Monday, February 26, 2007

Why hasn't ASU been better?

Over the past 10 drafts (1997-2006), 2,522 players have been drafted from 243 different schools. 14 schools have had 38 or more players selected in that time frame:

Per NFL.com
1. Miami (Fla.), 67
t2. Florida State, 66
t2. Ohio State, 66
4. Tennessee, 61
5. Georgia, 54
6. Florida, 53
7. Nebraska, 52
t8. Southern Cal, 45
t8. Virginia Tech, 45
t10.Michigan, 43
t10.Wisconsin, 43
12. LSU, 40
13. Oklahoma, 39
14. Arizona State, 38

from reviewing that list you would think that ASU should have been consistently ranked in the top 20 over the last decade. Obviously that is not that case but the question is why? From a closer look at the numbers we can see that ASU has been living off of the 96 Rose Bowl team for those numbers. 17 of those players were eventually drafted.

Plummer 2nd 97
Redmond 3rd 00
Battle 7th 97
Paulk 3rd 99
Poole 4th 97
Jennings 7th 00
Roque 2nd 97
Ruegamer 3rd 99
Rodgers 3rd 97
Swada 6th 97
Amey 7th 98
Staat 2nd 98
Smith 3rd 97
VonderAhe 6th 97
Simmons 5th 98
Richardson 6th 98
Tillman 7th 98

Another group of 7 players during that time were recruited and signed by Bruce Snyder.

Flowers 1st 00
M Smith 2nd 00
T Smith 4th 00
J Ioane 4th 00
Archuleta 1st 01
Heap 1st 01
Leyva 5th 01

that makes 24 of 38 players that were recruited and played under Snyder for their entire time at ASU. Leaving 14 players that were drafted after Snyder was fired. 11 of those were actually recruited by Snyder.

Jones 1st 02
Peters 4th 02
Scott 4th 02
Kosier 7th 02
Suggs 1st 03
McDonald 4th 03
Bates 4th 03
Karney 5th 04
Walter 3rd 05
Hodgdon 3rd 05
Verdon 7th 05

That leaves an astonishing low number of 3 players that were signed and played only for Dirk Koetter.

Shivers 5th 04
Hagan 3rd 06
Williams 4th 06

I do realize that close to a dozen of Koetter's signings still in the program that will be drafted over the next 4 years. Still under Koetter its clear the talent level dropped. One could argue from these numbers that Koetter was actually a very good coach just not a great recruiter. Snyder on the other hand consistently brought in talent; he was just incapable of consistently sustaining a big time program.

3 comments:

phillydevil said...

"One could argue from these numbers that Koetter was actually a very good coach just not a great recruiter."

The problem is, in college there is no such thing. To be a good coach you MUST be a good recruiter. Sure, successful recruiting alone isn't enough, but it is a prerequisite to a solid program.

Great analysis, BTW.

Anonymous said...

I truley believe Koetter didn't change his mind set or recruiting style from Boise State to ASU. Certain type of players fit his system and style and he was comfortable with that.

Koetter, was more comfortable handling the recruitment of offense players and took a "hands off" attitude, when it came to defense. His failure as a coach at ASU could be blamed to the overall poor depth and play of the defense during his tenure. Only in 06' did the offense really struggle.

Anonymous said...

Defense was certainly Koetter's downfall. Half of a team just isn't enough.

His recruiting efforts were often weak particularly when competing against the upper echelon teams. We particularly failed in our
defensive recruiting efforts until his last year when it was probably too late to recover.