I understand that people are disappointed with this class. But why? Because Rivals and Scout and 247 say we missed on some higher rated guys?
I'm sorry, but I don't really give a rat's butt what they think, because if they REALLY knew what they were talking about, don't you think some coach would snatch them up and put them on their staff and they'd make WAY more money?
People think that these guys are the end all be all on who is good and who is not, but all they are doing is going off of the opinions of coaches just like we do. If a player is attracting a lot of higher level attention, he's rated higher. If his offers are lower, he's less. If they don't have any attention at all, then they're unrated.
But come on people, be real. The only reason anyone is upset is because we aren't rated as high as Ohio State and Alabama and others. And that's most likely because Rivals and other scouting services say "Oh, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer are going after this guy? He's probably a pretty solid player, let's start him out as a 4*."
Get off the staff's back. You see what happened with Jalen Hurd when you get a player that doesn't fit in a system. You all were happy about Hurd, and granted, he had success here. But Hurd would have been more successful in a different offense and we all know it, and it lead to conflict and him eventually leaving the program. John Kelly is going to be super successful in this offense, and he wasn't a 5*. The star system only project how likely a prospect is to contribute early in college, nothing else.
I promise you that no college coach worth their salt looks at these ratings, because no college coach is going to listen to these writers who aren't even on college staffs. If you think Saban trusts any Rivals writer over his own judgment, you're crazy. If you think Butch trusts a Scout writer over Bob Weldon who has spent years scouting NFL prospects, I can't help you.
What comes first? The 5* ratings and then the offers? It's the other way around.
And of course Rivals is right more often then not! If every coach worth their salt wants a prospect, and they rate them a Top 100 player because of that, I'd say they have a pretty high chance of being right, don't you think?
Point is, these sites are not coaches, and they honestly don't know anything. All they can do is collect information, figure out which recruits are being recruited by coaches that have a leg up in evaluation, and try to match up.
So stop putting so much stock in them. Its' incredibly subjective folks. Trey Smith is a 5* on some sites and a 4* on others. Players go from 3* to 4* all of the time. Do they instantly get better? No. Evaluators see that more credible coaches have shown interest and they adjust their ratings to follow suit.
Is it nice to get highly rated players? Yes. But we are not coaches, and it's not our butts on the lines. The coaches targeted the players they wanted, and they signed the players they thought were the best fit out of what wanted to come.
All we see is height, weight, high school, stars, offers (which are sometimes not even accurate, we all know that), and highlight films which never ever show mistakes. We never see how a player interacts with his team mates. We never see how he does in a classroom. We never see how hard he works in the weight room. We never see his family dynamics or his body language. We never see how he respects his coaches and how well he listens. The coaches do. And those things are FAR more important than their number of "stars."
These guys are no longer 3* Recruits. They're Tennessee Volunteers. Leave it alone and get behind these men who despite other offers chose to play for our beloved university.
Go Vols, and go Team 121.
