Introduction
I realized that a lot of pack fans don't understand why we are losing don't understand the fact that we are at a significant talent disadvantage. They typically seem to understand the idea that the cupboard was bare but they also think they should have been replaced by now. Both of those are true but they simply don't understand the lingering effects of a historically bad recruiting class nor do they understand the residual affects of good recruiting classes 4 and 5 years ago by the teams we are comparing ourselves to. I often hear state fans say "well michigan's coach just came in and got immediate results out of Michigan, why can't DD do the same.

Its been difficult trying to explain the answer to the question but hopefully the graph below will help you see what i'm talking about. I'm sure this will help visual learners come around and get some perspective.

Data

If you look at each team from left to right the bars are progressing from oldest players to youngest. The middle of the graph represents our talent level and classes below 0 are less talented than ours. As you can see, our oldest, most experienced players are significantly less talented than every other team's. A lot of these players happen to be some of the key leaders and playmakers on teams around the country. Recruiting rankings aren't everything when it comes to pinpoint precision, but when you are so far behind, it speaks for itself.

Discussion
Going forward, you can see that the gap between us and the good teams becomes significantly less with each passing year. Next year, the gap between us and UNC is virtually gone and we open up a huge lead over Wake and BC. You can see how the talented young players have been enough to overcome Wake and BC's advantage at the top and that same line of thinking will allow us to improve on the field against every team listed.

You can also see how Michigan can be successful despite the coach just getting there. He had a bad class but not having good freshmen isn't a big deal. Not having good 5 year srs is a huge deal.

Acknowledgments
Special thanks to dmspack and titans for their positive contributions and all of the haters for feeding the cause. These numbers are all based on scout class rankings and posted below. I grant full consent for anyone to repost, share and/or redistribute this study.




Methods
These are the recruiting rankings used to produce the data. Scout class rankings were simply subtracted from those of NCSU for each of the years of players that are on the field this year.

NCSU
2015- #30 fr
2014- #35 so
2013- #47 jr
2012- #53 sr
2011- #87 5yr

Michigan
2015- #50 fr -20
2014- #31 so +4
2013- #5 jr +42
2012- #7 sr +46
2011- #21 5yr +66

UNC
2015- #28 fr +2
2014- #23 so +12
2013- #42 jr +5
2012- #44 sr +9
2011- #16 5yr +71

FSU
2015- #3 fr +27
2014- #4 so +31
2013- #10 jr +37
2012- #6 sr +47
2011- #2 5yr +85

Clemson
2015- #4 fr +26
2014- #13 so +22
2013- #14 jr +34
2012- #14 sr +39
2011- #8 5yr +79

[Edited on November 29, 2015 at 9:27 PM. Reason : k]

11/29/2015 9:25:56 PM

10/10

11/29/2015 9:30:53 PM

oh this is good shit

11/29/2015 9:38:06 PM

not reading this shit

Doeren is nothing special as a recruiter. Any coach that comes into a new program can sell playing time and that's what he did. He had two good classes and even those had more to do with bringing in a shitload of players than they had to do with the actual players (quantity > quality). Even fucking TOB brought in a couple five stars (Doeren has 0) and a smattering of fours before he stopped caring.

We're sitting here doing backflips over guys like Street and Roseboro when real programs bring in 3 guys of that caliber every year and shoot for 5* studs above them.

Now that he can't sell PT anymore his average recruit is worse than Wake Forest's:

http://247sports.com/Season/2016-Football/CompositeTeamRankings?Conference=ACC

11/29/2015 10:21:01 PM

Doesnt matter - matt canada calling jet sweeps to the right all season will never win you games.

11/29/2015 10:52:48 PM

Started at the:


Now we:

11/29/2015 10:54:25 PM

[Edited on November 29, 2015 at 11:05 PM. Reason : 10/10]

11/29/2015 11:02:56 PM

The E Man, The Myth, The Legend sets the record straight!

11/29/2015 11:04:10 PM

Love it.

11/29/2015 11:05:21 PM

Wouldnt you need to remove players not on the teams anymore

11/30/2015 12:28:08 PM

Yeah this doesnt account for a lot of things like guys going pro, being kicked off, transferring or graduating.

11/30/2015 12:53:53 PM

this is pretty interesting. you should do them for our bowl game and our schedule next year when it's released.

11/30/2015 1:27:53 PM

There are differences for players going pro, getting injured, kicked out, etc.

However, those things typically happen on all teams. I would imagine overall its more even than one might think,

Love this.

11/30/2015 2:53:27 PM

^ It also assumes that every player progresses linearly and completely undermines the effect that proper coaching has on player development.

Some players develop far more rapidly than others, and some players don't develop at all.

If the point of this exercise is to demonstrate a rebound in our recruiting efforts, then that graph is successful in demonstrating a normalization of our mid 30s recruiting classes.


