I promised you one last Henry post about recruiting after signing day, and it’s time I delivered.
This one is a direct comparison of Richt’s recruiting rankings and Smart’s, both based on Scout’s numbers.
Here’s how they look:
Mark Richt Recruiting Classes
Year National Rank
SEC Rank
SEC East Rank
Total Signed
Top 100
Avg. Stars
2002 9 2 2 29 4 3.24 2003 11 4 3 24 4 3.08 2004 6 2 1 19 5 3.32 2005 4 2 2 19 5 3.84 2006 4 2 2 27 7 3.63 2007 17 6 4 23 1 3.39 2008 5 2 1 23 4 3.70 2009 4 3 1 20 7 3.85 2010 21 7 3 19 4 3.47 2011 4 2 1 26 5 3.54 2012 14 6 3 19 5 3.68 2013 8 4 2 33 3 3.42 2014 12 7 3 20 3 3.70 2015 4 3 1 29 5 3.59
And…
Kirby Smart Recruiting Classes
Year National Rank
SEC Rank
SEC East Rank
Total Signed
Top 100
Avg. Stars
2016 10 5 1 20 5 3.90 2017 2 2 1 26 7 3.96
There are a lot of interesting contrasts and comparisons to be made there, but the general impression is that, in his first two tries, Smart has indeed upped the ante on the quality of Georgia’s recruiting classes. Smart’s gone back to back with the best classes in the division; Richt, to his credit, did that several times, but didn’t first pull that off until after his third season in Athens.
As far as star rankings go, Richt never achieved a class that averaged 3.9 or better. His fourteen years listed there averaged 3.53 stars, which is certainly commendable, but a far cry from Smart’s 3.93.
Richt’s best class came in 2009. It’s fair to argue it was better than Smart’s 2016 class. The five stars from that season included Aaron Murray, Orson Charles, Marlon Brown and Branden Smith. That class was the backbone of the team that brought the program back from the poor 2009 and 2010 seasons and came close to delivering an SEC title in 2012.
As the 2013 class reminds us constantly, it’s still a matter of keeping them enrolled and coaching them up along the way, but in terms of raw material, the numbers speak for themselves.
Get The Picture 
No doubt about it, Kirby is the Mastermind of signing Blue Chips.
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Bro, you’ve been warned.
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Damn, dude.
I guess it was worth it.
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Probably an Eagles fan. Disgruntled.
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I appreciate Henry’s effort but I think that using Scout numbers is the wrong approach and the 24/7 composite is widely regarded as the preferred ranking metric when it comes to comparing players across years and teams.
There simply isn’t enough fidelity in the avg star number for me to get a true sense of what is going on.
For example the difference between 3.5 and 3.9 seems a lot larger than the difference between .90 and .92 which I believe is the difference in richts class avg using the composite and smarts.
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Kirby so far is certainly the champion of the off season. Pretty sure we will never be champions of life with 5 star hearts. That’s just shooting too high.
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Senator, have you done a post on who in our class would Bama have taken in place of one of their recruits and vise versa?
Just curious what everyone thinks. Who would both teams want to swap out? I have to think that there are a few for both teams.
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Why isn’t the 2001 class shown? It may have been CMR’s best class. Pollack, Shockley, Thomas Davis, Blue, Chris Clemons, Geathers, Roland, Gibson, Thurman, et. al.
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In results and performance on the field you are right. As much effort as the recruiting sites put in, true rankings are better evaluated after the fact, not before a snap is ever taken. Similar to a preseason poll compared to the final after the season is over.
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My 2 cents on what these numbers show:
Richt is a very good, consistent recruiter in a conference of very good recruiters. His consistency, generally, was underrated, as most composite rankings show. He was probably #3 recruiter in the SEC behind Meyer and Saban. He had a glaring weakness in signing offensive linemen, which is due in part to hiring garbage OL coaches and recruiters. Will Friend was a pretty good coach, average recruiter. Sale was a bad coach and a bad recruiter.
