BlueandGold.com has been running its 3-2-1 column for years now and will start publishing it as a staff article with writers Patrick Engel, Mike Singer and Lou Somogyi to provide big picture takeaways, historical notes and recruiting impact on various Notre Dame football related topics.
Our first Blue & Gold 3-2-1 kicks off by giving three takeaways from Notre Dame in the NFL Draft, two historical nuggets and how the Fighting Irish’s six players selected impacts recruiting.
3 Notre Dame Takeaways From The 2020 NFL Draft — Patrick Engel
It is not the total pick number that matters, but where they are picked
LSU set a modern draft record with 14 players selected, a number fitting of the Tigers’ dominant season. Only two more touched double figures: Ohio State and Michigan, with 10 each. Alabama followed with nine.
Not really a surprise. LSU, Alabama and Ohio State are frequent guests in the top five of the recruiting rankings and the College Football Playoff.
Then there is Michigan, a pretty good but not elite team with no CFP appearances that has signed top-level classes less often. The Wolverines producing the same number of draftees as those powers seems odd, but it is not as strange as it seems when digging deeper.
LSU had eight of the top 70 picks and five first-rounders. Ohio State had three top-20 picks. All nine Alabama players went in the first three rounds. Michigan, however, had seven players taken in the fifth and sixth rounds, but just two in the first 140 picks.
Notre Dame, with six picks, had no worse a season and has signed recruiting classes closer to Michigan’s level than Alabama’s and Ohio State’s.
A closer correlation between on-field results and the draft is where the drafted players are selected, not the raw number of selections. Notre Dame had more top-100 draft picks than Michigan despite four fewer players drafted.
Total pick number can be a deceiving stat based on the right mix of underclass declarations and senior departures, or just a good example of developing lower-ranked recruits into solid but not elite draft prospects.
All told, Notre Dame (and Michigan) sits a bit below that perceived top tier of talent producers and regular CFP participants. It has not failed to put out draft picks or played poorly in recent years, 2016 aside.
If the Irish can develop more high-rounders in addition to their mid- and late-round guys, though, they will be closer to that top level.
Stars do matter
There is no better time than draft weekend to poke a hole in the “stars are meaningless” argument.
From Notre Dame standpoint, five of its six draft picks were four-star recruits. Three of its six undrafted signings were four-star recruits. The highest-ranked one was the highest-drafted player. The lowest-rated was the lowest picked. Quenton Nelson, the highest-drafted player under Brian Kelly, was a five-star.
Overall, the star rankings’ effectiveness shows up with basic math. There are more three-star recruits in the NFL and in the draft than any other kind because they are the most common kind of recruit. The percentage that get drafted, though, is minuscule.
Meanwhile, 15 of the 31 five-stars in the 2016 class have been drafted. In 2017, it is 13 of the 34 five-stars, and early 2021 mocks suggest another eight or nine should be high-round picks. Those five-star classes combined for 13 first-round picks. Finally, 21 of the 32 first-rounders this year were four- or five-star recruits.
There will be five-star washouts. There will be three-star and no-star first-round picks. But those are the exception.
