Georgia Tech Football: Recruiting Class Success Entering 2023

In the past, we have done a Recruiting Class Revisited series in which we will go through each recruiting class that makes up the roster to show what each player has done and who is still there.

This year, I wanted to do something a little different and take a more holistic view of the recruiting classes that make up Tech’s roster. This year, I’ll be dividing this article into two parts. The first part will examine the overview of the promise of the classes, and then the second part will critique and compare how they’ve performed up to this point.

Promise

Before I dive too much into this, I want to say that the 2018 numbers are slightly skewed due to Curtis Ryans being unrated on both Rivals and the 247 Sports Composite. If I remove the 0 I put for those scores, the average ratings jump to 5.548 for Rivals and 0.8476 for 247.

From looking at these numbers, a few conclusions can be taken. First, this is certainly a mixed bag of recruiting results that lines up well with Collins’ first couple years at Georgia Tech. There was a lot of excitement around the program, and he was able to bring in some promising (very intentional use of promising rather than good) recruiting classes.

What is also evident is the growing reliance on the transfer portal. The shift from 2020 to 2021 absolutely blows my mind. Georgia Tech has not had an incoming freshman class that includes 20 players in now three full cycles. Frankly, I don’t think this should be the goal, and I hope that Brent Key will give a greater focus to the incoming freshman moving forward (more on that class later this week).

I found it interesting that despite the high ranking of the 2020 class, the average rating of recruits is actually pretty consistent from 2020 to 2021 and 2022.

Performance

Now, before I show the results, take a guess at which class you think performed the best. It stands to reason that the highest-rated and highest-ranked class would be the most successful, right? Well, not exactly.

To better explain these numbers, I’ve included definitions for each category below:

• Starters: Players who, even if they have graduated, started for a sustained period of time or are expected to become starters this year.
• Reserves: Players who, even if they have graduated, did not start for a sustained period of time and are not expected to become starters this year.
• Transfers up: Players who transferred to a better Power 5 team (e.g., Jahmyr Gibbs to Alabama, Jared Ivey to Ole Miss, etc.).
• Transfers lateral: Players who transferred to a Power 5 team that is not demonstrably better than Georgia Tech (e.g., Chico Bennett to Virginia, Nate McCollum to North Carolina, Jeff Sims to Nebraska, etc.).
• Transfers down: Players who transferred to a non-Power 5 team.
• Medical/left team: Players who left Georgia Tech for any medical or non-medical reason and did not transfer to another team.
• Success %: The percentage of players who are listed as “Starters” or “Transfers up.”

I decided not to include lateral transfers in the success percentage because it’s a bit of a volatile group. Sure there are guys like McCollum or Bennett who were very good players for Tech, but there are also guys like Mike Lockhart (West Virginia) and Justice Dingle (Kentucky) who never accumulated much playtime at Georgia Tech but still transferred to another P5 school. It’s not a perfect system, but this is how I decided to look at this.

What stands out most to me is that the 2021 class has produced over twice as many starters as Geoff Collins’ “best” class. This was why I intentionally used promising instead of good when describing the class earlier.

Unfortunately for Georgia Tech, they are going to be replacing a lot of that 2021 success this season. Of those 11 starters, 5 were from the transfer portal. Of those 5, only one is left, and that is Kenyatta Watson II who will likely be the starter opposite Myles Sims this season. Also in that group are Ace Eley and Keion White. I’m excited to see how the 2022 class (and beyond) tries to fill some of those gaps.

There isn’t necessarily a lot of conclusions to be drawn from all of this yet, as this is the first time I’ve done something like this, but it will be interesting to follow these numbers year over year to see if it’s something that Tech (and specifically Brent Key) can continue to improve at.