BYU's 2022 Recruiting Class by the Numbers
Wednesday marks the first day of the early signing period where BYU's class of 2022 commits can officially sign with the Cougars. Numerically speaking, how does this class compare to prior classes under Kalani Sitake?
Recruiting Ranking
As of early Wednesday morning, BYU's recruiting class is ranked no. 54 in the country. That will change throughout the day as players across the country make their college decisions. A class in the 50's won't make national headlines, but it would be BYU's highest-ranked class since 2016.
Average Composite Rating
247Sports does a composite rating for each player. The composite rating is an equally-weighted average rating between the three recruiting services: 247Sports, Rivals, and ESPN. From an average rating perspective, this will be Kalani Sitake's second-best recruiting class since he became the head coach at BYU.
Author note: All these graphs exclude Kingsley Suamataia since he is not a traditional high school signee.
Competing Offers
One of my favorite ways to grade a BYU recruiting class is looking at the percentage of commits that have competing offers to play at other FBS schools. It's not a perfect measure, but it tells an interesting story. First let's look at the percentage of 2022 commits that turned down P5 schools to play for BYU.
Next, let's look at the percentage of 2022 commits that held a competing FBS offer when they signed with BYU.
As far as this metric is concerned, the class of 2021 set the gold standard. Moving forward into the class of 2023 with the P5 label next its name, BYU should be able to take on more head-to-head recruiting battles and win.
The Power Five Impact
On September 10, BYU accepted an invitation to join the Big 12 beginning in 2023. The move to a Power Five conference paid immediate dividends on the recruiting trail. Since this cycle was unique with the Big 12 news, let's look at those same metrics before and after BYU received the Big 12 invite.
After accepting a Big 12 invite, BYU received commitments from Cody Hagen, Aisea Moa, Talin Togiai, Joe Brown, Marcus McKenzie, and Dominique McKenzie. Five of those six players are the five highest-rated players in the class. The Big 12 made a difference for BYU, and I expect that trend to continue in the class of 2023.
Offense vs Defense
The offensive and defensive staffs took different approaches to the 2022 recruiting class. From a high level, the defensive staff took more chances on developmental players. The numbers are consistent with that strategy.
Taking on so many developmental players is high-risk move by the defensive staff. However, they have proven the ability to find under-the-radar prospects and turn them into good players.
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1. avg rating and % of offers
2. avg rating before and after Big 12 announcement