Let me start by saying this: I'm not going to judge whether it's good bad or indifferent because I've seen almost none of these guys play. Signing Day is PR and almost nothing more. Maybe a guy is the best player in the class, maybe he's the worst, who knows? We'll find all that out in two or three years. So I'm not going to grade the class or anything, just offer some thoughts.
1. This is a very typical Missouri class. Rivals ranks it 31st in the country. That's the best mark of Barry Odom's tenure by quite a bit. The first three classes were 47, 49, 39. So even if the ranking falls by two or three spots because there might be other teams with more room between now and February, it should be the best class they've had. It is the second highest ranked class Missouri has signed since 2010 (the Tigers were 27th in 2015...and this class would be right around there if the transfers counted). The average ranking of Gary Pinkel's last 14 recruiting classes? 33.71. So it's a slightly better than normal Mizzou recruiting class on paper. You'll take that.
2. The key obviously is getting this class to perform better on the field than on paper. Missouri's been very good at doing that. We all know what Pinkel's track record was. I wanted to see how Odom has been. So let's take the recruiting rankings of the four classes that make up the bulk of that season's team under Odom:
2016 (2013-16 classes): Average team rank 37.25. Record 4-8. Part of this is due to the fact we know that even at 41 and 34, the 2013 and 14 classes were terribly overrated and contributed very little on the field.
2017 (2014-17 classes): Average team rank 39.25. Record 7-6. The class rank got a little worse because on paper 2017 was worse than 2013...but in reality that wasn't true at all.
2018 (2015-18 classes): Average team rank 40.5 Record 8-4. Again, the team rank went down a little bit because Rivals said the 2018 class was worse than the 2015 class by a fair amount. And that 2015 class was pretty good. It included Terry Beckner, Terez Hall, Jonathon Johnson, Drew Lock and others. But the 2018 class included double digit freshmen who didn't redshirt and six that scored touchdowns. It was pretty good too.
2019 (2016-19 classes): Let's say for the sake of this that Missouri stays at 31 in the final team rankings. Average class rank at that point will be 40. Right about what it was the last two seasons. Add in the grad transfer quarterback and I think that changes the calculus a little bit. But this staff has shown that the more of its own recruits it gets on campus, the better it seems to be on the field. Here are the only players on next year's roster (as of today) that were signed/mainly recruited by Gary Pinkel's staff: Justin Smith, Johnathon Johnson, Richaud Floyd, Albert Okwuegbunam, Franklin Agbasimere, Tyrell Jacobs, Ronnell Perkins, DeMarkus Acy, Christian Holmes, Tucker McCann. That's five major contributors (Johnson, Albert, Acy, Holmes, McCann).
3. It's not all sunshine and rainbows because they are in the SEC. And this class is 13th in the SEC and most of Missouri's classes have been 13th in the SEC. I'm not going to tell you it's no issue at all. 13th in the SEC every year doesn't prevent you from ever being good...but it makes it very difficult to win the East or win the conference more than once every great while. Recruiting rankings certainly aren't everything. Florida and Tennessee are going to out recruit Missouri every year because of the name on the front of the jersey and yet Missouri has handled those teams pretty well on the field. If they can find a way to do the same thing with Kentucky and South Carolina, they'll be in pretty good shape. You're never recruiting better than Bama, A&M, LSU or Auburn, but who cares because you never play more than one of those teams in a season and quite often don't play any of them. But Missouri's goal should be 9th or 10th in the SEC. Here's where the 9th best recruiting class in the SEC has finished since Missouri joined the league:
2019: 22nd (South Carolina)
2018: 25th (Mississippi State)
2017: 24th (Arkansas...look where that's got them)
2016: 26th (South Carolina)
2015: 21st (Ole Miss)
2014: 17th (Kentucky)
2013: 19th (Vanderbilt)
2012: 29th (Vanderbilt)
So the average recruiting ranking of the 9th best team in the SEC is 20.4 over the last eight years. If you're ninth in the SEC, you've been a top 25 class six times in eight years. That's the goal. Be ninth. And you'll still be recruiting at a level Missouri has never recruited at before.
For some context, here's where Missouri would rank in each of the other Power Five conferences this year:
Big 12: 4th (behind OU, UT, TCU)
ACC: 5th (behind Clemson, FSU, NC State, Virginia Tech)
Big Ten: 7th (behind Michigan, Penn State, Nebraska, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Purdue)
PAC 12: 5th (behind Oregon, Washington, Stanford, USC)
4. Momentum is a crazy thing. Because of the timing of some of these announcements, the class feels even better than it is. Shawn Robinson committed on his visit, but Missouri didn't put it out until Tuesday night (I believe he signed Monday, so they held it for a little more than 24 hours). Chris Daniels has been committed for a while. Jamie Pettway committed on his in-home visit a couple weeks ago. Now, obviously you never know until the papers are signed, but my point is, if all those guys had announced the day they committed, you'd still be happy to have them, but it wouldn't feel like this huge win in the final week when Missouri landed seven guys. Because really, they knew at least five of those guys were coming prior to when it was announced.
5. One exception was Darius Robinson. That was a signing day win for Mizzou no matter how you slice it. I checked with someone at Mizzou early in the week and they told me 50/50. As we got closer to signing day, everyone thought he was going to Colorado (including, most certainly, Colorado people). Yesterday around noon I checked and the momentum had switched to Mizzou (what really convinced me was Colorado people felt the same way). Brick Haley told me yesterday he was on the phone with Robinson late into the night on Tuesday and thought it was about midnight he finally got the yes from Robinson. So Mizzou's defensive line coach deserves credit for the sales job there.
