6 Thoughts on a Thursday

Baltimore Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta was on a podcast recently and talked about the idea behind “The Loser’s Curse”. That’s a paper that was published by Cade Massey and Richard Thaler back in 2013. One of the big takeaways from that study is that NFL teams generally aren’t better at drafting than others. Everyone has about the same success rate and values certain positions the same as everyone else.

There isn’t a guarantee that the number two pick is going to be better than the number 10 pick. The main theme from the study is exactly what DeCosta said here:

“All things being equal, the fact that no one really knows who is going to be better than anyone else, the only rational approach is to get more at-bats…is to pick more.”

Anyone who follows the NFL knows that the Ravens always have a ton of picks in every NFL Draft. They are the kings of compensatory picks, which are awarded when more free agents leave your team than ones they’ve added. The Ravens focus their free agency on players who have been released by other teams and that helps them gain more compensatory picks because released players do not count when tabulating the number of compensatory picks a team receives.

Baltimore has been a consistent winner despite not accumulating a bunch of top-10 picks on their roster. They find value throughout the draft and it’s been that way for a long time.

The NFL Draft and recruiting are not the same. We know that there are different tiers even within conferences. Some teams have the resources, tradition, man power, and other factors that help them recruit at a much higher level than other programs. Wake Forest isn’t getting the number one pick if they finish last in the ACC, so this isn’t exactly an apples to apples comparison when looking at college football.

However, the idea to accumulate more at-bats (sign more players) is relevant to college football. Specifically, signing more blue-chips (4 and 5-star recruits) is one of those things that can make a huge difference.

Sure, there are better coaching staffs and better development at certain programs compared to others. That’s not going to close the gap if teams accumulate more talent and retain that talent, though. 

Players from the 2022 and 2023 recruiting classes are going to be key contributors on the majority of contenders in college football for the 2025 season. Here’s the number of blue-chips that each upper-tier team in the Power 4 signed in those classes followed by the number of those blue-chips who are still on those rosters:

Alabama 51

Georgia 44

Ohio State 40

Texas 40

Texas A&M 40

Notre Dame 37

Penn State 34

Oklahoma 34

Oregon 31

Clemson 29

Miami 26

LSU 25

Florida 25

Michigan 21

Tennessee 21

Auburn 21

USC 19

Florida State 15

Ole Miss 14

Notre Dame signed the sixth most blue-chips in those classes, which is a good spot to be in. Alabama signing 51 in two classes is truly incredible. That’s at least 30 more than Michigan, Auburn, USC, Florida State, and Ole Miss. It would be a lot more incredible if they did a better job of keeping those players.

Here’s what the numbers look like with the blue-chips who are still with those programs.

Notre Dame 23 (-14)

Ohio State 22 (-18)

Penn State 21 (-13)

Clemson 20 (-9)

Georgia 19 (-25)

Oklahoma 19 (-15)

Texas 18 (-22)

Oregon 16 (-15)

Alabama 15 (-36)

Florida 14 (-11)

Texas A&M 12 (-28)

Miami 11 (-15)

Michigan 9 (-12)

Tennessee 9 (-12)

USC 7 (-12)

Auburn 7 (-14)

Ole Miss 7 (-7)

Florida State 6 (-9)

This obviously flips things drastically for several programs and shows the amount of roster turnover that happens at every single one. This also includes players who left early for the NFL. Even with that in mind, Alabama being down 36 from that massive number shows that they aren’t exactly the juggernaut they should be based on recruiting rankings.

Holes can be filled through the transfer portal and some of these blue-chips who signed with one blue-blood program ended up transferring to another (safety Caleb Downs from Alabama to Ohio State, safety Keon Sabb from Michigan to Alabama, WR Zachariah Branch from USC to Georgia, etc), but it’s a lot harder to build a championship roster of future NFL Draft picks by relying on the transfer portal. (More on that in a bit)

It’s important to sign a bunch of blue-chips in recruiting to get as many at-bats as possible to hopefully hit some home runs. Notre Dame has to continue to do that.

Blue-chip ratio (the percentage of blue-chips signed over a four year recruiting period) is a good metric to look at when evaluating teams, but the percentage doesn’t matter as much if a team doesn’t sign more than most other programs.

Keeping more of those players around has put Notre Dame into a strong position to compete with any team in the country this fall. And when looking at the top-eight teams who have retained the most blue-chip talent, it shouldn’t be a surprise that seven of those eight have the best odds of winning a national championship this season according to FanDuel. (Oklahoma is the outlier)

2. To add further context of the importance of having more at-bats with blue-chip recruits, here’s the list of the last four national championship teams with the number of blue-chips signed and retained.

Georgia 2021

They signed 43 blue-chips in the 2018 and 2019 recruiting cycles. 24 of them were on the 2021 national championship team.

Georgia 2022

They signed 40 blue-chips in the 2019 and 2020 classes. 25 of them were on the 2022 national championship team.