If the point of that graph is to demonstrate hope that we can compete for the Atlantic in the future, it fails. And it fails on two fronts, at that. We are empirically behind division leaders Clemson and FSU in terms of raw talent, and our ability to outscheme or outcoach these division leaders is not shown in the graph, nor has it been demonstrated in the three years we've experienced.

So my question is this: How close does the talent gap have to be before we can reasonably expect to compete with FSU, Clemson, or Louisville, for that matter?

And my follow up question is this: If this staff is incapable of out recruiting these schools, do we honestly think they have the ability to compete and win with noticeably less talent? Can they outdevelop inferior Freshman level talent and turn them into equal or superior Senior level talent?

11/30/2015 3:12:11 PM

Quote :

" our ability to outscheme or outcoach these division leaders is not shown in the graph, nor has it been demonstrated in the three years we've experienced."

I'm not sure what games you've been watching. What do you call our good starts and relatively close finishes in these games? We had to outscheme them to score and get stops.

Quote :

"How close does the talent gap have to be before we can reasonably expect to compete with FSU, Clemson, or Louisville, for that matter? "

no one can know the specific answer to this question. All we know is that our team will become increasingly more competitive over the next few years.

BC and Wake were the teams with the level of talent most similar to ours this year and we won in dominating fashion. Thats outscheming the other team.

11/30/2015 5:11:52 PM

You can't call FSU and Clemson "close" then say we "dominated" BC and Wake.

11/30/2015 5:28:00 PM

Starts

24-0 vs BC
35-0 vs Wake
20-19 vs clemson
17-7 vs fsu

[Edited on November 30, 2015 at 5:38 PM. Reason : ^but thats exactly what happened.]

11/30/2015 5:37:22 PM

I hope Doeren learns how to coach for 60 minutes. The hot starts are great, but ultimately mean nothing other than a small moral victory if the end result is a loss.

11/30/2015 5:38:30 PM

^^Oh cool didn't know we got awards for hot starts.

FSU score 34-17
Wake score 35-17

One is dominant one is close

Clemson margin 15
BC margin 16

One is dominant one is close


Also find UNC dominate us or was it close? What about VT?

11/30/2015 5:45:50 PM

^honestly, i think anybody that watched the games would agree that we dominated Wake and BC. i'd also argue that FSU dominated us. the Clemson game wasn't exactly domination and it wasn't exactly close. we made it interesting...however you wanna classify that.

^^yeah, it makes me wonder what is changing. are opponents able to adjust that quickly? if so, why do they seem unprepared for our offense at the start of the game? or maybe our coaches get conservative. or maybe it's luck. it just seems weird that we do seem to start fast in a lot of games (obviously not vs UNC on saturday) and then get shut down so quickly.

11/30/2015 6:21:28 PM

^ I'm still scratching my head wondering why this is this case. It seems like we start out aggressively and then get more conservative allowing the other team to get back in the game. Also, sometimes our play calling just makes no sense.

11/30/2015 7:57:09 PM

Yeah, these seem to be issues that have been happening since year 1, as well. You can argue that all coaches deserve 5 years, but if you can't see any deficiencies in his coaching after 3 full years, I don't know what to tell you. So I remain in the "man I hope Doeren can turn the program around, but I don't see it yet" camp

[Edited on November 30, 2015 at 8:02 PM. Reason : .]

11/30/2015 8:02:39 PM

Miss State's edge over us is much smaller than Clemson's and FSU's. Louisville won't have an edge over us anymore.


all of the blue lines will be gone next year. this is why we've been saying it would be the first year that is fully indicative of the DD era

[Edited on December 14, 2015 at 6:35 PM. Reason : lets see how it goes]

12/14/2015 6:31:29 PM

You left off VT

12/14/2015 10:34:32 PM

So, in a thread talking about the past recruiting rankings I guess it isn't kosher to mention this years is going to be a step backwards barring any late surprises?

We aren't cracking ESPN Insiders Top 40 as of last week, while Miami, LU, UNC, Duke, Clemson, FSU, VT, fucking UNC, and fucking Maryland are.

[Edited on December 15, 2015 at 8:53 PM. Reason : left off LU]

12/15/2015 8:52:48 PM

Take that, MissSt sophomores!

12/15/2015 8:56:16 PM

^ That sophomore year talent gap should really work in our advantage come garbage time.

12/15/2015 9:19:11 PM

^^^thats a false narrative.

The quality of our player hasnt gone dow . Only the quantity has gone down. You also have to look at the players who are going out. Were losing a class that was severely less talented than everyone else and replacing it with a much higher ranked class.

Theres only so many spots on our team and most of our spots are going to returning players because we were so young before.

12/15/2015 10:58:42 PM

Yes Mike Rose, Joe Thuney, Quinton Schooley, Jacoby Brissett, Juston Burris, Hakim Jones, Shadrach Thornton. What a bunch of terds am I right?

[Edited on December 15, 2015 at 11:42 PM. Reason : We will be better without all these starters]

12/15/2015 11:41:45 PM

You are either trolling hard or dumb not to realize every other team is losing players as well.

