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Can Washington compete nationally without 5 Star recruits?
DerekJohnson
Administrator, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 69,264 
Comments
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with a full roster of high rated 4 stars sure
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Was Stan Emptemann a 5 star? That's what I thought
Although the 91 champs did have the highest ranked classes in school history. Funny how that works
We actually are in the midst of the next great bumper crop
Every 30 years UW wins a natty. Allegedly -
The '88 class, which built much of that NC team, was actually considered mediocre, as I recallRaceBannon said:Was Stan Emptemann a 5 star? That's what I thought
Although the 91 champs did have the highest ranked classes in school history. Funny how that works
We actually are in the midst of the next great bumper crop
Every 30 years UW wins a natty. Allegedly -
DDY swore to me it was considered ELITEDerekJohnson said:
The '88 class, which built much of that NC team, was actually considered mediocre, as I recallRaceBannon said:Was Stan Emptemann a 5 star? That's what I thought
Although the 91 champs did have the highest ranked classes in school history. Funny how that works
We actually are in the midst of the next great bumper crop
Every 30 years UW wins a natty. Allegedly -
I don't recall that but the 89 class was nailsDerekJohnson said:
The '88 class, which built much of that NC team, was actually considered mediocre, as I recallRaceBannon said:Was Stan Emptemann a 5 star? That's what I thought
Although the 91 champs did have the highest ranked classes in school history. Funny how that works
We actually are in the midst of the next great bumper crop
Every 30 years UW wins a natty. Allegedly
I thought 88 was too -
The answer is yes, quite easily. With a lot of 4*, good scouting and development, it's not that unusual to get 5* performance out of 4* and a few 3* guys.
UW has done it as recently as three seasons ago. It wasnt overperforming 3* guys coming back down to earth against elite competition that derailed that team. Guys like King, Jones, Gaines, Vea, Pettis, and Gaskin held up fine. It was a couple of key injuries to a thin roster and a lack depth players with 4* physical characteristics surrounding the elite guys (most of whom had been 3* recruits). Plus a weak OL and QB. -
As I recall, the big get in '88 was Mike Lustyk. Stan Empermananann was a two starRaceBannon said:
I don't recall that but the 89 class was nailsDerekJohnson said:
The '88 class, which built much of that NC team, was actually considered mediocre, as I recallRaceBannon said:Was Stan Emptemann a 5 star? That's what I thought
Although the 91 champs did have the highest ranked classes in school history. Funny how that works
We actually are in the midst of the next great bumper crop
Every 30 years UW wins a natty. Allegedly
I thought 88 was too -
(Hoffmann told me that the players referred to Emtman as "Empo")
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TOP DAWGS
A look the Huskies’ best recruiting classes of the past 30 years:
1988: Best of the best: Steve Emtman, Lincoln Kennedy, Mark Brunell, Mario Bailey, Dave Hoffmann and Jay Barry, to name a few, helped pave the way for the most dominant period in program history.
That's a great class
Hoff is going to get you -
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If Pete would have had his best Boise State team at UW, sprinkled with guys like John Ross, Budda, Vea, etc we would have won a title.
Yes stars matter, but this board gets too caught up in the four star guys. If those guys play up to their rankings, they would be late round NFL draft picks. We feel good about beating out Oregon, UCLA, and even USC, but some of those guys suck.
An example is Wattenberg. He was a low four star recruit that if he played to his exact ranking would be a 7th round pick. To almost everyone, he’s a disappointment, but he’s really close to the level he was rated as on 247, but we see the four stars and expect more.
We got worse at evaluating as time went on because we could get the good, but not elite four star recruits. The team now has better depth, but is not as talented as 2016. Our talent has decreased slightly despite higher ranked classes.
UW needs to always keep elite in state guys, have a great QB, and evaluate well. After the elite guys, you need to pick and get the others.
This post is scattered, but there is more nuance to simply thinking stars matter because the teams that win natties have the highest ranked classes. -
Yes, but it sure helps.
