It appears that Jerry Kill is really focused on making the state of Minnesota a recruiting priority. Kill’s first three commitments for the class of 2012 are all Minnesotans and a possible fourth commit in Edina’s Nick Rallis. Kill also gave offers to Grayson Levine and Joe Bjorklund after Tim Brewster took a pass so Kill really means business. With this insistence on having Minnesotans wear maroon and gold, I’ll take a look at the quality of talent and positions that Minnesota produces over the past twelve years, the classes 2000 to 2011. We’ll break down players down into Top 100 recruits, recruits rated as a 4 stars (non-top 100), high 3 star recruits and recruit that are below high 3 star rating.
Minnesota has done a fair job of producing high end talent, with seven top 100 recruits. Guys like Joe Mauer, Thomas Tapeh, Michael Floyd, Seantrel Henderson, Bryce McNeal, Matt Carufel and Lydon Murtha. There have also been 17 four star type players, but I’m assuming a little as the star system began in 2002.
The interesting thing about the four star guys is that they do not have a high success rate. Here are the guys that were “busts”: Willie Mobley, Brandon Hoey, Walker Ashley, Jordon McMichael, Brandon Robinson, Roszell Gayden, Joey Hiben and Dominique Sims. There are some guys that had solid careers like Mark Levoir and Rafael Eubanks and some that have yet to make a major impact like Lamonte Edwards, Jimmy Gjere, Anthony Jacobs, Sam Maresh and Jacob Fahrenkrug. Only Trevor Laws and Dominique Byrd played well enough to get drafted.
The “high 3 star” players have been more successful at the college level. There are 16 players but have guys like John Carlson, James Laurinaitis, Ryan Harris and Larry Fitzgerald that have been drafted while guys like Nate Swift, Broderick Binns and Rashon Powers-Neal had solid careers. You can give an incomplete grade to Rashede Hageman, James Farrow, Tommy Olson, Josh Campion, Moses Alipate, Matt Garin and Tobi Okuyemi. The only ones that constitute a bust are Andre Tate and Marcus Freeman.
On the other end of the spectrum, the low rated guys can pull off the sleeper bit as there are several guys that have played in the NFL. Guys like Marion Barber, Eric Decker, Dom Barber, Mark Setterstrom, Ben Utecht, Matt Spaeth, Derrick Robinson, Mike Lehan and Nate Triplett have been drafted by the NFL. There are several other players who had nice college careers like John Stocco, Adam Weber, Derek Earls, Willie Van De Steeg, Tony Brinkhaus, Karl Klug, Marcus Coleman and Alexander Robinson.
Here’s how the numbers average based on a 12 year history:
Top 100 recruits – 0.58 per year (one every two years)
4 star recruits – 1.42 per year
High 3 star recruits – 1.33 per year
3 star recruit with a handful of BCS offers – 1.58 per year
Fringe level BCS recruits (based on who offers) – 6.25 per year
That totals approximately 11 recruits per year that should be BCS caliber. Assuming that we would like to be able to redshirt our incoming freshmen in any given year then each class size would be 17 recruits per class (85/5) which would make the “fill the roster with Minnesotans” crowd happy if 11 out of 17 recruits came from Minnesota. I’m not so sure about the rest of us.
But the question is does Minnesota produce enough variety of recruits to make that a successful plan. I’ll tackle that one tomorrow.
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