Let's talk about talent..

[Shooter McGavin.sixpack]

No not that type of talent. Football talent. I saw a couple of twitter conversations over the weekend that caused me to ponder on this topic. One was UT, State, and who had more talent. Bo Bounds/Jake Wimberly say UT has more. Brandon Walker says based on on field results, UT's talent is over rated.

Another convo was with our own Brian Hadad and a fan who predicted State would beat Auburn, LSU, aTm and Bama. I don't think that is likely either. The tweeter brought up the 2017 LSU game as evidence that State was not at a talent disadvantage. Hadad said (and I'm paraphrasing) State can beat one of those 4 teams from time to time when that team gives the game away. I don't buy that at all.

Recruiting rankings are definitely important, but do you ever notice how it's always team x has underachieved based on their talent level or team y overachieved. Maybe they missed on the evaluations of some players, but it is never presented that way. Greg Little was a 5 star talent every time his named was mentioned never mind the fact his play never measured up to that, but he as always presented as a 5 star. While someone like Johnathan Abram or Erroll Thompson who plays like a 4/5 star from the start but was always presented as a 3 star over achiever.

What say you guys?

 

[Seinfeld]

Recruiting’s fun, and it always has been for me. However, the biggest problem that I’ve always had with recruiting rankings is that they only focus on the measurables. Speed, size, athleticism, arm strength... all very important factors mind you, but what about all the intangibles like work ethic, ability to read a defense, ability to lead or at least coexist with teammates? It would be like a company bringing in a top level manager because he/she has a degree from Yale rather than even attempting to understand their management style.

I get why it’s this way, but if you want to see some of what I’m talking about, take a look at State’s 2011 signing class for a good laugh. 41st nationally, 11th in the SEC, and here are some highlights.

Dak Prescott - 3 star, 601st best player nationally
Josh Robinson - 3 star, 956th
Benardrick McKinnie - 3 star, outside the top 1000
Darius Slay - 3 star
Preston Smith - 2 star

Don’t get me wrong. You have to recruit on the field talent to win big, but that’s 5 NFLers from one class that weren’t on many teams’ radars, and that tells me that the recruiting ranking gurus have yet to develop a perfect system. If we can find 5 guys in every class like the above group, I don’t care where are ranking ends up. We’ll be just fine

 

[BlueRidgeMtns]

what's the saying? The bama bump? When Bama (or another blue blood) gets a commit, they jump up a star/rating.

A lot of it is perception.

 

[DancingRabbit]

what's the saying? The bama bump? When Bama (or another blue blood) gets a commit, they jump up a star/rating.

A lot of it is perception.

There is some grade inflation at the "blue bloods". Subscriber bases matter.

 

[57stratdawg]

I think I ran these numbers earlier this year, but MSU has more NFL Draft picks and wins than Tennessee over the trailing 5 and 10 year periods.

 

[kired]

How many MSU fans have actually watched enough UT games to judge their talent level going into this season? I honestly probably don't watch more than 2 or 3 games of any single team in the SEC east, and have no idea what UT looks like.

I'd say you normally have 3 or 4 top talented teams each year, then you've got 2 or 3 that absolutely suck, and the rest in the middle are fairly equal. That's what made last season so disappointing - we were obviously one of the more talented teams in the SEC, but middle of the pack in terms of results.

Over the last decade 2014 and 2018 are the only two teams we've had that were near to top of the conference. Bama, Georgia, and LSU are really the only teams that are consistently more talented than the rest (probably add Florida... they've had so much coaching drama, it's hard to judge their talent). Arkansas, Vandy, Kentucky, and UT have been the bottom 4. I'd guess the other 6 are fairly even if you averaged out the years, with all of us having a couple of seasons where we were one of the best - but normally middle of the pack. There's no one other than Bama and LSU that we should look at every year and feel like they have to play a bad game for us to win.

 

[LilSebastian]

Bill Connelly ran the numbers and found that State actually benefitted from having just straight up bigger guys. Sooooo yeah recruit dudes with a big *** frame.