ANNUAL SUPER BOWL RETROSPECTIVE

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How each Super Bowl 2018 starter was rated as a high school recruit

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Some were stars; others weren’t even recruited to play football.

By Bud Elliott  Jan 23, 2018, 8:40am EST

The Super Bowl is the biggest games in football. But every player in the game had to start somewhere. And most were recruited out of high school and evaluated by scouts.

With the help of the 247Sports Composite, we’ve got a time machine that tells us how almost every player in Super Bowl 52’s Eagles-Patriots game was rated coming out of high school. Not counting kickers and punters (who’ve rarely been rated), each team has a handful of starters who didn’t get ranked before college, either because they weren’t scouted well enough, developed late, or came through high school before the modern recruiting industry. Recruits have been ranked publicly only since the early 2000s.

Super Bowl 2018: Patriots as recruits

Pos.	Player	Stars	College
DT	Malcom Brown	5	Texas
CB	Stephon Gilmore	4	South Carolina
LB	Kyle Van Noy	4	BYU
QB	Tom Brady*	4	Michigan
TE	Rob Gronkowski	4	Arizona
C	David Andrews	3	Georgia
DE	Eric Lee	3	USF
DE	Trey Flowers	3	Arkansas
DT	Lawrence Guy	3	Arizona State
FS	Devin McCourty	3	Rutgers
LT	Nate Solder	3	Colorado
RB	Dion Lewis	3	Pitt
RB	James White	3	Wisconsin
RG	Shaquille Mason	3	Georgia Tech
RT	Cameron Fleming	3	Stanford
SS	Duron Harmon	3	Rutgers
WR	Brandin Cooks	3	Oregon State
WR	Chris Hogan*	0	Monmouth
SS	Patrick Chung	2	Oregon
CB	Malcolm Butler	0	West Alabama
LB	Elandon Roberts	0	Houston
LG	Joe Thuney	0	NC State

Though 17 out of 22 Patriots starters were rated at least three-stars, the Patriots average star rating sits at 2.7, thanks to five unrated recruits.

 

* Tom Brady was around before recruiting rankings, but we’ve retroactively made him a four-star with an asterisk. From California, he was a Michigan signee with plenty of offers from other national powers and attention in national media outlets. In today’s landscape, he would’ve unquestionably been a blue-chip.

*Chris Hogan was actually a lacrosse player in college, for Penn State. And he was a damn good one, being selected as a 2006 Under Armour High School All-American.

The Eagles are a much different story.

Super Bowl 2018: Eagles as recruits

Pos	Name	Stars	College
WR	Nelson Agholor	5	USC
DT	Tim Jernigan	5	Florida State
DE	Brandon Graham	5	Michigan
OLB	Nigel Bradham	5	Florida State
CB	Ronald Darby	5	Florida State
WR	Alshon Jeffery	4	South Carolina
LT	Halapoulivaati Vaitai	4	TCU
LG	Stefen Wisniewski	4	Penn State
TE	Zach Ertz	4	Stanford
RB	LeGarrette Blount	4	Oregon
DT	Fletcher Cox	4	Mississippi State
MLB	Dannell Ellerbe	4	Georgia
RG	Brandon Brooks	3	Miami (OH)
WR	Torrey Smith	3	Maryland
QB	Nick Foles	3	Arizona
OLB	Mychal Kendricks	3	Cal
CB	Jalen Mills	3	LSU
S	Rodney McLeod	3	Virginia
S	Malcolm Jenkins	3	Ohio State
DE	Vinny Curry	2	Marshall
C	Jason Kelce	0	Cincinnati
RT	Lane Johnson	0	Oklahoma

The Eagles were very talented as recruits

The Eagles on the other hand, skew much, much higher, with an average star rating of 3.5. Recruiting fans scanning the Eagles’ roster will be familiar with those like Nelson Agholor, Tim Jernigan, Brandon Graham, Nigel Bradham, Ronald Darby, and Alshon Jeffery.

Perhaps the most interesting story on the Eagles is Lane Johnson. In high school, Johnson was 6’5 and 202 pounds. He went to junior college and just kept growing. And growing. And growing.

Lane Johnson

Eventually, Johnson wound up as a 6’6, 317-pounder. He went from a QB to a left tackle. Thatis rather unheard of:

“He was starving himself to play at 270 (pounds) to play D-end,” coach Bob Stoops said. “I asked (strength) Coach (Jerry) Schmidt how long it would take him to get to 300 pounds. He said, ‘About a week and a cheeseburger.’

Let’s get nerdy

• Five-stars: The Patriots have one, while the Eagles have five.
• Four-stars: The Patriots have four, while the Eagles have seven.
• Three-stars: The Patriots have 12, while the Eagles have seven.
• Two-stars or lower: The Patriots have five, while the Eagles have three.

Thirty-nine percent of the Super Bowl starters were four- or five-star recruits.

 

To put it another way, about two in every five Super Bowl starters were four- or five-star recruits, but only about one in every 770 recruits are rated as such. So yes, your odds of starting in the Super Bowl are, unsurprisingly, much higher if you were a superstar recruit in high school.