The Recruiting Gap
Part 1 in an Examination of the Virginia Tech Roster: High School Recruiting
Like many other Hokies, I have been thinking a lot about the roster of late. I have done little mind exercises trying to identify pockets of talent and positions where there is seemingly a dearth of it. Quickly, though, I run into an issue. What is talent?
For our purposes, I will define it as such:
Talent = Potential (to perform at a consistently elite level) + Actual Performance
Here are a couple examples from the recruiting class of 2017 to illustrate the point. Rayshard Ashby had average P5 potential and in 2019 performed at a high level. In particular, he had limited speed, but when he got to a ball carrier, he almost always made the tackle. As a result, his talent that season (obviously things went awry with Covid the following year) was commensurate with his being voted Second Team All-ACC.
On the flip side, Devon Hunter had elite potential, but performed at an average level, perhaps because he did not fit neatly into any one single position on either Bud Foster’s or Justin Hamilton’s defenses. Hunter stuck it out with Virginia Tech (and Tech stood by him during his legal issues), but despite his high recruiting ranking, he was mostly a special teams player.
With that bit of background, let’s start with an analysis of potential using the proxy measure of high school recruiting ranking. The 247 database has clean and complete information going back to the class of 2002. Upon entrance into the ACC, Virginia Tech enjoyed an eight season run of dominance that ended in the 2011 ACC Championship Game. The winning team that night, the Clemson Tigers, had handed the Hokies their only defeat during the regular season, 23-3 in Lane Stadium. This second win in as many months proved to be a passing of the torch. The term “Clemsoning” left the popular vernacular, and the Tigers went on to play in four National Championships, winning two, between 2015 and 2019. Meanwhile, the Hokies regressed to mediocrity, with only a brief reprieve from 2016-17. Tech has yet to make the College Football Playoff, or even finish in the Top 10 in the CFP rankings.
There has always been a recruiting gap
Much has been made of Virginia Tech’s recruiting struggles. Justin Fuente’s last two full recruiting classes (2020 and 2021) were among the program’s lowest ranked classes in recent memory. Fuente’s staff did most of the heavy lifting on the 2022 class, and Brent Pry’s staff managed to retain the vast majority of commits while adding a few of their own in the end. Still, the 2022 class is roughly on par with where recruiting was in Frank Beamer’s final years. So what happened?
From good enough to the bottom falling out
During the period from 2002 through 2011, Virginia Tech won at least 10 games in every season except one (2003). Clemson spent most of that time as a slightly above average, but consistently underperforming team. The Hokies dominated the Tigers in a 2006 Thursday night affair at Lane Stadium and put on a Beamerball clinic in Memorial Stadium in 2007. Tech was clearly the better team in both games, and really, for the duration of that era. But even then, there was a high school recruiting gap.
From 2002-11, Virginia Tech’s recruiting classes were roughly comparable to Clemson’s. The Tigers had a median player rating of 573, compared to 586 for the Hokies. However, the range on the middle 50% of players more strongly favored Clemson, 269-851 vs. 390-1041. Clemson did have more outliers among low ranked players, but overall, they were consistently signing high school players with a slight edge on those that went to Virginia Tech.
The gap widened noticeably from 2012-2022. The median player national ranking for Virginia Tech rose from 586 to 782, while the same metric for Clemson declined from 573 to 275. That is, more than half of Clemson’s recruits during this 11-year run were Top 300 players nationally, while the average Virginia Tech player was ranked barely in the top 1000. Even worse, the shift was not consistent within the teams.
From 2002-11, Clemson totaled 46 Top 250 high school recruits (4.6 per year), compared to Virginia Tech’s 28 (2.8 per year). Virginia Tech recruited slightly more players in the 251-500, 501-1,000, and 1,000+ groups. Tech’s slight advantage in the 251-500 group carried over nearly unchanged to 2012-22, but the Hokies saw their number of Top 250 recruits decline by nearly 50%. Meanwhile, Clemson more than doubled its number of Top 250 recruits. The Tigers were awarding scholarships to blue chip recruits that would have previously gone to players ranked 501-1,000 or 1,000+. Those lower ranked players, in turn, flocked to Virginia Tech.
