Last week, I published a big feature on Dan Mullen’s use of transfers and how it extends the trend of UF leaning on transfers that goes back to Jim McElwain’s time. While McElwain was pretty obviously plugging holes to keep the ship from sinking, by now Mullen is pretty obviously using some transfers in place of high school signees. If you take his words at face value, as I noted in the piece, he explicitly did that with Lorenzo Lingard last winter.
I’ve seen a lot of Gator fans express interest in seeing recruiting classes re-ranked in light of transfers. I’m against that in general, because recruiting high schoolers and most JUCOs is a different thing entirely than getting transfers from four-year colleges to come your way. There is no better example of that than Florida itself, which couldn’t land Demarkcus Bowman or Arik Gilbert out of high school but did out of the portal.
Here is where a certain segment would clamor to hear about bag men or kickbacks or McDonald’s bags. While I can’t blame anyone for citing that stuff given what’s floating out there in the ether right now, I also don’t have any specific knowledge in this domain. What I can say is that, again, this factor shows we’re talking about two different things between recruiting and portal mining.
A handful of folks have asked me if I would re-rank UF’s classes, given that I tend to do a lot of analysis and generally numbers-adjacent things. I am not going to, however, because it would require re-ranking everyone’s classes, or at least a dozen or two teams a year. I don’t have the time, and even if I did, the ROI isn’t there.
Besides, players being more of known quantities coming out of the portal versus high school is a double-edged sword in this kind of business. Sure, the Gator coaches will have a better idea of what guys will be like against college competition since they’ll have already seen it, and that’s good for them.
It also means that it could be possible to re-rank players based on what they’ve done, and a lot of portal guys will see a downgrade. Some players who excel or project to be great do transfer each year, but there are also a lot of James Houstons and CJ McWilliamses who are looking for a fresh start after seeing the writing on the wall about playing time.
The folks at 247 Sports who make the Composite that I lean on for recruiting stats began re-ranking transfers in 2019. It appears to have been something of a pilot project, as few got new numbers by their name. If you look at everyone who came or went from UF that year, only Jonathan Greenard got a new ranking. I think they lowballed him at a low 4-star rating of 0.9100 given how great he was in 2017, but he did miss all of 2018 to injury.
Anyway, they did a lot more re-rankings in 2020. Not everyone got a new number, and that makes sense. Dionte Marks, for instance, still had his high school ranking after only having bit parts against FCS opponents while redshirting in 2019. Issiah Walker does sport a re-ranking, but it’s 0.0008 off of his high school mark. I’m not counting that for a guy who transferred mere months after signing.
Of the nine players who were re-ranked, only one saw his figure actually go up. That one was Stewart Reese, who got a bump from the high 3-star rating of 0.8793 in high school up to a low 4-star 0.9000. If you’re noticing a pattern, all of the re-rankings are rounded to a 0.XX00 format. It’s because these new rankings are only from 247 without input from other services, whereas the high school ratings that go to four decimal places are composites of several ratings put together.
The re-rankings were not kind to those sporting elite high school ratings. Justin Shorter and Lingard may have been 5-stars out of high school, but both fell to high 3-star 0.8800 rankings. Shorter didn’t produce much at Penn State and had drop issues, and Lingard had major injury problems. Feleipe Franks was almost a 5-star out of high school, but he too fell to the same 0.8800 upon his exit to Arkansas. Even Brenton Cox managed to plummet from a 5-star, 0.9867 rating out of high school to a low 4-star 0.9100. It’s hard to argue too much with that, given how many growing pains he experienced in 2020 before coming on strong late.
It’s too early for the 2021 transfer re-ranks, and 247 has their work cut out for them. There’s an enormous number of players in the portal this year. The figures are inflated by guys who normally would’ve been out of eligibility using their COVID mulligan to seek playing time elsewhere. Both defensive tackles Florida has welcomed this winter, Antonio Shelton and Daquan Newkirk, fall into that bucket. Plus, the NCAA issued a blanket waiver that allows any Division I athlete who was enrolled in fall 2020, who was in good standing, and who hasn’t ever transferred before to get immediate eligibility for 2021. I’m sure some number of players who were on the fence about changing schools have done so solely because they’re guaranteed not to have to sit out a year.
Looking over the Gators’ 2021 page, I think UF won’t be taking near as many players who will get downgrades on their re-ranks. Bowman and Gilbert did nothing to warrant being dropped. Shelton was a low 3-star out of high school but was an honorable mention (e.g. third-team) All-Big Ten selection at Penn State last year. He’s probably in line for an upgrade. Newkirk fought injuries a lot but was a key starter on the defense last year according to many Auburn beat writers. He could easily sustain his low 4-star rating off of that.
I think it’s fair to say that the 2021 transfer haul projects to be the best since Mullen’s 2018 trio. Those three consisted of Van Jefferson, Trevon Grimes, and Adam Shuler. Jefferson was the leading receiver from the jump, Grimes had high-end skills even if he never dominated as much as he seemed capable of, and Shuler grew into being a reliable starter on the defensive line.
Greenard and Cox were a good pair in 2019, but they were the only two and Greenard only played one year. The story is yet to be written for the 2020 set, as only Reese and Shorter have done much. Reese I don’t think played at a 4-star level, and Shorter clearly needed time to work his way into the offense. He spent the first three games basically doing nothing but blocking and catching purpose-designed screens. Lingard is still fast but barely played; Pouncey probably never will make much of an impact outside the scout team and locker room.
But even as there are high feelings for the 2021 incoming transfers, it’s worth noting that Mullen has yet to have every 4-star signee in a class make it to fall camp. Justin Watkins was dismissed in 2018. Chris Steele left and Jalon Jones was dismissed in 2019. Walker left to be closer to family in light of the pandemic in 2020.
Any final re-rankings of Mullen’s classes will have to reflect the outgoing guys too. His transitional class especially would suffer, with eight of 20 players already having left after making little-to-no impact and three more with real doubts about whether they ever will do much. Five of the 21 enrollees from 2019 area also already gone for one reason or another.
I’m sure that as more teams undersign their initial counters to leave room for transfers, someone will try their hand at not just putting out recruiting class rankings but talent haul ratings. It will be tricky to do well, and I’m sure there will be no end to the arguing about it. This is college football after all. If we’re not arguing about something, that means it doesn’t matter.