1. This is a very typical Missouri class. Rivals ranks it 31st in the country. That's the best mark of Barry Odom's tenure by quite a bit. The first three classes were 47, 49, 39. So even if the ranking falls by two or three spots because there might be other teams with more room between now and February, it should be the best class they've had. It is the second highest ranked class Missouri has signed since 2010 (the Tigers were 27th in 2015...and this class would be right around there if the transfers counted). The average ranking of Gary Pinkel's last 14 recruiting classes? 33.71. So it's a slightly better than normal Mizzou recruiting class on paper. You'll take that.
2. The key obviously is getting this class to perform better on the field than on paper. Missouri's been very good at doing that. We all know what Pinkel's track record was. I wanted to see how Odom has been. So let's take the recruiting rankings of the four classes that make up the bulk of that season's team under Odom:
2016 (2013-16 classes): Average team rank 37.25. Record 4-8. Part of this is due to the fact we know that even at 41 and 34, the 2013 and 14 classes were terribly overrated and contributed very little on the field.
2017 (2014-17 classes): Average team rank 39.25. Record 7-6. The class rank got a little worse because on paper 2017 was worse than 2013...but in reality that wasn't true at all.
2018 (2015-18 classes): Average team rank 40.5 Record 8-4. Again, the team rank went down a little bit because Rivals said the 2018 class was worse than the 2015 class by a fair amount. And that 2015 class was pretty good. It included Terry Beckner, Terez Hall, Jonathon Johnson, Drew Lock and others. But the 2018 class included double digit freshmen who didn't redshirt and six that scored touchdowns. It was pretty good too.
2019 (2016-19 classes): Let's say for the sake of this that Missouri stays at 31 in the final team rankings. Average class rank at that point will be 40. Right about what it was the last two seasons. Add in the grad transfer quarterback and I think that changes the calculus a little bit. But this staff has shown that the more of its own recruits it gets on campus, the better it seems to be on the field. Here are the only players on next year's roster (as of today) that were signed/mainly recruited by Gary Pinkel's staff: Justin Smith, Johnathon Johnson, Richaud Floyd, Albert Okwuegbunam, Franklin Agbasimere, Tyrell Jacobs, Ronnell Perkins, DeMarkus Acy, Christian Holmes, Tucker McCann. That's five major contributors (Johnson, Albert, Acy, Holmes, McCann).
3. It's not all sunshine and rainbows because they are in the SEC. And this class is 13th in the SEC and most of Missouri's classes have been 13th in the SEC. I'm not going to tell you it's no issue at all. 13th in the SEC every year doesn't prevent you from ever being good...but it makes it very difficult to win the East or win the conference more than once every great while. Recruiting rankings certainly aren't everything. Florida and Tennessee are going to out recruit Missouri every year because of the name on the front of the jersey and yet Missouri has handled those teams pretty well on the field. If they can find a way to do the same thing with Kentucky and South Carolina, they'll be in pretty good shape. You're never recruiting better than Bama, A&M, LSU or Auburn, but who cares because you never play more than one of those teams in a season and quite often don't play any of them. But Missouri's goal should be 9th or 10th in the SEC. Here's where the 9th best recruiting class in the SEC has finished since Missouri joined the league:
2019: 22nd (South Carolina)
2018: 25th (Mississippi State)
2017: 24th (Arkansas...look where that's got them)
2016: 26th (South Carolina)
2015: 21st (Ole Miss)
2014: 17th (Kentucky)
2013: 19th (Vanderbilt)
2012: 29th (Vanderbilt)
So the average recruiting ranking of the 9th best team in the SEC is 20.4 over the last eight years. If you're ninth in the SEC, you've been a top 25 class six times in eight years. That's the goal. Be ninth. And you'll still be recruiting at a level Missouri has never recruited at before.
For some context, here's where Missouri would rank in each of the other Power Five conferences this year:
Big 12: 4th (behind OU, UT, TCU)
ACC: 5th (behind Clemson, FSU, NC State, Virginia Tech)
Big Ten: 7th (behind Michigan, Penn State, Nebraska, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Purdue)
PAC 12: 5th (behind Oregon, Washington, Stanford, USC)
4. Momentum is a crazy thing. Because of the timing of some of these announcements, the class feels even better than it is. Shawn Robinson committed on his visit, but Missouri didn't put it out until Tuesday night (I believe he signed Monday, so they held it for a little more than 24 hours). Chris Daniels has been committed for a while. Jamie Pettway committed on his in-home visit a couple weeks ago. Now, obviously you never know until the papers are signed, but my point is, if all those guys had announced the day they committed, you'd still be happy to have them, but it wouldn't feel like this huge win in the final week when Missouri landed seven guys. Because really, they knew at least five of those guys were coming prior to when it was announced.
5. One exception was Darius Robinson. That was a signing day win for Mizzou no matter how you slice it. I checked with someone at Mizzou early in the week and they told me 50/50. As we got closer to signing day, everyone thought he was going to Colorado (including, most certainly, Colorado people). Yesterday around noon I checked and the momentum had switched to Mizzou (what really convinced me was Colorado people felt the same way). Brick Haley told me yesterday he was on the phone with Robinson late into the night on Tuesday and thought it was about midnight he finally got the yes from Robinson. So Mizzou's defensive line coach deserves credit for the sales job there.