The evolving recruiting map
Under Frank Beamer, the Hokies focused their recruiting efforts on the six-hour radius around Blacksburg. Justin Fuente expanded the Tech map, but that appears to have been done under duress. More on that in a moment.
In general, from 2002-11, Tech recruited heavily in the DMV, established relationships in pockets of New Jersey and Florida, and made very selective outreach in midwestern states. Clemson’s recruiting turf primarily comprised North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Importantly, both schools pulled Top 250 commits mainly from their recruiting areas. Clemson dominated North Carolina (5-0), but Tajh Boyd was the only Top 250 player from the DMV to commit to Clemson during this era.
During Clemson’s 11-year run of dominance, the Tigers greatly expanded their recruiting map. Any player east of the Mississippi River was fair game, and the Tigers even got a commit (Scott Pagano, a defensive tackle in the 2013 class) from Hawaii. The Hokies also expanded their recruiting map, focusing mainly on B1G country and the state of Texas.
The issue, if you’re a Tech fan, is that Clemson expanded their map in order to get highly ranked players, while the Hokies expanded theirs in search of serviceable players. From 2012-22, Clemson signed Top 250 commits from Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, Texas, and California - all well beyond their traditional recruiting ground in the southeast.
In recent years, Chris Coleman of Techsideline has thoroughly documented the decline in Virginia High School League talent, especially in the 757. So, the Hokies were fighting an uphill battle to begin with, and that situation was made worse when Clemson expanded their recruiting efforts into the DMV. From 2012-22, top talent from the Tidewater area exclusively chose Clemson over Virginia Tech, and the Tigers also had an edge in the D.C. area. For the DMV as a whole, Clemson matched Virginia Tech 10-10 in Top 250 commits.
Worse still, the Hokies hit on only four of nine players, with the tenth, Gunner Givens, entering his true freshman season in 2022. Wyatt Teller is currently the best offensive lineman in the NFL, while Kendall Fuller and Tim Settle are enjoying successful NFL careers. Ken Ekanem was a three-year starter at defensive end for the Hokies. The remaining five players made virtually no contribution to the team.
What can Brent Pry do to improve the situation?
Brent Pry begins his tenure as head coach at the program’s lowest point in thirty years. However, as floors go, mediocrity is not that bad. Ask Tennessee and Florida fans. And, believe it or not, 2022 may be the inflection point.
The 2022 recruiting class was the first since 2013 in which the Virginia Tech signees had a lower average ranking (numerical, i.e., better players) than those on their way to Clemson. No doubt, Clemson’s 2022 average ranking was affected by the loss of both coordinators, who moved on to head coaching gigs at P5 schools (Tony Elliott at Virginia and Brent Venables at Oklahoma). Their replacements, Brandon Streeter and Wes Grisham, are unproven, and there is a level of uncertainty in death valley that has been absent since early in Swinney’s tenure as head coach.
Still, Pry has work to do, and he appears to have his priorities in order on the recruiting front. He has placed renewed focus on the Commonwealth of Virginia, with half of the current 2023 commits hailing from in-state. He and his staff are also rebuilding relationships with high school coaches that grew strained during the Fuente years. Issues like increased pay for high school coaches and allowing out-of-state signees to have their scholarships reimbursed at the in-state rate are beyond Pry’s current scope of influence, but remain important nonetheless. The latter, in the case of the Mack Brown model, could enter Pry’s scope should he get the Hokies winning again on the field and build his reputation and connections in the halls of power in Richmond.
Winning one-on-one recruiting battles for top talent will not happen immediately, but the recent trend of winning commitments from solid recruits close to home portends future potential for the new staff. Long-term, if Pry can keep the current staff together, we might see the Hokies make inroads into SEC and B1G country, which could potentially help flip the ACC balance of power back in Virginia Tech’s favor.