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Love this take. 254 players got drafted to the NFL last year, and Watty was rated 295th in the composite. The natural equilibrium would expect him to go undrafted. Now consider that the vast majority of the players drafted were not 4 and 5 star recruits either (15/32 first round picks in 2019 were 3 stars or lower).RoadDawg55 said:
An example is Wattenberg. He was a low four star recruit that if he played to his exact ranking would be a 7th round pick. To almost everyone, he’s a disappointment, but he’s really close to the level he was rated as on 247, but we see the four stars and expect more.
The elite recruiting prospects are hard to get for a reason, they pan out much more often than lesser recruited guys. It's important we get as many if them as possible. But the difference between being USC/Tennessee/Texas and actually competing for a Natty is how well you evaluate and develop the back half of your recruiting class with guys that not every school wants. -
Bearswiin told me it was nothing specialRaceBannon said:TOP DAWGS
A look the Huskies’ best recruiting classes of the past 30 years:
1988: Best of the best: Steve Emtman, Lincoln Kennedy, Mark Brunell, Mario Bailey, Dave Hoffmann and Jay Barry, to name a few, helped pave the way for the most dominant period in program history.
That's a great class
Hoff is going to get you -
NEsnake12 said:
Love this take. 254 players got drafted to the NFL last year, and Watty was rated 295th in the composite. The natural equilibrium would expect him to go undrafted. Now consider that the vast majority of the players drafted were not 4 and 5 star recruits either (15/32 first round picks in 2019 were 3 stars or lower).RoadDawg55 said:
An example is Wattenberg. He was a low four star recruit that if he played to his exact ranking would be a 7th round pick. To almost everyone, he’s a disappointment, but he’s really close to the level he was rated as on 247, but we see the four stars and expect more.
The elite recruiting prospects are hard to get for a reason, they pan out much more often than lesser recruited guys. It's important we get as many if them as possible. But the difference between being USC/Tennessee/Texas and actually competing for a Natty is how well you evaluate and develop the back half of your recruiting class with guys that not every school wants.
This argument can drive me bat shit crazy at times because people will say "STARS DON'T MATTER!!! STAN EMPO!!!!" The reason the vast majority of drafted players are 3 star or less is because there are a shit ton more of them.
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If we go by the legend of the 86 Sun Bowl being the wake up call for James and recruiting then the Feb 87 class was almost in the barn so the 88 class was the first test case
The instructions from James were for the assistants to get off their ass and verify everything that was said about a recruit including holding the stop watch. He was tired of fast guys that were slow and Bama really torched us with 80's SEC SPEED
If you look at that 88 class you can see the beauty of rankings and getting there in person to verify. Mario Baily was small, Stan was underrated. Kennedy was highly rated. The point is that the 88 - 90 classes were loaded with FOOTBALL PLAYERS who were mean and nasty and wanted to win
The 92 class look great on paper but ended up sucking
Its not an exact science by any means. Maybe we have a bad batch of chips. Maybe the coaches need to work harder on evaluation. We need football players not underwear models.
Everything matters
@Dennis_DeYoung @CokeGreaterThanPepsi -
Exactly and that is where we have done a worse job the past few years. We took less “risks” on paper but have not had as many gems in the back half. I think part of it is because Pete subconsciously did care about stars and you feel better about a guy when you beat out other big schools than getting a guy with only a couple of other offers.NEsnake12 said:
Love this take. 254 players got drafted to the NFL last year, and Watty was rated 295th in the composite. The natural equilibrium would expect him to go undrafted. Now consider that the vast majority of the players drafted were not 4 and 5 star recruits either (15/32 first round picks in 2019 were 3 stars or lower).RoadDawg55 said:
An example is Wattenberg. He was a low four star recruit that if he played to his exact ranking would be a 7th round pick. To almost everyone, he’s a disappointment, but he’s really close to the level he was rated as on 247, but we see the four stars and expect more.
