Super Bowl LVI: Recruiting Rankings and Draft Profiles For Super Bowl Starters

Roster building at the NFL and collegiate level has always intrigued me, and this is especially true for professional teams. Tonight the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals face off against each other in Super Bowl LVI.

Both teams built their rosters quite differently, showing there isn't one way to build a winner. Part of the fun for me when looking at the teams is evaluating the recruiting rankings and draft backgrounds for the teams.

Here's a look at the recruiting rankings for tonight's starting lineups, beginning with the Rams.

Here's a breakdown for the Rams starters, which is based on the 247Sports composite rankings.

Five-Stars - 5
Four-Stars - 4
Three-Stars - 8
Two-Stars - 2
No Ranking - 3

Some of the Rams top players are former five-stars like Matthew Stafford, Jalen Ramsey and Cam Akers. Some of their top players were lower ranked players like Aaron Donald (three-star), Von Miller (three-star) and Cooper Kupp (not ranked).

Ramsey (five-star), Donald (three-star) and Kupp (no ranking) were the All-Pro players for the Rams this season. Donald and Kupp were consensus picks, Kupp was named the NFL's Offensive Player of the Year.

Just five of the Rams starters were Top 100 recruits coming out of high school. Nine of the starters were ranked in the Top 300.

Now let's look at the Bengals starters:

The Bengals have several more highly ranked players, as you can see in this breakdown.

Five-Stars - 4
Four-Stars - 9
Three-Stars - 6
Two-Stars - 2
No Ranking - 1

Cincinnati has 13 former five or four-star recruits, compared to nine for the Rams. Cincinnati had two All-Pro players this season and both were Top 100 recruits. Those players are Joe Mixon (five-star) and Ja'Marr Chase (four-star). Defensive end Trey Hendrickson (two-star) was fifth in the NFL with 14 sacks during the regular season.

Cincinnati had seven former Top 100 recruits and 12 were former Top 300 recruits.

Here is the draft background for the Rams.

Clearly draft positioning was far more telling of future NFL success than was recruiting rankings. Here's a look at where Ram starters were drafted.

1st Round - 6
2nd Round - 7
3rd Round - 2
4th Round - 3
5th Round - 1
6th Round - 0
7th Round - 1
Not Drafted - 2

Thirteen of the 22 starters for the Rams were first or second round picks and 15 were taken on the first two days.

Here's a look at the Bengals draft backgrounds.

Here's a look at this by round:

1st Round - 4
2nd Round - 7
3rd Round - 5
4th Round - 0
5th Round - 1
6th Round - 2
7th Round - 1
Not Drafted - 2

The Bengals don't have as many first round picks but have more total picks in the first three rounds (16 to 15).

Thirteen of Cincinnati's 22 starters were picked by the franchise, including eight on offense. Cincinnati has landed a lot of top-of-the-draft talent on offense in recent seasons, including the No. 1 pick at quarterback (Joe Burrow) and his college teammate, WR Ja'Marr Chase, with the No. 5 overall pick.

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