This comment ran with a post that’s dropped off the front page at GTP, so you may not have read it, but take a look at this particular observation:
… The numbers would suggest that Richt’s biggest weakness is recruiting real talent that produces in CFB. His Rivals rankings are great, but those kids are not turning into high NFL picks. The NFL draft is the best measure of college football talent (which is all I care about…college football). Based on the 2002-2007 recruiting classes and the 2005-2010 drafts, Georgia ranks 45th in terms of converting Rivals talent into NFL talent. [Emphasis added.] This shows up dramatically when one looks at the fact that Richt took over a team that had over 200 NFL talent points consistently and has yet to get back to 150 with his recruiting.
That’s in spite of having two very high draft picks in 2009.
Now I’m not one who measures the success of a college program by the number of players who get selected in the first two rounds of the NFL draft, but I’m also not naïve enough to think that has no relevancy on the recruiting trail.
Here’s the list of UGA players now on NFL rosters. See how many defensive players on that list you can find who’ve been taken in the first or second rounds of a recent NFL draft. (Hint: that hasn’t been one of Martinez’ strong suits.)
And it’s not like there aren’t plenty of in state kids to get ready for the next level.
… Fifteen players drafted by NFL teams this year played high school football in Georgia. Only Florida with 34 and Texas with 26 had more.
On a per-capita basis, Georgia ranked fourth in producing NFL players behind only Hawaii, Louisiana and Florida, according to USA Football. The state produces one NFL player per 545,764 people.
Dream Team talk aside, perhaps one reason Richt’s been hitting the recruits harder than ever this year is that he’s got something new and credible to sell to them.
Get The Picture 
The defensive coaching staff was crippling. Some of us *cough, cough* saw the beginnings of the downward spiral as early as the end of the 2005 season. Those in the arena, however, took a more deliberate approach and was willing to let an incompetent manager do what incompetent managers do: degrade the quality of the product/service and waste valuable resources.
Perhaps now the defensive staff is competent. If so, those numbers should change.
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The former defensive staff was deficient on many levels. All the talent they could want and so few can’t miss NFL players. Chavis Vs Martinez. How could you argue that Georgia recruit Eric Berry, for example, made a poor decision? I am confident that Grantham can give our kids an NFL skill set.
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Can you say “player development?” One of the reasons CWM lost his job was that top D talent was being signed but too many of them became marginal players at best. Some Dawg fans cited the “talent gap” between the Dawgs and Gators, but when the Dawgs were signing players that had offers from the Gators and other elite programs yet those players weren’t playing in CFB at a high level, the issue was manifest. If prep stars played SEC-level ball right out of HS, we wouldn’t need coaches. Player development counts. Exhibit B: Jim Donnan’s 1998-2000 squads that loaded up the NFL draft like no Dawg editions had before but on-the-field averaged less than 9 wins.
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So if Bryan Evans went to Florida, he’d have been “developed” into a first round pick?
Kelin Johnson?
Ricardo Crawford?
Akeem Hebron?
Rod Battle?
Jeremy Lomax?
Quinton Banks?
CJ Byrd?
Brandon Miller?
Akeem Dent?
Marcus Washington?
Darius Dewberry?
tell me when to stop…
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Normaltown,
Brandon Miller epitomizes errors in this coaching staff. He should have been a DE all along. He had no nose for sniffing out a play, and eventually they just started lining him up as a makeshift DE. Totally squandered.
Most of those players would have benefited from better coaching. Don’t make the false argument that because they may not have been 1st rounders even with good coaching – they would have been improved and likely drafted higher.
Even if it was just the scheme, very few teams are attracted to drafting “athletes” from an otherwise crappy defense (See Jones, Reshad).
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What epitomized the old staff is decisions like taking Chase Vasser over Jarvis Jones.
Jones has made it quite obvious in his comments that he really wanted to come to UGA, but UGA’s staff made that an impossibility out of high school.
What Jones did not talk about, but what was much discussed during the summer of ’08 was the ludicrous decision to announce that we would only be taking 2 LB’s in the class, then offering Chase Vasser before Jarvis Jones.
It is absolutely ridiculous to take players simply to fill a quota number at a position, and it often seemed like UGA’s former staff was doing that more and more frequently.
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Gimmicks, anyone?
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