Georgia Tech Football: Recruiting Classes Revisited - 2019

The 2019 Georgia Tech recruiting class served as the bridge class between the two most recent coaching eras. After the hire of Geoff Collins, the new staff added several commitments, including most of the highest rated players in the class, but they have not worked out as hoped. Before diving into the specific members and contributions of the class, I wanted to take a broader look at how Georgia Tech’s on-field performance over the past six seasons compares to recent rankings in recruiting. To do this, let’s pair each recruiting class with the average performance in its second, third, and fourth seasons on the Flats. This means we have enough data to consider the 2014-2019 classes, and we will use the Massey Composite Index (a compilation of over 50 computer power ratings) as the index for on-field performance.

If a team falls below the x=y line, the recruiting class is generally outperforming its recruiting ranking, while a class above the diagonal line has underperformed its recruitment.

Over the past six seasons, GT has only one class (2014) that over performed, while the remaining five have slightly to vastly underperformed their recruiting rankings. It’s stunning to see the sustained underperformance in the transition period that includes the final Johnson classes and the initial Collins class.

As the transfer portal has become an ever-present force in college football, it’s assumed that there will be significant personnel turnover that happens during the final days of a departing coaching staff and the early days of a new staff. Georgia Tech may be one of the most instructive case studies for this phenomenon. The 2019 class that we are considering today has been flat-out decimated.

Initially, after Collins and company took over and added some final pieces to the class, the 2019 recruits came in with a composite average of 85.53, ranking 53rd nationally and 9th in the ACC. The composite average was slightly better than the final Johnson class of 2018. These players are now theoretically in their fourth year in the program and should be the heart of the team.

Unfortunately, they are making almost no impact at all. The raw numbers are simply stunning. This class had 22 members. Take a minute to try and guess how many of those 22 are still at Georgia Tech and part of the football team.

Drumroll…

6. 6 players. Out of 22. Losing half of a transition class in this age of college football would be normal. Losing 73% of the class thwarts program building to an exceptional degree. Beyond that, as you will see below when we go through the individual members of the class, there is not a single member of this recruiting class expected to start for Georgia Tech in 2022.

Read that sentence again. These are the players who should be seniors and redshirt juniors. Not a single one will start in their fourth year out of high school. That is quite enough evidence to get an indictment against the talent development and deployment capabilities of this staff.

Let’s now get a little more granular and consider each member of the class. I’ve gone through each member of the class and provided the current position, the original composite rating, the current playing status, and an updated rating that I assigned.

Here’s how I’m evaluating each player:

>95: All-America Candidate

>90: All-ACC Candidate

85: Average Starter

<80: Below the Line

After doing my ratings updates, the 2019 class ended up with an 81.45 average, which is a full four points below their original rating. This was barely an FBS caliber recruiting class, much less Power Five caliber. The two players who demonstrated the most production, Walker and Lockhart, have transferred to other P5 destinations, and a third player, Chico Bennett, has developed at UVA to the point where he is expected to contribute heavily to their defense this season.

They are three of the sixteen players from the class no longer on the Georgia Tech roster. Out of the six still around, Norris and Leonard ought to feature in secondary roles in the passing attack; Douse, Yondjouen, and Knight will likely be second teamers, and Johnson has struggled when elevated beyond a third team type role. I do not expect any above average production from this class to benefit Georgia Tech this season. Another significant observation to make here is the ongoing consequences of this class containing no offensive linemen.

Last year, I reviewed the 2018 class, observed that only 8 members were left at GT, and wrote that that class was probably the one most affected by the coaching transition. Nope! 2019 has vaulted into the lead of that race. On the development and deployment side, the higher rated offensive skill position players mostly have did not live up to their billing nor found alignment with the system being employed by the Patenaude-era offensive staff. On the defensive side, the class had little high-end talent and has posted very little production. This is a nearly complete miss of a year, and the 2022 team looks likely to continue paying the piper for that miss.