Kirby is hell on wheels recruiting. always has been. UGA can thank him for the Knowshon Moreno experience. I’m optimistic he can keep that up given the more limited interaction head coaches can have with recruits. Kirby Smart’s hiring of Sam Pittman is the difference in the Mark Richt class and the first 2 Kirby classes. the man can recruit offensive lineman with the best of them and it shows. If you compare, the primary difference I see in the class compositions is more and more highly rated offensive linemen. Kudos to Kirby for hiring the Pillsbury Doughboy as offensive coordinator in order to get get Pittman on campus.
If Kirby is as good as Richt at coaching and coaching management, along with Pittman’s penchance for recruiting and developing top notch offensive linemen, I’d say our future is pretty bright.
We’ll find out in 6 months if Kirby’s the man we want him to be.
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Solid post, but if the cost of getting Pittman was to bring Chaney in, I think we seriously over paid.
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You’re right, there’s a lot to chew on there that could send me in a google fit for days. My first reaction is more of the same though, talent hasn’t ever been the issue when it comes down to winning the games that propel the season into top 5 rankings and bus/playoff entry.
Out team almost always had the potential to win games number 10 and 11 in the regular season. Usually they did not, out of 15 seasons we only saw pre-bowl records of 10 wins something like 4 times? Maybe only 3? The 10 win season benchmark has always been met with the bowl victory added in, which isn’t quite what we have in mind.
I have to believe that if CMR pulls off 3.0 star averages in the acc he may reach the championship game more often with Miami, especially if Diaz keeps the intensity off the charts like he has been.
Also, to win the sec it’s going to take coaching and game prep to a much finer degree to win with comfort like Alabama routinely does. As a former professional musician I can tell you, you’re only “winning” when your worst day is still better than your opponent, similar to golf. A golfer can shoot 72 while personallly struggling to get through a round. Seems that in football, if you’re barely hanging on you’d better have a solid team in all phases of the game enjoying dominance to have a good result even though it’s not a comfortable game in terms of player match up.
I’m rambling a bit, apologies. The stuff between the ears of the players is the hard part and we haven’t seen what kirbys management of the big picture will really settle in to.
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Actually Richt had 6 teams that had 10 wins or more heading into the bowl games: 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2011 and 2012. The 2004 team only had 9 but we also only had 11 game regular seasons then.
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obviously the recruiting is improving and it seems that the distribution is moving more inline with Smart’s ideal.
I dont think that recruiting for the difference between the 2016 team and a national championship.
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I don’t think anyone would dispute what Kirby and this staff have done on the recruiting trail since they showed up. We definitely have a focus on the line of scrimmage and they are convincing the best to come to Athens. The unknowns are whether the this staff can make chicken salad and whether the chicken salad ends up tasting good to the consumer. This staff will not survive on recruiting and the Process. It eventually has to translate on the field to wins and championships.
I’m cautiously optimistic they are getting it done. I’m still not convinced the sous chefs (the coordinators) know what they’re doing.
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You are right about the coordinators. Kirby was a DC himself and can cover the D but leaving Chaney to run the O is a recipe for disaster, particularly if Chaney calls the plays.
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Numbers aside, the one big difference for me is that it seems Smart and his staff are able to recruit the OL better, which, imo, has been our biggest problem for years. We’ve had a couple good linemen but never a championship OL.
Hell, even during some of their down years, Florida has still had some nasty OL. We were fortunate to have a stacked in-state OL in Georgia this year but I think we’re going to have to improve national recruiting of OL in the future if we’re really going to compete with BAMA. They’ve been a powerhouse in recruiting OL on the national stage.
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Obviously the talent in this class is only numbers on a board and the talent in the previous class has not been fully realized yet, but we all know what this will do for expectations.
The memories of past games against 3-star-recruiting teams like Boise St., Vandy and S.Carolina should help dampen expectations. Nevertheless its hard not to get excited and expect that the numbers from the board will carry over to talent on the field. We are closer in quality numbers to Bama than all but one other SEC team is to us…so, if the smaller numbers can compete with us we should be able to compete with anyone in the SEC.
In any case this is where it begins. If you start with the best talent, hopefully you don’t have as far to go to coach them up. I’m not quiet ready for the Kool-Aid…but I’m getting closer.
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And who was the recruiting coordinator during the Richt Days? None other than Rodney Garner the lazy recruiter alive. That man backed up to the pay window at UGA.
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lets not count the mixed years in the Recruiting. It gives false impressions. We do know this year he turned quite a few players his way.
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