COLUMN: Despite ranking, Morris has signed Hogs' best class

The casual fan may look at the 20th-ranked signing class, see that it’s ninth in the SEC and scoff at the idea Chad Morris put together anything that could be considered Arkansas’ best ever.

While that is where the Razorbacks settled in on National Signing Day after peaking at 10th nationally in mid-November, the second-year coach still managed to do something no other coach has done in Fayetteville during the Rivals era.

Not only did Arkansas sign a school-record 13 four-star prospects, five more than the famed 2009 class, but it also didn’t sign a single two-star recruit for the first time ever. That illustrates the strength of this class: it’s depth.

Over the last 17 years, the Razorbacks brought in at least one two-star in each class and averaged 4.8 - a number slightly inflated by the early years of Rivals. Under previous head coach Bret Bielema, though, they still signed 17 two-star and two unrated recruits in five years.

To understand why Morris’ 2019 class didn’t zoom past a few of Bielema’s in the rankings, you must first understand how Rivals calculates its team recruiting rankings.

Only the top 20 players count toward the point totals used to determine the order of teams. Therefore, a class of 25 with five two-star prospects is no different than one with no two-star prospects if the first 20 are equal.

This is done to prevent massive, “quantity” classes from jumping over smaller classes with more quality. For example, a 15-member class at Stanford with three five-stars is better than a 35-member class at Ole Miss with a bunch of three- and two-stars.

Also, players in the Rivals250 receive bonus points. This didn’t really help Arkansas’ class because only four of the 13 four-stars cracked the list, and none were particularly high: No. 128 Trey Knox, No. 146 Treylon Burks, No. 176 Collin Clay and No. 249 KJ Jefferson. Together, they added only 70 points to the Razorbacks’ recruiting score.

To his credit, as bad as Bielema’s classes were at the bottom, they were usually buoyed by some strong Rivals250 signings at the top. Of his 23 four-star signees, an incredible 18 were in the top 250 and added an extra 75 points per year to his classes. Three of those four-stars came from the JUCO ranks, making them ineligible for the Rivals250, so that means 90 percent of Bielema’s eligible four-star signees counted extra - compared to only 30.8 percent this year.

Even without a bunch of bonus points, the Razorbacks still piled up 2,054 points. That is 249 points better than Bielema’s best class (2015) and - if you recalculate the pre-2013 classes with the current formula - even nine points better than Bobby Petrino’s 2009 class that ranked 16th nationally.

The problem is that Morris put together this class in a historically strong year for the already dominant SEC. The conference claimed the top three spots in the team rankings, marking the first time any conference has ever accomplished the feat, and five of the top eight spots.

Going back to 2013, when the formula changed, a 2,054-point class would have ranked anywhere from 14th to 19th nationally with an average finish of 16.8. It also would have been sixth in the SEC the last two years, with the gap between it and a top-four spot being about one-third the size it is this year.

One reason for the massive point increase in Arkansas’ class is not only does it include a lot of four-star prospects, but the three-stars are high quality players. Four of them have a 5.7 rating and six have a 5.6 rating, leaving only two 5.5 players.

That gives Morris’ three-star signees a composition of 33.3 percent/50.0 percent/16.7 percent. By comparison, Bielema’s had a 26.6 percent/31.6 percent/41.8 percent composition, meaning his three-stars were on the lowest end of the spectrum at a 2.5 times higher rate.

Recruiting is obviously an inexact science and there are always individual outliers like J.J. Watt and Khalil Mack, but it has been proven that the higher a player is rated, the more likely he’ll succeed.

Likewise, the more highly rated recruits a team can sign, the better its chances are of having fewer busts. No one bats 1.000 in recruiting, but getting to the plate more often gives you more opportunities for hits and even a few home runs.

That is exactly what Morris has done in his first full recruiting cycle at Arkansas. By increasing the overall quality of the signees, he has put together the Razorbacks’ best class of the Rivals era, regardless of ranking.

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