The elite recruiting prospects are hard to get for a reason, they pan out much more often than lesser recruited guys. It's important we get as many if them as possible. But the difference between being USC/Tennessee/Texas and actually competing for a Natty is how well you evaluate and develop the back half of your recruiting class with guys that not every school wants.
I get that the teams with the highest ranked classes win natties, but recruiting for fit is important. Chip at Oregon wasn’t getting good, but not top ranked classes, but was winning the conference almost every year because he recruited guys that fit what he wanted to do. We don’t do that at all because we didn’t have a offensive system under Pete. -
I think @NEsnake12 knows that, given the context of the rest of his post. The larger point is that plenty of 4 and 5 star guys still bust, highlighting the need to stockpile as many of them as you can to outlast the law of averages.CFetters_Nacho_Lover said:NEsnake12 said:
Love this take. 254 players got drafted to the NFL last year, and Watty was rated 295th in the composite. The natural equilibrium would expect him to go undrafted. Now consider that the vast majority of the players drafted were not 4 and 5 star recruits either (15/32 first round picks in 2019 were 3 stars or lower).RoadDawg55 said:
An example is Wattenberg. He was a low four star recruit that if he played to his exact ranking would be a 7th round pick. To almost everyone, he’s a disappointment, but he’s really close to the level he was rated as on 247, but we see the four stars and expect more.
The elite recruiting prospects are hard to get for a reason, they pan out much more often than lesser recruited guys. It's important we get as many if them as possible. But the difference between being USC/Tennessee/Texas and actually competing for a Natty is how well you evaluate and develop the back half of your recruiting class with guys that not every school wants.
This argument can drive me bat shit crazy at times because people will say "STARS DON'T MATTER!!! STAN EMPO!!!!" The reason the vast majority of drafted players are 3 star or less is because there are a shit ton more of them. -
True, but I do think politics and player’s initial rankings play a large role and their ratings are inflated because of it. Guys do drop in the rankings, but if they were initially ranked as a 5 star as a sophomore, there will be a 4 star at minimum when the final rankings come out.CFetters_Nacho_Lover said:NEsnake12 said:
Love this take. 254 players got drafted to the NFL last year, and Watty was rated 295th in the composite. The natural equilibrium would expect him to go undrafted. Now consider that the vast majority of the players drafted were not 4 and 5 star recruits either (15/32 first round picks in 2019 were 3 stars or lower).RoadDawg55 said:
An example is Wattenberg. He was a low four star recruit that if he played to his exact ranking would be a 7th round pick. To almost everyone, he’s a disappointment, but he’s really close to the level he was rated as on 247, but we see the four stars and expect more.
The elite recruiting prospects are hard to get for a reason, they pan out much more often than lesser recruited guys. It's important we get as many if them as possible. But the difference between being USC/Tennessee/Texas and actually competing for a Natty is how well you evaluate and develop the back half of your recruiting class with guys that not every school wants.
This argument can drive me bat shit crazy at times because people will say "STARS DON'T MATTER!!! STAN EMPO!!!!" The reason the vast majority of drafted players are 3 star or less is because there are a shit ton more of them.
Certain positions, mainly WR are so inflated. A ton of it has to do with 7 on 7 and their stats too. If the national guys develop a relationship with a kid, I think that can play a role in inflated rankings as well.
If you have a shitty high school QB, it’s hard to really produce as a WR. Spiker might turn out to be a good player, but he was an obvious guy that was ranked too high because his team threw the ball a ton and he had a D-1 QB throwing to him.
The story about Whittingham flipping out over Sidney Jones decommiting made me think that he must be pretty fucking good despite a low ranking.
If schools are dropping a guy, it probably is a sign that he’s overrated, but since he’s still ranked a 4 star, the team that ends up getting him gets excited. Oregon got the kid from Alabama that was dropped by them and they rose a couple spots in the rankings when Oregon signed him because he was still ranked fairly high. He very likely sucks.
