In my never-ending quest to turn the Pseudoscience of college football recruiting into something a little more scientific, today we're going to look at the value of five-star offensive linemen in comparison to all other positions on the field.
Specifically, we're going to look at the five-star prospects, high four stars (6.0) and mid-four stars from the state of Texas 2003-2016 that have completed their eligibility.
A few data points to know ...
1. On the average, a five-star ranked player has somewhere between a 50-70 percent chance of being drafted by an NFL team, depending on the year. A five-star ranked player is also 10X more likely to be drafted in the first round than a four-star prospect and between 2-3 times more likely to be drafted at all.
2. On the average, a high four-star ranked player has somewhere between a 35-60 percent chance of being drafted by an NFL team, depending on the year. A high four-star ranked player is also 10X more likely to be drafted in the first round than a three-star prospect and twice as likely to be drafted at all over a mid four-star prospect.
Let's look at the five-stars.
2002 - Justin Blalock (Texas)
2003 - Jorrie Adams (Texas A&M)
2003 - Ofa Mohetau (BYU)
2005 - Reggie Youngblood (Miami)
2007 - Tray Allen (Texas)
2008 - Stephen Good (Oklahoma)
2009 - Mason Walters (Texas)
2015 - Maea Teuhema (LSU)
2016 - Greg Little (Mississippi)
Breakdown
* Two of the nine players (22.2%) were drafted by NFL teams: Justin Blalock (2nd round) and Greg Little (3rd round)
* Of the other seven offensive linemen that didn't have NFL careers, five were massive busts. Only Walters was a multi-year starter among the remaining seven and Walters seemingly never flipped the switch from pretty good to something better.
* Seven schools are responsible for nine of the players, so this problem isn't a University of Texas problem. In fact, you can strongly argue that Texas is responsible for developing two of the only three multi-year starters of this entire group.
Wow.
Now let's look at the high four stars:
2002 - Kyle Williams (USC)
2002 - Tony Ugoh (Arkansas)
2004 - Herman Johnson (LSU)
2004 - Cedric Dockery (Texas)
2006 - J'Marcus Webb (Texas)
2007 - Michael Huey (Texas)
2009 - Garrett Porter (Texas)
2010 - Luke Joeckel (Texas A&M)
2010 - Jake Matthews (Texas A&M)
2013 - Darius James (Texas)
2013 - Kent Perkins (Texas)
2014 - Demetrius Knox (Ohio State)
2016 - Kellen Diesch (Texas A&M)
2016 - Patrick Hudson (Texas)
Breakdown
* Five of the 14 players (35.7%) were drafted by NFL teams: Tony Ugoh (2nd round), Herman Johnson (5th round), J'Marcus Webb (7th round), Luke Joeckel (1st round) and Jake Matthews (1st round)
* Texas has seven of the 14 players and the only one that was drafted is the guy that transferred out of the school after his first season. A few others were solid starters (Dockery and Huey)
Ouch.
Mid Four Stars
2005 - Michael Shumard (Texas A&M)
2007 - Jarvis Jones (LSU)
2007 - Jason Hannon (LSU)
2007 - Aundre McGaskey (Texas)
2008 - Daniel Campbell (USC)
2008 - J.B. Shugarts (Ohio State)
2008 - Ben Habern (Oklahoma)
2008 - Mark Buchanan (Texas)
2010 - Dom Espinosa (Texas)
2010 - Cedric Ogbuehi (Texas A&M)
2010 - Trey Hopkins (Texas)
2012 - Kennedy Estelle (Texas)
2012 - Curtis Riser (Texas)
2015 - Toby Weathersby (LSU)
2015 - Conner Dyer (Texas Tech)
Breakdown
* One of the 15 players (6.7%) were drafted by NFL teams: Cedric Ogbuehi (first round)
* Only one other player from the group of 12 played in the NFL: Trey Hopkins
* Texas has six of the 12 players and outside of Hopkins, only Espinosa ever developed into a starting player.
Overall Breakdown
It's a disaster on so many levels.
First, outside of a freakish Texas A&M 2010 offensive line class, which featured three future first round draft picks, only five of the state's top 35 (14.3 %) other top offensive linemen from 2002-2016 went on to become drafted players in the NFL.
That's horrid.
As it relates to Texas, turn your eyes away. Including Blalock (from the 2002 class), the Longhorns are zero for its last 15 when it comes to turning its highest-rated offensive line prospects into drafted NFL players.
Zero of 15.
ZERO!
It's a lot to think about.
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