12/16/2015 12:37:09 AM

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football-recruiting/2015/2/6/7987571/recruiting-rankings-ratings-2015-college-football-teams

If you look at the recent average recruiting classes and look at how all the teams have done, all you can say is that if you don't have a top-10 or top-20 class consistently, you might as well put on a blindfold and throw darts. 3* and 4* recruits are all just a wild guess for the most part. At least from about 25-75 is a crapshoot. So obviously FSU and Clemson are gonna fare better than us on the "Relative Talent" scale, Wake and BC are gonna be a little lower, and UNC is gonna be similar. Hopefully DD can bring us from laughing stock back to mediocrity with some actual coaching ability.

12/16/2015 1:17:58 AM

Our average recruit this year is worse than Wake Forest's

12/16/2015 2:08:21 AM

The point is not necessarily to have higher rankings than other teams, but to make sure the gap is not too large to overcome.

Its easy to say that when you are ranked 80 spots below a team, you are completely outmatched regardless of coaching.

I believe we can have a fair chance if we can keep the differential to the 40s. You can make up for talent with experience and system identity. Thats whats happening. The blue lines on the graphs are gone and those are the classes that really killed us. BC had a top defense because they had a class ranked around there with some 3 star guys who had a ton of experience.

12/16/2015 8:51:25 AM

Quote :

"thats a false narrative"

The fuck are you talking about? You started the thread by saying our recruiting is getting better. Now your answer is "so long as we aren't too far behind, don't worry" while we are a ways behind. You arbitrarily pulled 40 and 80 to fit your false narrative.

A pretty graph doesn't mean shit to people that don't fall for shit.

12/17/2015 9:59:46 PM

Our recruiting is getting better though. Just because its not getting exponentially better doesnt mean its not getting better. The rate that our talent will improve has seems like it may decrease or at least level off but that doesnt mean we arent getting better.

The 87th ranked class is exiting. Anything better than that is an improvement and all of our classes will be significantly better than that.

The graph clearly shows that there is some basis to what i am saying and it makes people who say the cupboard wasnt bare or that our talent is going down without any evidence look stupid.

12/18/2015 12:05:57 AM

Seems right up your alley

http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=78&f=1408&t=14422194

12/29/2015 10:09:26 PM

Quote :

"Our recruiting is getting better though. "

Demonstratively false now that scout has us at 47, our 4 yr rolling average just fail.

[Edited on February 3, 2016 at 10:53 PM. Reason : .]

2/3/2016 10:53:06 PM

I was talking about our recruiting relative to the TOB players exiting not comparing the classes on our current team to this years class as you have gone and done. That was clearly not a genuine post considering those rankings came out after my post and you know that.

Our 5 year rolling average went up. RS Seniors make more of an impact than true freshmen.

Also, the class rank being a little bit lower doesn't necessarily mean "recruiting got worse". You have to consider the fact that a young team can't continue to recruit more and more guys each year. Eventually the number of commits in a class has to go down and that inhibits the ranking regardless of the quality of guys you are recruiting.

There is some analysis involved. Its more than just looking at numbers on a screen. The quality of players we have coming in hasn't really dropped off.

[Edited on February 3, 2016 at 10:58 PM. Reason : k]

[Edited on February 3, 2016 at 10:59 PM. Reason : k]

2/3/2016 10:55:04 PM

Quote :

"our 4 yr rolling average just fail"

No, it still went up. Replacing the 53rd ranked 2012 class with 47 this year.

2/3/2016 11:00:35 PM

Bama got the #1 class again. Some things never change.

2/3/2016 11:10:35 PM

we did it fam

2/4/2016 1:06:45 AM

Jesus. This team is headed to the shitter again ... we're about to see a 5 win season and with this recruiting we can hope for a bowl game after the next coach gets fired.

2/4/2016 3:35:51 AM

We might not win a game. Our whole team is made up of 3 and 4 star players. FCS caliber guys like Dayes and Samuels just can't compete at this level.

2/4/2016 9:32:52 AM

zero 4-star recruits this year? contract extension

2/4/2016 9:54:38 AM

I thought we got a WR, TE, and DT who were each four stars this year?

2/4/2016 10:11:34 AM

yall are stupid

2/4/2016 10:50:12 AM

I think a couple guys were 4 stars on some sites, but no consensus 4 star players. Sucks that we are recruiting on Wake's level seeing how sad the state of their program is.

2/4/2016 10:50:24 AM

Theres only 5 levels of talent. Every 3 star recruit is of equal value and wake forest is the barometer for how 3 atar players can perform.

2/4/2016 11:23:16 AM

Lol. Keep defending poor results Earl.

2/4/2016 11:43:11 AM

LOL. Keep bitching about football Staars.

(Please don't misconstrue this comment as me defending Earl. Or Doeren, even.)

2/4/2016 11:55:48 AM