Is Louisville football better than everyone at developing talent?

After decades of being a perennial Division I bottom-dweller, Louisville football has made its name largely on the backs of unheralded recruits. Why the Cards are so good at finding and developing overlooked talent.

Today, I scoured the internet trying to find Tyler Haycraft‘s recruiting pages. I searched for the former Louisville football tackle’s name on 247Sports, Rivals, and ESPN to no avail. I tried to find some background information on the unheralded recruit out of Louisville St. Xavier but found next to nothing in terms of his recruitment, commitment, and subsequent development.

Haycraft didn’t have any stars. He didn’t even have a recruiting profile. He played football for two years at St. Xavier, then accepted a spot as a preferred walk-on for Bobby Petrino in 2015. He redshirted his freshman year, didn’t see action in year two, played sparingly in year three, before finally earning a scholarship and making his way into a back-up spot in the rotation during his redshirt junior season.

Flash forward to the Sunday following the 2020 NFL Draft. Though Haycraft didn’t get drafted, he was signed as an undrafted free agent by the New York Giants.

Haycraft developed into a crucial piece on Louisville’s offensive line in 2019, locking down a starting spot at right guard, and playing crucial snaps when his team needed him the most.

From little-known walk-on to scholarship starter, Haycraft is just the most recent in a series of overlooked recruits to become NFL stars after developing at Louisville.

There are tons of stories of players being overlooked by recruiting services and then developing into stars at Louisville.

Sam Cooper of Yahoo! Sports released a list on Monday of the colleges that develop the most 3-star (or worse) talent into top NFL Draft picks, and according to his metrics, Louisville football is among the top teams in the nation at developing talent.

Cooper used Rivals as his source for recruiting rankings, and then broke down each team’s success since 2010 in regards to how many stars a recruit received vs where they were selected in the draft. Here’s what he found as it pertains to Louisville’s development system:

Total draft selections: 14
4/5 star: 3
3-star: 11
2-star: 0
Unranked: 0
(3-star or worse) First-round selections: Calvin Pryor, Marcus Smith, DeVante Parker, Sheldon Rankins, Jaire Alexander

Cooper also found that Louisville was the best in the ACC and third-best team in the country, behind Ohio State and LSU, at putting “lower-level” recruits into the league.

The Cardinals certainly became accustomed under Charlie Strong at putting lesser-known guys into successful positions. In 2014 alone, the Cardinals had 10 players drafted- all of which were a part of classes that didn’t even crack the top 25 in the team recruiting rankings.

Even a player like Lamar Jackson, who won the Heisman in 2016 and was the 2019 NFL MVP, was not nationally ranked by rivals and was considered the 51st-best product in the state of Florida.

When you aren’t a big-name team, the stars assigned by recruiters often don’t matter. Even this season- in a junior and senior class that is considered the most accurate 247Sports’ recruiting services have ever put out– the league only drafted six 5-star players in the first round. 15 players were four-star recruits, while the remaining 10 were 3-star or lower.

It’s impossible for experts to always get things right. There are so many factors- namely, personality, fit in a scheme, and mental fortitude- that play into how a high school recruit develops at the next level. And that’s why teams like Louisville, Iowa, and Wisconsin hang their hats on going after lower-rated guys. Recruit guys that fit your system the best and watch them develop into something special.

Looking to the future

Louisville could see something even more special come to fruition in the Scott Satterfield era. Just in his first year, we saw players like Marshon Ford (walk-on, 0 stars), Dayna Kinnaird (0 stars), Javian Hawkins (3 stars), and Jack Fagot (0 stars) develop into special players.

Ford and Hawkins will almost undoubtedly be future draft picks along with Micale Cunningham (3 stars) and Tutu Atwell (3 stars). Back-up quarterback Evan Conley, a 2-star player, led the Cardinals on two game-winning drives as a true freshman.

The Cardinals built one of the nation’s most electric offenses on the backs of players that aren’t coveted studs. In fact, more often than not, it’s those highly sought-after recruits who have not panned out. Jairus Brents (4 stars) and Colin Wilson (4 stars) were two of the highest-rated players the Cardinals have landed in the past five years. Though both players had an offer from virtually every power five team, neither is currently on a college football roster.

Satterfield and the Louisville coaching staff want to land highly regarded players, but they won’t select guys who don’t fit their system and their culture. Stars and recruiting class rankings mean nothing.

Texas, Texas A&M, Tennesse, Nebraska, Arkansas, and Ole Miss are all teams in the top 25 in the 2019 recruiting rankings that landed those top-name recruits based on name alone. None of those teams finished 2019 in the top 25, and most of those programs haven’t spent much time contending for a conference title over the last five years.

Recruiting success is important, but stars are not everything.

There’s no better example of that than at the University of Louisville, and as we look ahead to recruiting classes to come, we still want Louisville to continue landing somewhere in the high 20’s or low 30’s in the national recruiting rankings. However, working their way up into a consensus top 25 recruiting class year after year shouldn’t be the priority.

Things have been pretty good the way that they are on the recruiting trail for the Cardinals coaching staff.