Jimmystats: Captain Hindsight on the Crutin Consensus
Like my friend Captain Foresight said, you should have taken at least a QB in 2012.
—Captain Hindsight
It's been four classes since I played the Captain Hindsight game, where we go over a list of Michigan recruits going back as far as I can find crutin information (Lemming and Parade All-Americans and Sandeep's old page), and then pulling from stats and starts and awards and draft position and memory to give each guy a "results" star rating.
But this time instead of just 1-5 stars, I quartered that to fit the same ranking system I came up with last week as a composite rating. That is…
Seth's Rating System:
| Rating | Meaning as recruit | Meaning as player |
|---|---|---|
| ★★★★★ | Consensus top 25 | Star by end 1st year, generational talent |
| 4.75 | Top 50ish. 5-star to 3/4 sites | Star by year two, 1st rounder or denard |
| 4.50 | Top 75ish. 5-star to 2/4 sites | Star by year three or long-term very good |
| 4.25 | Top 150ish. 5-star to 1 site. | Really good, UFR heroes, senior stars |
| ★★★★ | Top 250, nationally ranked. | Very good, all-B1G, draftable |
| 3.75 | 4-star not always ranked | Good, all-B1G upperclassman |
| 3.5 | High 3-star, some 4th stars | Mostly good, sometimes frustrating |
| 3.25 | Better than average 3-star | Better than okay, but frustrating |
| ★★★ | Consensus 3-star | Usable as upperclassman starter. |
| 2.75 | Low 3-stars | Serviceable backup, iffy starter |
| 2.5 | 2-/3-star tweener. | Backup, can play a few series w/o disaster |
| 2.25 | High 2-star (by pos rank) | Depth, can steal a few snaps w/ him |
| ★★ | Standard 2-star | Liability |
| 1.75 | Below 2-star | Can't play on this level. |
And here's the results of my re-ranking survey. Please (and I'm serious about this) lodge all questions and complaints about rankings in the comments. I plan to take them all into account and adjust. Or if you want to download it and make your own rankings I'd be happy to take that. This is a feels thing so the more input the better our information. That said, unless you think I'm way off with the bulk of guys, please preserve my fragile ego, since I'm putting the sum total of my Michigan fan knowledge into those numbers and would like to continue thinking all that attention over the years hasn't been for naught.
Notes on these: Since this is just judging talent scouting, anyone I could possibly rank (including the transfers) I did so. Those not ranked were injured before we got a chance to see them on the field or compare them with players ahead of them on the depth chart.
Also to handicap things for scouts this is not about who ended up being the best PLAYER but accurately representing a guy's talent and ability to convert it to footballing. This is NOT to say every 5.0 was better than every 4.25, because some truly great players who went on to long NFL careers weren't able to help out until they were upperclassmen. I did it that way because I know the ranking systems themselves judge a player by how college-ready he is, necessarily underrating ceiling. There's no skill that would let you see a 220-pound tight end and predict he'll be the NFL Draft's first OT taken in five years. Long careers therefore can catch up to loftier ones, and the top overall groups are guys who had both.
I'll repeat that just so we can shame the guys who didn't read it in the comments: it's not about who's BEST but how accurately he was scouted.
[After the jump: we compare services, and find fun things like best class ever, most underrated guys, etc.]
------------------------------
Money Chart: What was the best class?
Can't judge 2013-'15 yet but few surprises. Those 2010 and 2011 classes though: woof! 2010 especially, even if Rich Rod was recruiting under the silly freepgate cloud, had a lot of scouting whiffs. Late Carr also saw a lot more misses than his usual, which was usually excellent. The 1997 team was built by some magnificent finds in 1993-'96.
How accurate were the recruiting services?
The r-squared was 13.3%
The way things shook out you could expect an average consensus 5-star to be at least very good, one in the top 100 or 250 to be at least serviceable, and not much difference from 3-star on down. Here's the standard deviations:
- Rivals: 0.90 stars
- Scout: 0.92 stars
- ESPN: 0.93 stars
- 247 : 0.79 stars
- 247 composite: 0.86 stars Being accurate to within nine-tenths of a star ranking doesn't seem that helpful, but you're dealing with humans.
The thing I found most interesting were the three tiers:
Consensus 5-stars (the kind of guy who's in the top 100 and probably picked up a 5th star on two sties) usually turned out to be very good players. Then you have a group of Top 250 to 4-stars and high 3-stars whose expectations fall at about a serviceable upperclassman. The rest are indiscernible until you get below 3-stars.