Michigan 2023*

They signed 29 blue-chips in the 2020 and 2021 classes. 19 of them were on the 2023 national championship team*.

Ohio State 2024

They signed 41 blue-chips in the 2021 and 2022 classes. 19 of them were on the 2024 national championship team. (It should be noted that seven more players were on the 2024 roster, but many left the team to enter the transfer portal in December)

Teams are going to lose talent and not every player is going to hit. The key is signing enough to give programs a better chance of stacking up those hits.

3. I can always count on our good friend FunkDoctorSpock to post an interesting offseason thread breaking down some numbers for Notre Dame and other major programs. He posted one earlier this week on Power 4 programs who have had at least 10 players drafted (with at least one first round pick) over the last two seasons.

There were 14 teams who fit the criteria with Notre Dame among them. The Irish had 13 players drafted and had one first round pick (Joe Alt). They were one of 10 out of the 14 who won 20 or more games the past two seasons as well.

The four programs who didn’t were LSU (19 wins, 13 drafted with four first rounders), USC (15 wins, 10 and 1), Miami (17 wins, 11 and 1), and Florida State (15 wins, 12 and 1).

The interesting thing to me about three of those four teams was their reliance on the transfer portal. Six of Miami’s 11 draft picks were transfers. Seven of USC’s 10 were transfers and nine of Florida State’s 12. (It was four transfers out of 13 for LSU)

That’s not a big enough sample size to definitively say that living and dying with the transfer portal is the wrong way to go, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that teams who put their focus on a quick fix underachieved relative to the NFL talent they had on their roster.

Out of the 10 others who won 20+ games, only Oregon (nine of 18) and Ole Miss (10 of 11) were that reliant on players from the portal. It also begs the question how sustainable it is for Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss to continue with their portal strategy.

It clearly worked well for them with them being able to identify talented transfers and plug them into their program. They’ve taken 20 or more transfers in each of the last four years. USC and Florida State are two examples of the portal being boom or bust. It’s worth monitoring if Ole Miss will go bust this season or the next.

When looking at the other eight programs with 20+ wins, it has been all about developing players they signed out of high school.

Notre Dame: 13 draft picks, only two transfers

Washington: 11 and two

Georgia: 21 and two

Ohio State: 18 and three

Texas: 23 and six

Michigan: 20 and four

Penn State: 13 and two

Alabama: 17 and two

That seems like a pretty good argument for all of these teams to retain more of the talent they’ve recruited and developed over three to five years over hoping to hit big with transfers.

Utilizing the transfer portal to improve a program’s roster is important. Trying to build a national championship team through the transfer portal isn’t the right path.

Sorry to that billionaire who is funding Texas Tech’s transfer portal spending spree. Most of those guys he bought aren’t going to the league.

4. Looking at the last two NFL Drafts for those teams made me want to see how the next two drafts went for every national champion during the College Football Playoff era (2014-present). Here’s the list of champions, followed by the season they won, the total number of draft picks, and then how many were selected in the first three rounds of the NFL Draft.

Ohio State 2014: 17 - 12 in first three rounds

Ohio State 2024: 14 - 7 (this total will get added to after the 2026 NFL Draft)

Alabama 2015: 17 - 16

Alabama 2017: 22 - 10

Alabama 2020: 17 - 14

UGA 2021: 25 - 13

UGA 2022: 18 - 10

Michigan 2023*: 20 - 12

LSU 2019: 21 - 12

Clemson 2016: 9 - 4

Clemson 2018: 13 - 8

The deeper I have dove into the national champions and their rosters the last 11 years, the more it’s become obvious that Clemson in 2016 was the closest thing we’ll get to a Cinderella in modern day college football. The next closest thing to a Cinderella team is…Clemson in 2018. I guess it helps to have Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence playing quarterback!

It should be instructive to look at these numbers so people understand that having a great culture helps, but there’s a reason why the teams loaded with future NFL talent are the ones who end up winning national championships. Many of the players that Notre Dame signed in the 2022 and 2023 recruiting classes have to prove they can play at the next level if Notre Dame is going to win it all this season.

The 2019 Fighting Irish was the most talented team in terms of future NFL players that they’ve had in the last decade. The next two drafts saw 15 Notre Dame players selected and eight of them went in the first three rounds. Lou Holtz’ 1992 team featured 15 players who were drafted in the first three rounds in the two drafts that followed.

Chances are that the 2025 team would have to fall somewhere in between to win a championship.

5. There was another recent thread discussing which players on Notre Dame’s roster have the potential to be first round picks and it’s one of those things that’s fun to talk about, but doesn’t matter at all unless they play like first round picks.

I saw Charles Jagusah in one of those way-too-early 2026 first round mock drafts. That says a lot about his potential. It also could be a whole lot of fool’s gold. Go back and check these way-too-early mock drafts from recent years and the quarterbacks who are and aren’t first projected first round picks. Or you can even go back and find that there were people who had Corey Robinson and Ishaq Williams as projected first rounders if you’re a real sicko.

