With the commitment of Nick Brooks today, it got me curious about quantitatively assessing the true difference between Flood's approach to recruiting large humans on the OL, and previous years. There is a persistent perception that we used to recruit much smaller recruits. Well - here's proof, and thought I'd share with y'all.
Method
I simply used the rivals historical data for each year and documented height, weight, stars, and rating for each recruit for each year
An average was calculated side by side for years with Flood recruiting the OL, and comparable years prior
This does not include any portal transfers
Some results highlights:
Big finding is there is a 20.3 pound increase to the average weight of the OL recruits with Flood (315.6 lbs average vs 295.4 average prior)
Height of the recruits is a push (77.3 inches with Flood, 77.2 inches prior)
Star power of recruits slightly increased under flood (on average); 3.45 stars now vs 3.42 stars prior, and 5.78 rating now vs 5.71. Not a material difference there.
Current starters are denoted in bold. 2022 was big.
Surprising how forgettable the OL recruiting was prior to Flood
