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1) The weekend was a fruitful one for Eli Drinkwitz. If you're reading this, I'm going to assume you likely already know that Missouri added Tavorus Jones and Deshawn Woods to the commitment list over the weekend. Both are four-stars. Mizzou's class rose to No. 13 in the country at the moment Woods committed and currently sits at 18th in the Rivals team rankings. Mizzou has six four-stars in the class so far. That ties 2015 for the second-most in a Missouri class in the Rivals era. The most is 2010 when the Tigers had seven. Drinkwitz has about ten spots remaining to add at least one more four-star, which would tie the most Mizzou has ever signed in a class. So, yes, when people are throwing around words like "unprecedented" it is justified. This isn't recruiting we've seen around here before.
2) As impressive as the high end of the class is, what might be more noticeable is Drinkwitz's raising of the floor of Mizzou recruiting. In two years plus the first half of this recruiting class, Mizzou has added only two two-star prospects (at least as day one scholarship players--Chance Luper was a two-star, but he walked on his first year and was a unique situation). Realus George and Dylan Spencer are the only two players Drinkwitz has signed or received a commitment from rated below three-stars. Spencer transferred out already and George should be in the mix for playing time at defensive tackle this year.
For some perspective, here are the year-by-year number of two-stars prior to Drinkwitz:
2019-1
2018-6
2017-6 (to be fair, two of them just got drafted this year)
2016-5
2015-1
2014-8
2013-2
2012-1
2011-0
2010-0
2009-8
2008-5
2007-7
2006-11
2005-4
2004-16
2003-4
2002-5
That means Missouri had an average of about five two-star players per class. Again, some of them turned into really good players. And some four-stars flopped. But AS A GENERAL RULE, the more highly rated players you have, the better chance you have of being a good team. Not every one is going to hit. There are going to be individual exceptions. But the higher your class ranks, the more likely you are to be good. So this is a good thing.
3) To build on the point above, let's take a look at the history of the rankings here. Most players (I'd guess at least half) are three-stars. But I want to look above and below that. Again, from 2002-2019, Missouri signed 90 two-stars (79 of them who have been eligible for the NFL draft). It signed 48 four-stars or higher (44 of whom have been eligible for the NFL Draft). NOTE: These numbers only count players once. So Sheldon Richardson, Daron Davis, Jason Townsend, Chase Abbington, Nate Strong (maybe a couple others) are only counted one time here.
Of the four-stars, ten of them were NFL Draft picks. That figures out to a 22.7% clip. In other words, a little more than one out of every five four-star players and above Mizzou has signed over an 18-year period was selected in the NFL Draft.
Of the 90 two-stars (11 are still in college), 11 have been NFL Draft picks. That is a 13.9% clip. Approxiimately one out of every seven two-stars Missouri signs is drafted into the NFL. I don't know, but I'd be willing to bet that is actually one of the higher rates in Power Five football. And still, it's nearly ten percent less likely that a two-star or less player is going to be drafted by the NFL than it is that a four-star or higher player will be. Missouri has had some incredible two-star success stories (for the record, this list doesn't include Colin Brown, who was a walk-on, but got drafted, but it also doesn't include players who were on NFL rosters but weren't drafted like Marcus Lucas and Damarea Crockett). I'd go so far as to say it's the most impressive part of Gary Pinkel's legacy is that he took players that Rivals didn't even view as college starters and made them NFL Draft picks 11 times. But even Pinkel, a coach who built his reputation on finding underrecruited players, was more likely to put a four-star in the NFL Draft than a two-star. On an individual level, it doesn't matter. On a larger scale, it absolutely matters.
4) Running through all these numbers got me to wondering, what is the makeup of this year's roster? So I went through every scholarship player. This includes the seniors who are coming back for another year but do not count against the official scholarship count.
5-stars: 0
4-stars: 9
3-stars: 54
2-stars: 14
Unranked: 9
5) Here is a breakdown of the number of those players signed under each coach.
5-stars: 0
4-stars: 3 by Odom, 6 by Drinkwitz
3-stars: 22 by Odom, 32 by Drinkwitz
2-stars: 7 by Odom, 7 by Drinkwitz
Unranked: 9 total. This number is tough to assign because it includes Blaze Alldredge and Grant McKinniss who were signed by Drinkwitz, but mostly consists of walk-ons who have since been awarded scholarships, either for this year or for multiple years.
Of the 77 players who were not in the unranked category, 45 of the 77 have been signed since Eli Drinkwitz was named the head coach. That means approximately 58% of the roster are Drinkwitz signees. Considering he's just about to start his second season, it's a pretty quick overhaul of the roster. There has been a lot of turnover. That's the idea. When you fire a coach and hire a new one, the general belief would be that your roster wasn't good enough under the old coach. You're trying to get more talent in here. There are naturally going to be more transfers out and more transfers in. Part of that is just due to the nature of college sports today, but a larger part is that when you're taking over for a coach that got fired, you're probably trying to remake the roster as quickly as possible. You want to bring in guys that you think are better players than the ones who had something to do with the last guy losing his job. But it is a process. Entering year two, Drinkwitz still has a roster that is only a little more than half guys he signed to play here. Which is a major reason why I have tried to tamp down expectations for this season just a little bit. There are nine four-star players on the roster (still a very low number for the SEC--without going through every roster, I'd bet that ranks 13th). Five of them are true freshmen and Mookie Cooper is a redshirt freshman. Missouri is still going to be at a talent deficit in the vast majority of its league games this year (and even Boston College has signed seven four-stars in the last four classes so the talent is probably pretty close there). The upshot to me is this: No coach taking over for a fired coach should be judged by results on the field until AT LEAST year three. I think the floor for this Missouri team is probably 5-7. And if he goes 5-7, I'm not going to judge Drinkwitz at all. It will change my opinion of what he can do going forward not one bit.
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