Ryder Burton's transfer motivated me to go back and break down some high school qbs from across the country. I wanted to see of those just drafted in the NFL this year how they looked coming out of high school, and I also wanted to compare the top rated qbs in some of their equivalent classes and what happened to them. I'll use 247 numbers and ratings for players because they are the most consistently accurate and actually have the most evaluators out looking at players and grading them.

2024 NFL draft:
Caleb Williams- 5 star (99)
Jayden Daniels- 4 star (97)
Drake Maye- 5 star (98)
Michael Penix Jr- 3 star (85)
JJ Mccarthy- 4 star (97)
Bo Nix- 4 star (96)
Spencer Rattler - 5 star (99)
Jordan Travis- 3 star (86)
Devin Leary- 3 star (88)
Michael Pratt- 3 star (82)

Clearly stars matter. You can see that of those qbs drafted, only 4 were 3 star guys. And 3/4 of them were drafted in the late rounds. The most highly sought after qbs in the draft were very highly recruited coming out of high school. That's not really a surprise to anyone. Pretty much everyone expects the top rated high school recruits to do better than the lower rated guys. What is surprising though is how many of the 5 and 4 star qbs coming out of high school amount to nothing in college.

Class of 2020 had 19 qbs that were rated 4 star or better. Of those, 4 were drafted. Bryce Young, DJ Uiagaleilei, CJ Stroud, and Anthony Richardson. Of the other 15 qbs, Jayden de Laura had the best career, then Haynes King and Ethan Garbers were the only other two that really did anything. And they didn't do much. Several of the guys switched positions, and most of them just never really panned out. Think about that. 12 of the 19 top qbs in 2020 (all of whom were 4 star or better) didn't do diddley squat in their collegiate careers.

Class of 2019 had 15 qbs that were rated 4 or 5 star. Of those, 5 got drafted. Spencer Rattler, Jayden Daniels, Bo Nix, Sam Howell, and Max Duggan. Of the other 10 qbs, Ryan Hilinski, Graham Mertz, Taulia Tagovailoa, KJ Jefferson, and Cade Mcnamara amounted to much. The others all washed out and transferred or dropped out of football before finishing their eligibility. That means that 5 of the top 15 from 2019 (all 4 star guys) didn't pan out.

Yes, most 5 star qbs turn out to be at least decent starting college qbs. Most of them even go on to be drafted. So, if you are one of the few lucky schools that lands a 5 star high school qb, the odds are in your favor that he will become a good starting qb for your college. When you consider that there are 134 FBS football teams in the country, and 68 of them are P4, you can see that there really are not that many qbs to go around. And even many of the perennial top dogs and blue bloods get it wrong. There are typically only about two or three 5 star qbs in each class and about 12-15 4 star qbs. So given that scarcity of top rated qbs, it shouldn't be a surprise that BYU isn't consistently landing 4 star or better qbs. QB, more than any other position, is so very difficult to predict how the high school recruits will pan out. It would be nice if BYU could start landing a 4 star qb here or there. Based off 247 numbers, in the past 24 years BYU has only landed 3 qbs who were 4 star. Ben Olsen, Jake Heaps, and Tanner Mangum. Jacob Conover was rated as a 3 star by 247, and it's apparent now that they got it more correct than the other rating services. Ben Olsen transferred and was an ok starter for UCLA at the end of his career. Jake couldn't quite put it together. And Tanner had a fantastic freshman year but couldn't ever recapture that (I'm convinced he had some undisclosed shoulder injuries that affected him negatively). That's 3 guys in 24 years that are 4 star qbs.

Why do we as BYU fans have this mentality that we should be landing a 4 or 5 star qb every year? Our best success in those same 24 years? 3 star qbs. John Beck, Max Hall, Taysom Hill, Zach Wilson, and Jaren Hall. All 3 star qbs. Also, you'll notice that all of them are LDS/Utah qbs. It's not like we will be going into Texas or Florida and landing non LDS qbs that are rated at 4 and 5 star. Historically BYU has done well at finding 3 star qbs in our traditional recruiting niche and then developing those guys up.