hart, Kris Abrams-Draine, Deantre Prince, and Jaylen Harrell.
247SPORTS WON AGAIN, BUT THE INDUSTRY IS IMPROVING
Across the board, scores have improved over the last decade.
Technology and data are some of the biggest reasons why. Schools routinely have access to electronic laser times. Camps like the UC Report, which all but one Power 5 school subscribes to, provide film and verified, laser-timed data on every drill done. Tenths of a second make a big difference, and schools now have better info upon which to base their offers.
As evaluators, those elite camps offer us a great chance to size up prospects against one another. Almost every Power 5 signee (about 1,200 per year) dominates at the high school level. But the truly great ones (those who earn a 5-star or end up in the Top247), not only show out on Friday nights, but they also outclass their elite competition at the camps.
And don't underestimate the quality and availability of digital film. Fifteen or 20 years ago, schools had to send off VHS tapes or DVDs of their tape. Someone from the school or recruiting service had to receive it, catalog it, etc. Now? Every prospect has his film available online, cut into highlights and it can be watched by any member of a staff from his phone. No longer must a staffer go into the film room to watch a player and wait for a video person to pull up the tape.
The quality of the film is also far greater. Watch any highlight from yesteryear. It's often grainy. Linemen can be hard to identify. Now? High-quality cameras are so cheap that even schools in the most underfunded schools have them.
In addition, next year On3 will join this analysis with the 2025 draft. On3 did create some recruiting rankings for this draft class, but multiple players were graded after they had stellar spring game performances, and some of the rankings were released as late as August. 247Sports, Rivals, and ESPN all made their recruiting evaluations based on what a player did as a recruit, without the benefit of seeing or hearing how a player was doing once he was already in a college program.
More competition and less hom*ogeneity is good for the market.