Some things popped out, like Rivals consistently overrating their "6.0" guys, and 247 (their own rankings not the composite) coming out more accurate than the others. I think that's an affect of existing not as long: all of the sites got more accurate as the years progressed, and by being the last ones in the 247 ratings got to skip that 2002-2006 period of major recruiting mistakes.
Also I found ESPN's rankings past the top guys didn't match the rest, a sign perhaps that they rank and forget while the others are more diligent about parsing 3-stars from almost 4-stars.
Most underrated?
| # | Name | Pos | Class | STARs | Riv | SC | ES | 247* | Reassess |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | David Harris | MLB | 2002 | 2.5 | 3.00 | 2.00 | n/a | n/a | 4.50 |
| 2. | Patrick Omameh | OG | 2008 | 2.3 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 1.75 | n/a | 4.00 |
| 3. | Brandent Englemon | FS | 2003 | 2.0 | 2.00 | 2.00 | n/a | n/a | 3.50 |
| 4. | Jake Ryan | SAM | 2010 | 3.1 | 3.25 | 3.00 | 3.00 | n/a | 4.50 |
| 5. | Jehu Chesson | WR | 2012 | 3.4 | 3.25 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.75 | 4.50 |
Most overrated?
| # | Name | Pos | Class | STARs | Riv | SC | ES | 247* | Reassess |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Will Paul | FB | 2003 | 4.6 | 4.50 | 4.75 | n/a | n/a | 2.00 |
| 2. | Justin Turner | CB | 2009 | 4.3 | 4.50 | 4.75 | 3.75 | n/a | 1.75 |
| 3. | Kevin Grady | RB | 2005 | 5.0 | 5.00 | 5.00 | n/a | n/a | 2.50 |
| 4. | Brett Gallimore | OG | 2004 | 4.3 | 4.25 | 4.25 | n/a | n/a | 2.00 |
| 5(t) | Dann O'Neill | OT | 2008 | 4.2 | 4.50 | 4.00 | 4.00 | n/a | 2.00 |
| 5(t) | Anthony LaLota | SDE | 2009 | 3.9 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.75 | n/a | 1.75 |
Checks out.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:02 PM ^
Effect.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:22 PM ^
double-clicking the "post" button.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:12 PM ^
Denard at only 4.75? The man broke offensive records at Notre Dame Stadium, Penn State, and was the MVP of the Big Ten one year? Seems like a 5* by any definition to me.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:27 PM ^
I laid out the reasons. Denard could run around WMU his freshman year but also couldn't beat Iowa or supplant Tate as a starter in 2009. It wasn't until UConn in 2010 that we saw how ruthlessly efficient he could be in an offense designed around him.
I also took that last bit into account. Henson you could run just about any offense and his skills translated to them. Denard--and you can blame the coaches and the AD for this way more than him--was vastly more effective in a QB outside zone/veer based offense than any other. He was never a very good zone reader, and he was even less effective when they tried to make him into Tom Brady. That took Borges far out of his comfort zone and led to all sorts of offensive problems.
Denard at 4.75 is something I'm very comfortable with. It doesn't make me love him any less.
January 27th, 2016 at 3:23 PM ^
Seth-
Given that you, Brian, Ace et al love Michigan athletics so much you do this for your career, and that you have access to this database, I will have to take a backseat to you fellas in my attention to and knowledge of Michigan football.
But that's about the only people I will defer to - so when I saw Rasheed Simmons on your 5 or near 5-star tier I spat out some tuna sandwich and said "WHAAAT?!?!?!" It hit my laptop screen and keyboard too, so thanks for that!
Granted he was highly rated coming out of HS, but he did nothing I recall for Michigan, transferred out and went undrafted... doesn't that belong where Kevin Grady & J.T.Turner reside?
Please explain?
Also, is it unique to Michigan fans or is it unversal that I bet almost everyone's favorite players (Charles Woodson & Tom Brady excepted) are in the "Most Underrated" tier. Mike Hart should have been in there too!
January 27th, 2016 at 4:01 PM ^
Rasheed Simmons: Crap you caught a typo. I had him as a 3.75. He transferred to Maryland after taking a year to get over personal issues, and bounced around NFL practice squads after. 3.75.