Get elite guys and evaluate well to your scheme and fit after that. Pete did very good at that with his 2014 class. So many of those guys were lowly rated but ended up being great players. He was obviously amazing at it when he was at Boise. I wish he wouldn’t have changed except for get a couple elite guys here and there since he was at UW and now could. -
I don't understand the notion that our evaluation process changed at all. The only thing that changed is that we got better at recruiting and got more of our top targets. Its not like those 3*s were our top targets in 2014. From what I can tell we just got really lucky with a lot of the 3*s we ended up with.RoadDawg55 said:
True, but I do think politics and player’s initial rankings play a large role and their ratings are inflated because of it. Guys do drop in the rankings, but if they were initially ranked as a 5 star as a sophomore, there will be a 4 star at minimum when the final rankings come out.CFetters_Nacho_Lover said:NEsnake12 said:
Love this take. 254 players got drafted to the NFL last year, and Watty was rated 295th in the composite. The natural equilibrium would expect him to go undrafted. Now consider that the vast majority of the players drafted were not 4 and 5 star recruits either (15/32 first round picks in 2019 were 3 stars or lower).RoadDawg55 said:
An example is Wattenberg. He was a low four star recruit that if he played to his exact ranking would be a 7th round pick. To almost everyone, he’s a disappointment, but he’s really close to the level he was rated as on 247, but we see the four stars and expect more.
The elite recruiting prospects are hard to get for a reason, they pan out much more often than lesser recruited guys. It's important we get as many if them as possible. But the difference between being USC/Tennessee/Texas and actually competing for a Natty is how well you evaluate and develop the back half of your recruiting class with guys that not every school wants.
This argument can drive me bat shit crazy at times because people will say "STARS DON'T MATTER!!! STAN EMPO!!!!" The reason the vast majority of drafted players are 3 star or less is because there are a shit ton more of them.
Certain positions, mainly WR are so inflated. A ton of it has to do with 7 on 7 and their stats too. If the national guys develop a relationship with a kid, I think that can play a role in inflated rankings as well.
If you have a shitty high school QB, it’s hard to really produce as a WR. Spiker might turn out to be a good player, but he was an obvious guy that was ranked too high because his team threw the ball a ton and he had a D-1 QB throwing to him.
The story about Whittingham flipping out over Sidney Jones decommiting made me think that he must be pretty fucking good despite a low ranking.
If schools are dropping a guy, it probably is a sign that he’s overrated, but since he’s still ranked a 4 star, the team that ends up getting him gets excited. Oregon got the kid from Alabama that was dropped by them and they rose a couple spots in the rankings when Oregon signed him because he was still ranked fairly high. He very likely sucks.
Get elite guys and evaluate well to your scheme and fit after that. Pete did very good at that with his 2014 class. So many of those guys were lowly rated but ended up being great players. He was obviously amazing at it when he was at Boise. I wish he wouldn’t have changed except for get a couple elite guys here and there since he was at UW and now could.
I generally agree with your points, but just saying 'evaluate better' is not really a formula for success. Like, no shit it would be nice to have gotten all the 3*s that turned out to be good players. Every team is doing their best to evaluate and find under the radar players, you can't blame us for missing on someone when literally everyone else did too.
Assuming your evaluations are better than everyone else's is a bad strategy, as we see all the time with the NFL draft, where no team is really any better at it than any other team. Its why recruiting top 15 classes is the only way to reliably have a good team. -
I get what you’re saying, but we can and should evaluate better. There is no reason why it can’t be done. We are going to have to in order to compete for a natty because we aren’t going to start getting top 5-10 classes. We are never going to have consistently have top 10 classes until we put together years of winning to where our program is seen differently.Neighbor2972 said:
I don't understand the notion that our evaluation process changed at all. The only thing that changed is that we got better at recruiting and got more of our top targets. Its not like those 3*s were our top targets in 2014. From what I can tell we just got really lucky with a lot of the 3*s we ended up with.RoadDawg55 said:
True, but I do think politics and player’s initial rankings play a large role and their ratings are inflated because of it. Guys do drop in the rankings, but if they were initially ranked as a 5 star as a sophomore, there will be a 4 star at minimum when the final rankings come out.CFetters_Nacho_Lover said:NEsnake12 said:
Love this take. 254 players got drafted to the NFL last year, and Watty was rated 295th in the composite. The natural equilibrium would expect him to go undrafted. Now consider that the vast majority of the players drafted were not 4 and 5 star recruits either (15/32 first round picks in 2019 were 3 stars or lower).RoadDawg55 said:
An example is Wattenberg. He was a low four star recruit that if he played to his exact ranking would be a 7th round pick. To almost everyone, he’s a disappointment, but he’s really close to the level he was rated as on 247, but we see the four stars and expect more.