Is a little bit of click bait to post my list of potential first rounders of returning players (freshmen excluded) on Notre Dame’s roster? It is, but I know some people will be interested, so here you go.

I have Jeremiyah Love, Jagusah, Leonard Moore, Bryce Young, Boubacar Traore, and Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa as players that I believe who have the potential to be first round picks. My dark horse choices would be Aamil Wagner and Eli Raridon.

Obviously a lot can change where players can play themselves in the first round conversation. For every Kyle Hamilton or Joe Alt who look like inevitable day one picks as true freshmen, there are others like Harrison Smith, Tyler Eifert, and Jerry Tillery who build to that point throughout their college careers.

It will be a lot more interesting to look at who could potentially be a first rounder a year from now because there’s a bunch of very talented players who still won’t even be draft-eligible at that time.

This topic also gives me an excuse to highlight what Wagner said about Bryce Young earlier this spring.

“He has the ability to be an All-American,” he said of Young. “He has the skillset to do it. It’s hard to imagine, but this is still a young kid. That’s the reminder you need to have. He has only been here for a year. It’s not like he’s been here 2-3 years like the older guys. He’s still learning. Obviously there’s some day to day things that he has to get better on, and just routine stuff he has to get better on, but he’s definitely someone who will be special. Whether it’s the first game of the season or in a year from now, he will be special at some point. I’m really excited to see what he develops into as a man and as a player.”

I don’t think it was discussed enough how much Young has improved over the last year.. He’s going to be even better this fall and I think he can grow into the type of player that people who don’t even care about Notre Dame football will be talking about a lot.

He’s different. How many guys his size run like this?

Out of those potential first rounders I mentioned, I don’t think any of them are going to be picked higher than Young if he reaches his ceiling. His Dad was drafted seventh overall back in 1994. Bryce could end up off the board before that then when it’s his time to go the NFL.

6. I think the 12-year scheduling agreement between Notre Dame and Clemson is very smart for both sides. The first reason why it’s good for both parties is that it acts as insurance if the Big Ten/SEC try to ice out teams with their schedules.

For Notre Dame specifically, having this game annually is the perfect insurance in case USC goes the cowardly route and doesn’t renew their series with Notre Dame. Cowardly probably isn’t a strong enough word for it.

It would be unthinkable for USC to stop playing one of the longest rivalry games in college football if the Trojans were rolling like they were during the Pete Carroll era. They wouldn’t be entertaining it if they had won 10 of the last 14 games between the two like the Irish have. I think that’s fairly obvious.

Hopefully they come to their senses and realize that they can recruit at an elite level, be a top tier program again, and they don’t have to stop playing Notre Dame to do it. An extra road trip every two years is really going to kill a series that has been played 95 times?

Let’s put a pause on that and get back to Clemson.

Playing Clemson every year guarantees Notre Dame a marquee opponent and it sounds like there will be other agreements in place, although maybe not annual matchups, with Miami and Florida State as well. That’s a great thing for the ACC who desperately needs the brand power of Notre Dame to maintain relevance as a football conference and it’s a great thing for Notre Dame when it comes to strength of schedule for the College Football Playoff and for fans who would rather not see the Irish play lower level ACC opponents.

The biggest reason why I’m excited about it is that the two programs have already established a rivalry even though they’ve only played five times since 2015. Every single one of those was a big game.

The 2015 game, played during a monsoon, was a statement game for the Clemson program on their way to their first CFP appearance.

The 2018 CFP game in the Cotton Bowl was Clemson at the peak of its power and showed how far the distance between the two programs was at that time.

The 2020 game at home was the biggest win of the Brian Kelly era. That’s the game he couldn’t win at Notre Dame and they finally won it…only to be humbled in the rematch in the ACC Championship game.

The 2022 game was Marcus Freeman against the ropes in year one as a head coach. His team came out and physically beat up an undefeated Clemson team. In many ways that was the first glimpse of the program Freeman was building at Notre Dame.

The 2023 game was the game where Dabo Swinney was against the ropes. Clemson was 4-4 that season and 7-7 in their previous 14 games. They looked like they were in danger of not getting to a bowl game for the first time since before Dabo Swinney was promoted in 2008. The Tigers won that game and finished the season on a five-game winning streak.

Notre Dame and Clemson didn’t play last season, but we know that kind of year that the Irish had and Clemson squeaked their way into winning the ACC and making the CFP. Notre Dame has a ton of talent returning and are set up to be CFP contenders again this fall. Clemson has the most returning production in the country and has their best team since 2020.

The potential for it to become a real rivalry was there. Now we get to see it become a reality. It’s good for both programs and great for college football.

It’s also a perfect opportunity for Notre Dame to continue to show that what they have going as a program with Freeman is different. They embrace these types of challenges. We don’t need teams ducking out of scheduling commitments because coaches and administrators are worried about losing their jobs. We need more games that matter outside of traditional conference games and this agreement is going to deliver exactly that.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish 14oz. Basketball Glass

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