"Most Underrated": was simply the reassessed stars minus the composite star rating. I bet it's universal that underrated players become fan favorites, and I submit for evidence that it's those same underrated guys I like on the Red Wings and Tigers when they do well. We love a rags to riches story (and don't realize the greatest players are usually the ones who worked the hardest to get there--talent only gets you so far).
Here's that full list including guys from before the modern services were available (and kickers). Really there's a lot of our beloved guys on that list. There's also a lot of kickers and fullbacks, because for some reason the sites never want to assess those positions like the rest of them.
| # | Name | Pos | Class | STARs | Reassess |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | David Harris | MLB | 2002 | 2.50 | 4.50 |
| 2 | Patrick Omameh | OG | 2008 | 2.30 | 4.00 |
| 3 | Brandent Englemon | FS | 2003 | 2.00 | 3.50 |
| 4 | Jake Ryan | SAM | 2010 | 3.10 | 4.50 |
| 5 | Braylon Edwards | WR | 2001 | 3.50 | 4.75 |
| 6 | B.J. Askew | FB | 1999 | 3.00 | 4.25 |
| 7 | Adam Finley | K/P | 2000 | 3.00 | 4.25 |
| 8 | Zoltan Mesko | P | 2005 | 3.40 | 4.50 |
| 9 | Jehu Chesson | WR | 2012 | 3.40 | 4.50 |
| 10 | Brian Thompson | TE | 2002 | 2.50 | 3.50 |
| 11 | David Molk | OC | 2007 | 3.50 | 4.50 |
| 12 | Marcus Knight | WR | 1996 | 3.00 | 4.00 |
| 13 | Dan Rumishek | SDE | 1998 | 3.00 | 4.00 |
| 14 | Hayden Epstein | K/P | 1998 | 3.00 | 4.00 |
Kickers and punters and fullbacks almost never get rated over a middling 3-star, I guess because they're oft replaceable from your student body. The rest above were mostly really skinny dudes who beefed up. JMRF, Braylon, Chesson, Molk, Knight and Rumishek were too small to play as freshmen (Braylon was too good to leave off the field anyway) but grew into those bodies. That's a common story among breakout college stars who weren't highly rated coming out of high school, but guessing which guys will be able to get bigger without losing any twitch is a crapshoot.
Why isn't Hart on that list? For one people are arguing with me that he should be higher than 4.25 so maybe he does belong there. For two, it's because he was actually a high 3-star. The point of going to quarter-stars with the ratings is that when Rivals calls a guy a "5.7" they're saying he's closer to a "5.8" than a "5.5". However a "5.8" is a 4-star and a 5.7 is a 3-star. Hart was a high three-star who almost but didn't quite crack the 4-star range, and therefore he was forever able to play with that "3-star" tag around his neck. He was also ranked as an "APB" which is a distinction I never understood since they never manage to actually capture scatbacks and slot receviers, which hid the fact that despite the difference in apparent stars, Hart and classmate Max Martin were ranked very close to each other.
Hart was overlooked, by the way. Despite crushing NY State records in the Buffalo/Syracuse area he didn't get a lot of looks. State might have gotten him if not for a serendipidously timed phone call by Carr...
@Misopogon Little-known story: He was on unofficial to Mich. St. during April break & got a call from UM coaches as he was heading home ...
— John Moriello (@nysswa) April 21, 2015
Sometimes all you needed was to look closely at the film to see a player should be ranked higher than he is. Sometimes the services just miss on those guys, especially when there aren't a lot of schools involved in his commitment. With Hart, and with Khaleke Hudson, the film didn't show a "3-star" level kid. But that film got in the hands of the services long after his decision was no longer going to be interesting, and they had each rated as a mild 3-star, so both got a bump to "near 4 star" status. At least my numbers adjust for that.
January 27th, 2016 at 4:11 PM ^
OK, thanks for the very detailed reply. I wasn't trying to catch you in a typo, I seriously needed to know why tuna salad was on my laptop!
In another comment a few down I mentioned Simmons again, so obviously disregard that. But I did make the point that I'm not mathmatician enough to sort out the nexus of how the rankings coming in influence the final grade. The other poster asked about Funchess vs Streets vs Arrington. If you could explain how their initial ranking connects to production and finally to draft position to create a final grade I'll better understand the entire process... when you can.
Thanks! (I'm among those who thought Mike Hart was closer to 2-star then 4, so that's just faulty memory.)
January 29th, 2016 at 12:29 PM ^
I didn't have Arrington higher than those guys did I? I'll check in a second so my reply isn't colored by it.
