What to do about Market Overrated Prospects? A Case Study

We can see the limitations and benefits in using the Market Rating model by comparing Class of 2026 QBs Brodie McWhorter and Jonas Williams

Brodie McWhorter is a Class of 2026 QB from Cass High School in the Atlanta metro region. He is 6’1 190lb, has offers from 23 different Power 4 programs including the in-state Georgia Bulldogs, and has recently taken unofficial visits to playoff caliber programs like Ole Miss and Auburn. My Market Rating model says he is being recruited like a 4 star. This is a remarkably similar profile to USC commit Jonas Williams. Williams is 6’1.5 200lb, has 27 Power 4 offers, and has recently visited the likes of Oregon and USC. The Market Rating model has him a touch higher rated as a 4.25 star. Yet the services rate McWhorter as an average 3 star and Williams as a Top 100 caliber 4 star. Looking at the differences between these two recruits can help inform us on what the limits of the market rating are and how it can be effectively used.

Are Williams and McWhorter’s industry ratings fair? In my opinion yes. I am not a scout but even after only watching their highlights it’s obvious that Williams is the better prospect. Williams is a tremendous athlete who seems like he cannot be tackled on Friday nights at points and has a strong arm that can fire it into tight windows. McWhorter is a good enough athlete to be a threat in the option game and has a good arm with multiple 50+ yard bombs on tape, but is not elite in either respect.

McWhorter also broke his fibula and dislocated his ankle 4.5 games into the season last year and his final 7 schools include Syracuse, Mississippi State, and Indiana. Williams is good enough to have On3’s USC reporter Scott Schrader singing his praises and comparing him to former Heisman winner Caleb Williams. Even if we don’t consider my brief highlight tape perusal at all, it’s safe to say that Williams is the better prospect and their ratings of 3 and 4 stars respectively is probably fair.

This reveals an obvious flaw in the Market Rating model. The model does not know Williams is the better athlete and that McWhorter just broke his leg. The model can give us good information when comparing players around the edges, but misses significant context. It should play second fiddle to the scout ratings, but can give additional information when combined with those scout ratings.

In the way that On3 and other recruiting services have measured it, McWhorter has been recruited like a 4 star recruit. This is what the model is reporting back. But this narrative starts to come apart a tad when we look into McWhorter’s exact timeline. McWhorter has been starting at Cass along with his OL cousin Bear since his freshman season and his early success led to him being considered one of the top recruits in Georgia. That summer following his freshman season he began taking unofficial visits to various Power 4 programs before receiving offers en masse following his sophomore season. These offers included high level programs such as Georgia, Ohio State, and Oregon.

This interest hit a brick wall last June entering his Junior season. He has only taken two unofficial visits since then to programs which did not make his final seven schools. The Power 4 programs which have offered him since are decidedly mid-level (Colorado and Syracuse). Taken all in its totality, we see that early on in his high school career he was able to pique the interest of major programs but they were not interested in seriously recruiting him. For similar reasons, the recruiting services reviewed the available tape and concluded that his talent was commiserate with a 3 star, not like the 4 star he was being pursued like at one time.

Being able to easily detect these types of recruits is a terrific benefit of the model. The model knows how players have been pursued over their high school careers, so we can see which recruits may not have lived up to expectations. We also know from previous analysis that there is some evidence that these players who are overrated by the market - perhaps because of not living up to previous expectations - tend to transfer down more often.

Even if we cannot solely use the Market Rating model to identify the most talented players in a class, we are able to take advantage of the additional information it lends to identify players which may be flawed in a fraction of the time.