Illinois Football Recruiting Thread
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It appears to be pay only for me.
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
I’ve been working on this data for ~3 months and now that signing day has passed, I’m ready to share. We’ve had many discussions on here, and national discussions elsewhere, on assessing a recruiting class. How do we know it’s a good or bad recruiting class? The information is endless – lots of dedicated websites for recruiting, all the voices inside the house are full of optimism, podcasts, etc. There’s also doubt – how come program X is always ranked highly but never performs or how can player A be rated higher when our program didn’t even want him?
I wanted a different perspective of how Illinois, and their Big Ten rivals, were performing in recruiting. I’m not a scout or have expertise in football, but I am a researcher. What seems especially important to me is offers. The more offers a player possesses, the more confirmation it provides that the player is valuable. Some of this is likely baked into the systems we already have (e.g., Rivals), but it’s not consistent. The anecdotal evidence is offers from certain programs, like Texas and Alabama, can create significant movement for a player’s rankings. But what if lots of P5 programs are offering a player? Is that a consistent driver of player’s rankings to increase?
Therefore, I wanted to assess Illinois’ and Big Ten recruiting rankings based on their signee’s listed offers. Specifically, (a) I wanted to see if Illinois was seeing an uptick in commitments with more offers than previous classes, and (b) I wanted to see how Illinois’ class, based on their other offers, compared to their main competition. Here is what I found:
Part A: Is Illinois seeing an increase in prospect commitments who hold more D1 and P5 offers? YES
Illinois Recruits' # of Other D1 Offers
The 2021 class only had a median of three other D1 offers, with the trend being offers from App State, Georgia Southern, Bowling Green. Another frightening trend was that 55% of all ’21 commits had zero other D1 offers.
Now? The 2024 class had a median 13 other D1 offers. To contextualize that difference – the ’21 class had 18 commitments and only two players (Patrick Bryant and DD Snyder) had 10 or more offers. The ’24 class has 20 commitments and 13 of those players have 10 or more offers (Canada, Brown, Dennis, Petty, Barna, Knight, Stewart, John, Orr, Woodward, Tuerk, Griffin, and Valentine). You also are seeing a significant decrease in players with no other P5 offers – and two of them were big priorities for the staff (Hansen + Orr) compared to being C/D targets in previous years (only Hollinger might fall into this group but it seems like the staff prioritized him once they found him).
Maybe you don’t care about how many MAC, AAC, or Sun Belt offers – you just want to compare to other P5 offers.
Illinois Recruits' # of Other P5 Offers
You are not seeing an error. Yes, the ’21 class had a median P5 offer of 0. A few have worked out (Odeluga, Kreutz, Rosiek), many others did not (Collier, Curry, Johnson, Villaneuva, Barlev). There was only incremental improvement in 2022 (0.5).
Now? The 2024 median P5 offers is 4.5. Sticking with the same comp: Comparing it to the ’21 class – only Bryant had more than 5 other P5 offers. The ’24 class has 8 players with >5 P5 offers (Woodward, Tuerk, Griffin, Valentine, Dennis, Stewart, Knight, and Barna). It’s not a perfect analogy but imagine another seven players on the roster right now, who are juniors, who are at the level of Pat Bryant. I know this isn’t a ranking comparison but this points out the potential concern for rankings – the ’23 class has a higher, average ranking (~987) compared to ’24 (~1006), but there is still a difference in offers obtained, with the ’24 class averaging another two D1 and one P5 offer than ’23.
I know this is already really long, so I’ll break this into two parts and do the comparison to the B1G West peers in a follow-up post.
I wanted a different perspective of how Illinois, and their Big Ten rivals, were performing in recruiting. I’m not a scout or have expertise in football, but I am a researcher. What seems especially important to me is offers. The more offers a player possesses, the more confirmation it provides that the player is valuable. Some of this is likely baked into the systems we already have (e.g., Rivals), but it’s not consistent. The anecdotal evidence is offers from certain programs, like Texas and Alabama, can create significant movement for a player’s rankings. But what if lots of P5 programs are offering a player? Is that a consistent driver of player’s rankings to increase?
Therefore, I wanted to assess Illinois’ and Big Ten recruiting rankings based on their signee’s listed offers. Specifically, (a) I wanted to see if Illinois was seeing an uptick in commitments with more offers than previous classes, and (b) I wanted to see how Illinois’ class, based on their other offers, compared to their main competition. Here is what I found:
Part A: Is Illinois seeing an increase in prospect commitments who hold more D1 and P5 offers? YES
Illinois Recruits' # of Other D1 Offers
The 2021 class only had a median of three other D1 offers, with the trend being offers from App State, Georgia Southern, Bowling Green. Another frightening trend was that 55% of all ’21 commits had zero other D1 offers.
Now? The 2024 class had a median 13 other D1 offers. To contextualize that difference – the ’21 class had 18 commitments and only two players (Patrick Bryant and DD Snyder) had 10 or more offers. The ’24 class has 20 commitments and 13 of those players have 10 or more offers (Canada, Brown, Dennis, Petty, Barna, Knight, Stewart, John, Orr, Woodward, Tuerk, Griffin, and Valentine). You also are seeing a significant decrease in players with no other P5 offers – and two of them were big priorities for the staff (Hansen + Orr) compared to being C/D targets in previous years (only Hollinger might fall into this group but it seems like the staff prioritized him once they found him).
