Who is/was the most important recruit for UW in this class?

QBs are always the most important, because they’re the QB. I think that explains enough.

There are two ways to look at it now, and then a third one later on for retrospective. From a competition standpoint it’s Huard. Because he’s the QB and could make an enormous impact.

Huard has been committed since he was a sperm, or at least since fetus Huard made it past the cutoff date. The other way is recruiting pull, whoever was the one that had to be recruited instead of just landed and was valued the most. It’s a toss up for me, both JTT and Emeka have equal chances to be difference makers both competitively and narratively. I would go with the DL 81% of the time, but here it’s different when you could have a WR/QB 5-star combo.

If anyone is curious about 5-star QB scouting and bust rates: a 5-star QB is as likely to be a bust as a super star. Highest bust rate for any 5-star recruit position. I would argue that QB scouting is worse in the last decade than it was 2000-2010. I attribute that to camps being valued more than high school game performance.

2010-18 composite 5-stars: 2010: Philip Sims, Jeff Driskel, Braxton Miller, Jameis Winston, Gunner Kiel, Max Browne, Christian Hackenberg, Kyle Allen, Josh Rosen, Blake Barnett, Kyler Murray, Shea Patterson, Jacob Eason, Davis Mills, Hunter Johnson, Tua Tagovailoa, Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, JT Daniels.

I count
Busts: 6 (Sims, Driskel, Kiel, Barnett, Johnson, Daniels)
Super star: 6 (Winston, Rosen, Murray, Tua, Lawrence, Fields)
Everyone else is middling to good.

Tequilla said:

Daniels isn’t a bust

What do you think a recruiting bust is?

The traditional definition


I set a pretty low threshold of: if you don’t contribute at least one solid season to the school that signed you then you’re a recruiting bust.

JT Daniels might be good, but it won’t be for USC. Gunner Kiel was good at Cincy, Jeff Driskel was good at Louisiana Tech and is playing for the Broncos. Driskel actually leads the team in quarantines caused.

But I’m sure that doesn’t help Notre Dame or Florida. Driskel I almost didn’t want to label a bust since he started on an 11-2 team, but I made an exception for him since in a quarter of those games he couldn’t crack triple digit yardage and Florida told him to not come back once he got hurt.

RoadDawg55 said:

1to392831weretaken said:

Because we're going through this exercise now, before we've seen any of the three play college ball, my order of importance would be JTT, Egbuka, Huard.

Go to the Elite-11 website and look at the lists of the elite of the elite TBS QB recruits going back over the years (you'll see Garbers on one and Morris on another, btw). It's amazing how few of them I can remember doing anything in college. How often anymore do you see a class #1 QB JT Daniels hitting the portal while some kid named Kedon Slovis wins the job? For every Trevor Lawrence, there are 10 Keith Prices.

Huard throws an incredible ball, but how he will handle the next level is a total crapshoot. JTT seems as much a sure thing as they come. Egbuka, similar. Huard could end up being the Washington Trevor Lawrence, in which case he's the most important recruit in decades. Not knowing that, though, I'd rather have a sure thing. Yesterday was a bummer, and JTT's tOSU commitment will be even worse.

This is a fair point. I do think we have overrated Huard’s impact. He’s far from the only good QB and he’s a way more likely bust than either Egbuka and JTT.

This is all I was trying to say. It's ceiling vs. probability of success. QB always will have highest ceiling. Number one overall DT is a sure thing as long as he stays off the ATVs...