Streets is a very good example of production versus ability. When they're assessing stars it's the latter, so I tried to be fair to the services by grading them on that and not just "this dude put up STATS!"
For most of his career Streets had his stats nerfed by a Fred Jackson-coached, passing-averse mess led alternately by Dreisbach and Griese. As much as we complained about Borges under Hoke, DeBord in his his first stretch at Michigan was wose, neither holds a candle to the insane decisions being made on offense immediately after Moeller left. Fred Sr. will admit he wasn't ready for the job. They routinely misjudged their talent, famously let position battles drag deep into the season, telegraphed their plays, and never did anything more clever than a waggle after at least five runs to set it up. Anyone who played in those offenses should be judged against the clowns running the show. Braylon in contrast did most of his work in the comparatively competetent Terry Malone era.
Streets still put up great numbers for his day, but he did so much more. Watch him at the bottom of the screen on this TD pass to C-Will (at 2:11):
https://youtu.be/foIuqsrzGmc?t=2m11s
The last bit to separate them is their respective pro careeers. Streets had a long and successful NFL career despite toppling down the draft with an injury.
Streets was also an all around amazing athlete. He was the fastest guy at the draft combine (before the injury) and played basketball for Michigan too. I will go look at the scores I gave them again now but that's my thinking: the Original 86 at least=1.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:40 PM ^
Denard the same as Bryan Mone, makes sense right? NOPE.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:18 PM ^
Well, at least Kevin Grady isn't Michigan's MOST overrated.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:19 PM ^
Thanks Ace!
January 27th, 2016 at 2:23 PM ^
Not sure if serious?
January 27th, 2016 at 2:30 PM ^
It's a running meme on the site that people don't read the author's name.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:41 PM ^
Great work. I'm a sucker for graphs, charts, and numbers. This post was awesome.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:28 PM ^
Is the table in the middle sorted in any way? It seems somewhat sorted, but not enough to be useful.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:31 PM ^
Sorted by how I ranked them, then by class, then by what their coposite stars were when they were recruited.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:35 PM ^
I see your column now. I was looking at mgostars and was confused why many had no rating.
Thanks for posting!
January 27th, 2016 at 2:30 PM ^
Are you using Windows Live Writer to nest an excel table like that so you can scroll thru columns?
If yes - is that something we can do in diary or only on the front page?
If no - what wizardry does it entail? And then after that explanation - is that something you can do in diary or only on the front page?
tl;dr I'd like to do nested excel tables too.
thx
January 27th, 2016 at 2:32 PM ^
Google spreadsheet!
You "publish to the web" and get the embed code. I manually added width="560" height="315"
January 27th, 2016 at 2:37 PM ^
5.0 in recruiting = Top 25 recruit.
So, I'd argue 5.0 in college should be "among everyone who left the College Football landscape in a given season, he was among the Top 25 in terms of his career production."
Players like Glen Steele and Braylon. I would argue they reach the 5.0 level. They weren't once-in-a-generation supernovas like Charles Woodson but they still were damn damn good, clear All-Americans.
January 27th, 2016 at 4:44 PM ^
Several reasons why that is:
-
You lose 20% of every class to attrition and grades and injury and new coaches who don't run the scheme you came for and whatnot. Even if guys play beyond that they often play less effectively from missing practice and learning new offenses. Put another way, if scouting was PERFECT you'd still have just 20/25 of the 5-stars going in the NFL draft.
-
In my rankings a 5.0 is a 5-star but a 4.25 is a 5-star too! I mean, at least he is to one site. So you're not counting the Top 25 but the handful of guys who are Top 25 to all four sites! So really you're talking more like a guy who'd be the college equivalent of a top 5 draft pick.
- I wanted there to be a strong early PT contingent in these values because that relates closely to what the sites are intentially trying to represent with their stars.
January 27th, 2016 at 11:33 PM ^
I missed in your 20-Jan-2016 post that a 5.0 recruiting ranking was a Top 25 everywhere. That''s my fault. Obviously, a smaller subset.
Glen Steele --- as highly as I thought about his work at Michigan --- he's not a 5.0 now. :-)
It would be interesting to see this across the whole of college football, but that's obviously a massive expansion of scope. But recruiting season ends soon and it's a long off-season, so perhaps there are folk on 127 other blogs with free time. :-)
I agree with others here that Mike Hart is under-rated at a 4.25. Yes, he was more of an "aggregator" versus a star. Still, 5000+ career yards, which is top 20 all-time in CFB, even despite missing several games over his career. You simply can't get to those numbers without at least being long-term very good.
