Team Talent Composite Ranking | 2018 UPDATE

[chaseball]

247 just updated their team talent composite rating for the 2018 season (this update is done once per year a few weeks into each season). Essentially, it's a snapshot of the talent on each program's 85 man roster based on the individual recruiting rating of each player. This is probably the single greatest/objective indicator of a program's overall health relative to its peers that's available to the public.

More important than where programs fall on this ranking system, is the actual rating that they've accrued over the last 4-5 years. For instance, ND is ranked 10th, but their overall rating of 847.85 is multiple tiers away from OSU/Alabama/Georgia/USC whose rating is well into the 900s.

Basically the programs in green are playoff gatekeepers...and as fans of NDs program we should all be rooting to close this gap as much as possible. It's difficult to win games vs programs above your talent tier, and even more difficult to secure playoff spots over them.

I've always said that Brian Kelly is a very underrated developer of talent, and that his biggest problem is not the development of his talent, but procuring talent/and out recruiting his peers (it's an opinion that isn't very popular around NDnation).

Brian Kelly has gone toe to toe/beaten more talented programs throughout his ND career, but he's always had to start with less which makes that kind of success less sustainable and caps the program's ceiling.

Anyway just wanted to post this here for discussion .. (i took some screen grabs after putting the data in excel and thought i'd share it here with the rest of the board)

 

[NDSMC78]

Obviously a hoax. In the past 12 months, ND has beaten USC, LSU, and Michigan, all of which had more talent than us, according to your chart.

 

[impossibilityofreason1]

Interesting. No Stanford. Washington is usually a top 10 team without the talent. Miami is pretty far down too and that was a nightmare last year.

 

[echowaker]

that poor horse.....been beaten more times than 88ND in a debate on football.

 

[chaseball]

Interesting. No Stanford. Washington is usually a top 10 team without the talent. Miami is pretty far down too and that was a nightmare last year.

Ya, things like strength of schedule, injury luck, turnovers, etc. all have pretty big impact on a single game or even a single season. And these things are usually out of a team's control.

The best way to see the connection between talent composite rankings and a program's performance on the field is to expand the sample size to multiple seasons of performance.

For instance, Miami murdered ND last year despite ND being in a higher tier than Miami .. but ND has outperformed Miami if we look at say the last 3-4 seasons collectively (e.g. what team has won more games over that time, won the bigger games, played in more prestigious bowls, what was their average final playoff ranking, etc.)

And then you have programs that defy all odds .. like Oklahoma and Washington's recent success .. but if you look past a few of these outliers there's a SCARY amount of correlation between talent ranking and ultimately where a team finishes their season in the final playoff ranking.

 

[impossibilityofreason1]

I think you would have to list USC, Texas, and FSU as big underachievers based on this example.

 

[Pennick4]

that poor horse.....been beaten more times than 88ND in a debate on football.

I have it as a draw.

 

[NDAFArly]

USC, Texas, Michigan, LSU have not even been in the discussion.
FSU obviously has fallen off.
Georgia has just now come on.
So really, since the CFP started only OSU, Bama & Clemson in the top 10 have achieved more consistently than ND.

 

[chaseball]

I'm going to average the final FEI/S&P+ combined rankings over at footballoutsiders.com (https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/fplus) over the last 4 years (2014/2015/2016/2017 seasons) and compare it to the team talent composite ratings that i posted here ... that way we don't have to make random guesses as to which teams have under performed/over performed their talent

the results should be interesting

 

[d1042]

Interesting. No Stanford. Washington is usually a top 10 team without the talent. Miami is pretty far down too and that was a nightmare last year.

UW ? only since Peterson arrived.

 

[ivan brunetti]

FSU & USC, as well as Washington and OU, stand out on that list.

I wonder if it keeps track of recent injuries?

 

[d1042]

it takes a really bad coach to overcome elite type roster talent
it takes a really good coach to coach sub elite talent to play together as if elite.
So, you need talent as team and that team needs a talented coach.

 

[impossibilityofreason1]

UW ? only since Peterson arrived.

This is his 5th year.

 

[chaseball]

It doesn't look like 247s team talent composite rating is propagating correctly ( at least as it relates to stanford ... stanford in past seasons usually has talent ranked in the top 15-20 range) this season they are showing stanford ranked #115th with only ~20 commits ... something seems off there .. i contacted their site to notify them about it and ask for clarification ..

i didn't notice any other blatant errors ...

 

[chaseball]

Below line graph reflects the 50 most talented teams in the country. Their average FINAL RANKING at the end of each season from 2015 through 2017 is reflected in the "performance rank" (orange line) their average talent ranking during that same time is reflected in the blue line.

Notre Dame has a performance rank of #16 and a recruiting rank of #10 .. mind you .. it looks like a common trend for most teams to underperform their talent for some reason (the orange line rarely goes lower than the blue line) ... i don't have any theories at the moment as to why that is .. but worth mentioning none the less ...

in spots where the orange line is much higher than the blue line is where teams are way under performing their talent .. Maryland is a very egregious example of this (#21 talent rank, #93 performance rank)

It seems like much of the top 10-15 teams in the country perform at or near their recruiting rank .. and that things get more erratic the further away you get from that top 10-15 window ..

 

[SIhoosier26]

My problem with Brian Kelly is that while we've consistently had top 10-15 talent under him we hardly actually finish in that range. Seasons like last year (ap 11) have proven to be an outlier. Losing to teams we shouldn't lose to and notching seasons like 8 and 5, and even 4 and 8 ect.. simply shouldn't be good enough at Notre Dame.

I'm of the opinion that when Notre Dame starts winning more consistently, they will have no problem recruiting even better. I really think the QB position has been the biggest thorn in Kelly's side. That being said, Ian Book is much more like the QBs he had success with at Cincy so hopefully we can continue to ride that into a great season.