Maybe you don’t care about how many MAC, AAC, or Sun Belt offers – you just want to compare to other P5 offers.
Illinois Recruits' # of Other P5 Offers
You are not seeing an error. Yes, the ’21 class had a median P5 offer of 0. A few have worked out (Odeluga, Kreutz, Rosiek), many others did not (Collier, Curry, Johnson, Villaneuva, Barlev). There was only incremental improvement in 2022 (0.5).
Now? The 2024 median P5 offers is 4.5. Sticking with the same comp: Comparing it to the ’21 class – only Bryant had more than 5 other P5 offers. The ’24 class has 8 players with >5 P5 offers (Woodward, Tuerk, Griffin, Valentine, Dennis, Stewart, Knight, and Barna). It’s not a perfect analogy but imagine another seven players on the roster right now, who are juniors, who are at the level of Pat Bryant. I know this isn’t a ranking comparison but this points out the potential concern for rankings – the ’23 class has a higher, average ranking (~987) compared to ’24 (~1006), but there is still a difference in offers obtained, with the ’24 class averaging another two D1 and one P5 offer than ’23.
I know this is already really long, so I’ll break this into two parts and do the comparison to the B1G West peers in a follow-up post.
Wow great job!
First off, really the effort here. I know there's a bunch of time/effort behind seemingly simple charts. The data is great, and using this as well as other data sources (e.g. 247 team rankings), I have 2 takeaways:
A) It is very clear that BB's staff has enhanced our recruiting rankings, especially vs. prior staffs
B) With the growing B1G, we continue to fall well behind most of our peers as it relates to recruiting rankings
In the day and age where it is pretty much the SEC and the B1G, we still have some distance to make up before we are even middle of the pack
Great stuff and thanks for sharing
Joel Goodson
- respect my decision™
When Steve Earle's singing Way Down In The Hole, I think it's about Illini football, namely recruiting.
Great job thanks for putting in the effort fr.ILL
Ryllini
- Lombard
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
1. You’re absolutely right that it took plenty of time. Each team takes 2-ish hours to catalog their commitments, rankings, offers, P5 offers from the sites. Also updated each of them a couple times, including the big signing day changes.
2. Rankings are straight forward but there are quirks out there that require some basic rules to apply for solving more advanced problems. I was going to mention these later but your good response provides the correct runway:
(A) I removed all of the ‘23 Northwestern recruits who committed but left the team before the season started because of Fitzgerald being fired. They never played or even attended camp.
(B) I removed any punter or kicker commitments because their rankings and recruitments are just too different.
(C) JUCOs were given an equivalent ranking based on their composite score in the HS rankings.
(D) Any unranked JuCo was removed. I chose this because half of them have stories about coaching staffs didn’t know they were going to be eligible. With that narrative, it seems obvious that many of them wouldn’t have normal recruitment based on their eligibility being unknown to most staffs.
(E) Anyone that had a large gap in offers, especially if they received lots of offers as a sophomore or junior but then nothing happened until late in their senior year, were only assessed based on their last grouping of offers. This might be controversial but there were obvious cases where players got chunks of blue blood offers in their junior year but then committed late in their senior year to Indiana - heavily suggesting that first group had moved on.
3. Next post will have more complicated results. It’s still some basic stuff, but might take more time to digest.
It will focus on “Illinois recruiting has improved. Got it. But how do these numbers compare to our rivals?”
DeonThomas
- South Carolina
For comparison, and per the online rumor mill:
$3.2M - Bryce Young
$3.2M - Caleb Williams
$1.6M - Marvin Harrison, Jr.
$1.3M - Stetson Bennett
$1.0M - Spencer Rattler
And the Auburn offensive line received free food throughout the school year at a local restaurant, including free meals for family members when in town. Might partially explain why BB's OL portal recruit last summer bolted for the Tigers.
DeonThomas
- South Carolina
Superlative!!
I don't click on the football recruiting thread often because its hard to get excited about adding a 3 star linebacker I've never heard of to a roster of 100, but this post made me glad I stopped by. Well done, sir!
Simeon 2025 DE Chris Burgess narrowed his list to 4 blue bloods. Not surprising, but we were first offer and he visited a bunch early. Plus, the Malik Elzy connection. 2025 is a loaded in-state class, and we really seem to be failing to gain traction with that group
Would've been nice to have a hat on the table again.
Very well done.
And I’m extremely curious to see the comparison with peer level B1G teams over this same time span.
I think this season’s backslide and not making a bowl game certainly won’t help with in-state kids. Illini are still firmly in the “show me” stage with the better in-state recruits, and not having back to back bowl seasons is not what they want to see.
I agree, but I also don't think winning one more game moved the needle much with the top kids. How about we finish a season with a top 25 ranking (or be ranked at any point in the season)
Joel Goodson
- respect my decision™
Walters gonna turn off the lights?
TwoElevenEastDaniel
- Cochrane's-Orchid-Tonic
Gotta love a player named after a character from The Great Gatsby.
Illinivek23
- Gurnee
Hmm... looks alot like the DE that announced he was portaling last week - Nic Scourton
True. But it is harder to play the “we’re building something here” card when you can’t string together back to back bowl seasons. And yes please on finishing season ranked.
This is the same guys right? What gives?
Attachments
Is the light green?
Seen Illinois offered a saftey from nm st. 2 years experience. Is another safety a higher priority than another cb or both on the same level of need?
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