Big picture though: good work, I enjoyed it!
January 27th, 2016 at 2:38 PM ^
Is the star rating based strictly on the position assigned or overall affectiveness to the game? Maybe I missed that designation in the write up.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:43 PM ^
All Brady Hoke can't evaluate talent memes aside, the 2012 and 13 classes ended up being a pretty solid foundation to build on for Harbaugh. The high profile busts and OL's initially bad play really skewed the perception.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:56 PM ^
QB bust, RB fairly bust, and aside from Ben Gedeon, where are the linebackers from 2013, and 2014?
In hindsight I think it is fairly objective to say Hoke's method of locking down the recruiting class as soon as possible left some significant money on the table with holes and soft spots Coach Harbaugh will need to work around for the next couple of years.
January 27th, 2016 at 3:53 PM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 2:46 PM ^
Devin Funchess ahead of Biakabatuka, Tai Streets, and Adrian Arrington?
January 27th, 2016 at 4:02 PM ^
That's the type of comparison this exercise was built to debate about... The thing I'm still not sure I fully understand is where's the nexus between ratings and actual performance? I see Grady & J.T. in "Most Overrrated" where they surely belong, but some are much more complicated.
Funchess was drafted more highly than Arrington & Streets, although his actual on field performance was not more impactful. I'm not math whiz enough to figure out how his intitial ranking tracked to his eventual production and to his draft slot in comparison with those two other WR.
Also, Funchess was ranked as a TE coming out of HS - how does that influence the equation?
This same discussion could be had about any position - pick 3 OL, DL, LB, QB (although since generally only one plays at a time there's a smaller sample size.)
Finally, as I had asked above: Rasheed Simmons?! If he'd stayed any longer he'd be in there with Grady & Turner, but he's among the 1st handful of players listed... I guess I don't understand the ordering of final list.
Fun to see the names, and how they were initially ranked vs their contributions though!!
January 27th, 2016 at 4:20 PM ^
Steve Hutchinson was recruited to play DL, it wasn't until spring 1997 with the OL looking a bit anemic that Hutchinson was flipped to OG.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:52 PM ^
Outstanding. The recruiting service accuracy graph is a major reason I don't pay attention to recruiting (aside from not wanting to creep on high school kids). I trust the coaches to not only get the right talent, but more importantly to develop the players properly regardless of "stars".
Also, in my mind Mike Hart is on the list of most underrated (higher reassess).
January 27th, 2016 at 3:04 PM ^
Totally agree on Mike Hart. If he doesn't fit Seth's description of "long-term very good", I don't know who does.
Love the charts though and no one could make one of these without causing some debate.
January 27th, 2016 at 2:52 PM ^
People forget this now, but when Slocum was originally scouted he was viewed as a package deal. So if your recruitment comes hand-in-hand with a key contributor, your own star rating naturally creeps upward.
So when you take into account Marques Slocum's Fuck Lion, how do you like him?
January 27th, 2016 at 3:04 PM ^
I really hope this Peppers kid lives up to his ranking...
Also, excellent work. Spreadsheets and categorized lists are a secret hobby of mine.
January 27th, 2016 at 3:07 PM ^
Interesting that between 3.0 - 4.0, it looks pretty much like noise. It's above and below that range that there seems to be the main contributions to the 0.13 r^2 value.
January 27th, 2016 at 3:08 PM ^
Drew Henson a 5 star??? No way!!
January 27th, 2016 at 4:05 PM ^
Class of 1998 REPRESENT!
January 27th, 2016 at 4:29 PM ^
January 27th, 2016 at 3:30 PM ^
Shouldn't the eyball logo go on his butt?
January 27th, 2016 at 6:24 PM ^
1) I love you for doing this. If I could go hang with my 'M' boys one of these Friday evenings over beers, I would insist we geek out on it name by name for hours.
2) on the specific rankings you are a clueless idiot and wrong many, many times over ... but this is still freaking awesome
January 27th, 2016 at 9:59 PM ^
in that Captain Hindsight character. . .
and I'm ok with that.
January 28th, 2016 at 3:14 AM ^
If Denard doesn't count as a star after his first year despite taking that first bobbled snap to the house, Jabrill shouldn't either. (This may point to a general distortion in the rankings from redshirts.)
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