The elite recruiting prospects are hard to get for a reason, they pan out much more often than lesser recruited guys. It's important we get as many if them as possible. But the difference between being USC/Tennessee/Texas and actually competing for a Natty is how well you evaluate and develop the back half of your recruiting class with guys that not every school wants.
This argument can drive me bat shit crazy at times because people will say "STARS DON'T MATTER!!! STAN EMPO!!!!" The reason the vast majority of drafted players are 3 star or less is because there are a shit ton more of them.
Certain positions, mainly WR are so inflated. A ton of it has to do with 7 on 7 and their stats too. If the national guys develop a relationship with a kid, I think that can play a role in inflated rankings as well.
If you have a shitty high school QB, it’s hard to really produce as a WR. Spiker might turn out to be a good player, but he was an obvious guy that was ranked too high because his team threw the ball a ton and he had a D-1 QB throwing to him.
The story about Whittingham flipping out over Sidney Jones decommiting made me think that he must be pretty fucking good despite a low ranking.
If schools are dropping a guy, it probably is a sign that he’s overrated, but since he’s still ranked a 4 star, the team that ends up getting him gets excited. Oregon got the kid from Alabama that was dropped by them and they rose a couple spots in the rankings when Oregon signed him because he was still ranked fairly high. He very likely sucks.
Get elite guys and evaluate well to your scheme and fit after that. Pete did very good at that with his 2014 class. So many of those guys were lowly rated but ended up being great players. He was obviously amazing at it when he was at Boise. I wish he wouldn’t have changed except for get a couple elite guys here and there since he was at UW and now could.
I generally agree with your points, but just saying 'evaluate better' is not really a formula for success. Like, no shit it would be nice to have gotten all the 3*s that turned out to be good players. Every team is doing their best to evaluate and find under the radar players, you can't blame us for missing on someone when literally everyone else did too.
Assuming your evaluations are better than everyone else's is a bad strategy, as we see all the time with the NFL draft, where no team is really any better at it than any other team. Its why recruiting top 15 classes is the only way to reliably have a good team.
There are NFL teams that draft way better than others. That’s a false statement to say no team is really better than others.
When everyone misses on a guy, it is stupid to act like the coaches completely fucked up. I used to think it was retarded when fans would bash Sark for missing out on Cooper Kupp. Everyone, including WSU and Oregon State did. Idaho even probably did.
That said, Amandre and a couple others over Evan Weaver could have and should have been avoided. A lot of the guys that Pete brought to UW with him from Boise were very good players. 95% of those guys wouldn’t get a sniff from UW in the later Pete years. He brought the guys he thought could play in the PAC 12 and some of those guys played large roles in 2016 and 2017.
He also had a bunch of other players from Boise State that were bonafied studs and high NFL picks. He was evaluating and developing at an extremely high level. They were beating good BCS schools and there wasn’t an actual talent gap in terms of talent in the field.
Either his evaluations and/or development had slipped in the next few years after that when he had more options to choose from. We aren’t a more talented team right now than a few years ago despite higher ranked classes.
I do think we should pay close attention to players that commit to lesser schools like Cal, Oregon State, Arizona, WSU, etc and poach the very best ones to fill out our classes. Like we did with Tryon and Sidney Jones in 2014.
