On3 data reveals 5-star recruits have 63% draft rate

For years there’s been an ongoing debate about whether or not a lofty star ranking from the four major recruiting media companies translates into NFL draft success.

Detractors are quick to point out names like David Johnson, Shaquil Barrett, Darious Williams, Hunter Renfrow, J.J. Watt and numerous others that were under-recruited and under-ranked coming out of high school.

However, On3’s Draft by Stars data collected from the past five NFL drafts indicates that stars do matter.

In fact, over the past five years, players ranked as five stars are 15 times more likely to get drafted vs. two stars or lower prospects. Four-star recruits over the past five years are 5.2 times more likely to get drafted over two stars and three-stars are 1.3 times more likely to get picked.

“The five- and four-star draft success rate over the past five years by the recruiting media companies is mind-blowing,” a Big 12 coach who has also spent time working in an NFL front office said.

“They don’t always get it right. Nobody does. Ranking players and projecting their long-term NFL draft success is a very inexact science. But it’s pretty clear looking at the data that if you’re ranked high, you’ve got a much better chance of getting drafted.”

That’s especially true when you consider the average recruiting cycle since the Class of 2017 has included 16,602 players and during that time 1,294 players have been drafted.

Over that period, five-star recruits make up only .7% of the overall recruiting cycle. Yet, 117 five-star recruits have been selected and the draft rate over the past five years is 63%.

4 stars 5.2X more likely to be drafted

It’s a similarly impressive story with four-star recruits.

Since the 2017 NFL draft, 468 four-star recruits have been picked or 36.2% of the total — even though they make up only 2.8% of the number of recruits. The draft rate of four-star recruits over the past five years is 22.1%.

It would make sense that more three-star recruits have been selected over the years. That’s especially true since they make up a larger part of overall recruiting classes each cycle. Since 2017, there have been 9,728 three-star recruits and 517 of them have been drafted.

Overall, the data from the past five years reveals that 40% of the players drafted have been three-star recruits coming out of high school. But with the much larger number of three-star recruits in each cycle, the draft rate is only 5.3%.

“The recruiting folks have done a great job over the years,” an SEC recruiting coordinator said. “And they are getting better and better. That’s my biggest takeaway from looking at the data. They’re getting it right over and over and over.”