Neat little piece at Football Study Hall that attempts to measure the relationship between a team’s talent and its on-field results over the past seven seasons. There’s really little surprise about the talent conclusion – teams that recruit well tend to do better than teams that don’t recruit well – but it’s the part afterwards that’s really fun to read.
The remaining piece of the puzzle is what I am calling “Coaching Effect”, but refers not only to game prep and game-day coaching, but scheme, S&C program, and talent evaluation–coaches that routinely have better results than recruiting rankings indicate they should are probably doing a better job of evaluating the available talent than the ratings services are doing.
It stands to reason that over time, strong coaching staffs ought to consistently and measurably outperform (or at least perform in line) with the available talent on hand and weaker staffs will underachieve (sometimes spectacularly).
Based at least on how Richt’s teams chart, his method feels like it has the ring of truth, or at least plausibility, to it. And for some real amusement, compare Gene Chizik’s numbers from the 2010 and 2012 seasons. Let’s just say Cam deserved the Heisman.
Get The Picture 
Love this stuff. Absolutely love it…
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Great article. There are lot of things you could take from that. My first thought is that if Richt’s teams are going to so consistently match, but not exceed, the promise of their recruiting then they probably need to step up their recruiting.
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No, they need to step up the coaching–that’s what. However, I honestly believe CMR has.
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Does this mean Bama takes great players and makes them better? I am afraid it does seem that way. Gulp.
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Scorpio, unfortunately it seems to be true
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I don’t buy it – if the purpose of the metric is to measure coaching ability then why is it that the so clearly shows that Cam deserved The Trophy? Chizik didn’t go a great coaching job in 2010 so much as he hit the player lottery. So, if the metric is to measure coaching ability, he shouldn’t have a high number. It also doesn’t seem to jive that Snyder can hold the best mark on the list as well as some of the worst. Individual statistics rarely fluctuate beyond a certain degree, but this one seems to do so wildly. Simply put, it seems there are a lot of factors that this metric does not control for and thus it merely serves as a number you add to an argument you already believe in rather than enlighten you to some new insight.
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Agreed, list is mostly b.s. There are so many intangibles I could rattle off. How to categorize a 4 game suspension for AJ, or any player for that matter? Is that supposed to be poor coaching or poor recruiting? What if the player is suspended for a big game you end up losing, rather than a gimmie you easily win without him? Last year’s top D player in cfb, Jarvis Jones, was a transfer and never counted toward a UGA recruiting class.
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I do agree coaching matters. But what matters most is finding the diamond in the rough. Or the diamond that is a real diamond and not a CZ.
Look at the NFL, all of those players drafted in the first couple of rounds are diamonds. Some like AP or Megatron or tons of others are real diamonds. Some are not, JaMarcus Russel, Glenn Dorsey (thank god I was not in charge of the falcons or I would have drafted him). And that is with a Combine where everything is measured and 3-4 years of film. College coaches do not have that luxury. Some people are just good, better than advertised Gurley and some are no Jasper.
So there is some luck, hell I say a lot of luck involved in making some players better. Some will work and be better others will not.
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At the NFL level, you have to start factoring in how money affects a guy’s attitude and work ethic. I think that’s one reason why we don’t see some guys pan out.
All you sign-for-dough folks need to take notice of that. 🙂
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Just looking at the averages of the Scout recruiting rankings provided, it appears Georgia has had talent ranked roughly equivalant to Bama and LSU, and slightly below Florida.
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Correctomundo. Why then have those programs outperformed UGA during the subject period? Coaching–that’s why. Truthfully, the coaching got bad (even with great talent) in 2008, 2009 and continued into 2010. Fortunately, CMR identified the problem and moved to fix it. It took a year to make it stick but now the coaching (especially conditioning) has improved dramatically IMHO.
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Conditioning appears good when you have recruited + developed depth. GD Saban has perfected that formula
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Position coaches are who make a difference in developing players. Head coaches have to choose good ones but they don’t develop the player.
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Anyone watching the Bengals training camp series on HBO? hate it they are trashing Orson Charles for such poor fundamentals
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