skyway

How accurate (or not) is the 247 player list for Dillard's c/o 2023 and 2024?

if/when they beat STA, Central or Chaminade, it will be seen as a major upset. If they beat STA, STA will not win their district.

^^^

Most football players transferred for football. My point is that many kids transfer (or move into a more desired school's zone) for many other reasons. That said, I do think there are kids in urban areas like Fort Lauderdale who'd prefer the overall environment-including academics- at a wealthy private school over the inner city public school they are zoned for. *I do get your joke. Just trying to add to the conversation.

The key for Lehigh is that the year before last, they played (lost 52-14) STA and had several common opponents with Miami Central. Both STA and MC have games in recent years with both CA teams and other teams who've played CA teams. THAT is why Lehigh shows up high now when factoring in the RB.

There are actually a lot of those kids! It's just that there are no people on messages boards who know their names or talk about them, because they don't play football. (Some of the private schools really do offer a vastly better educational experience than the public school kids are zoned for.)

It's a shame that the folks who voted to use Calpreps for playoff seeding were utterly ignorant as to what calpreps is and how it works. You can bet not one of them even knows it's calpreps: they think it's "Maxpreps" and don't get it.

He's not as highly rated a player as Cormani McClain. Of course, calpreps doesn't know who he plays for

On Lakeland's team preview page, they say they are "not yet rated" (even though they are at #127 nationally, better than Dr. D's list) at the link here. I couldn't post a screenshot because the file was too big. Despite listing all known players with 2 or more stars for the teams, the only major prospect they list for Lakeland is Tyler Williams, so they know literally nothing of Lakeland's roster, which is unsurprising. Calpreps- which is what the Maxpreps "power" ratings are, predictably has 5 of the top 8 teams nationally, and 7 of the top 12, from...California. So, as I said above, playing a team from CA, or playing a team who's played a team from CA in recent years (doesn't have to be the present year) makes a HUGE difference. SFA has played multiple CA teams in recent years. So, with margin of victory/defeat not factoring in, Venice losing 56-0 to SFA will be a MASSIVE boost to Venice's calpreps/maxpreps ratings. LOL

It's the calpreps computer, I assume. Those ratings heavily favor teams from other states. So games in recent history either against teams from those states, or against teams who've themselves played against teams from those states make a huge difference. Venice's games against IMG and SFA (both play teams from more valued states) in recent years figure to ensure a top rating for Venice throughout the season. )Without even looking, I bet Lehigh or its opponents in recent years have played teams from more valued states.)

It worked! Thanks a million!

SOMEBODY HELP ME DO THIS!!!!!

Going through this thread, it really strikes me just how important it is that these message boards limit the length of the "signatures". It's extremely annoying trying to scroll down threads when one person's signature is very long and of course in every single post they make.

You love to disparage the teams that don't work with your boy Joe. But, that doesn't explain how SFA is supposed to score any points against the 2022 Lakeland defense. How would the SFA offense attack this Lakeland defense? I'm talking match ups. What would they exploit? (I'll try to keep an open mind, rather than assume you'll make some cheap quip about Lakeland's schedule.)

I'm afraid this Venice team is not going to be as good as the team that lost to SFA in 2019. And SFA will be as good or better than their 2019 team. I don't recall that game being the least bit competitive.

What the coach needs to do is build a quality program that families in the area want to send their kids to. If they currently lack the talent to play with elite teams, it probably does no good to schedule one and get clobbered. But if they win most all of their games and build quality facilities and services and do it with class, they'll get better players. Tampa Plant, Jesuit, and Venice all come to mind as programs that didn't figure to have a ton of talent, but ended up able to play with the elites many years anyway.

No doubt about this. And, as you know, that's not at all limited to transfers. Some players and teams will work their asses off and get much better, while others will be lazy, not improve, and show up to camp out of shape.

It varies some based on the classification and the draw. You could make a deep run and then run into a team that you can't compete with like Central. You could also be really strong but get a tough draw and bow out early. So, I guess I'd define it as being good enough to be reasonably competitive with any/all the teams in your classification.

We've reached a point where, for just about anyone to make a deep playoff run, they have to snatch up local kids. All of the schools are trying to snatch up all of the local talent. They're just having varying degrees of success doing so.

All of the schools that benefit from an influx of transfers also lose transfers all the time. Roughly 95% of the time, the players they lose weren't good enough to get as much playing time as they want, because there's someone else better than them at their position. Lakeland lost two running backs this off-season, both of whom figure to get scholarship offers. There's just substantial movement of players all over the place.

Back when I was a kid, TV broadcasts of games would routinely start games with comparing the weights of the OL and DLs. They'd emphasize it when there was a big disparity in lbs per man. That would matter if it was actual wrestling going on. But, the only goal of the DL is to get to the ball; they don't need to engage with the OL at all! Miami in the 80s was famous for having guys shoot the gaps and blow plays up. Obviously, at the more advanced levels of the game, guys can be outmatched if they're too small/weak. But, in HS quickness is the most important attribute.

And I think something hard for a lot of people to get their heads around is how lighter DTs can be a major problem as well. You'd need a lot of them to rotate through, but the 215 lb kids can cause havoc shooting the gaps if they know what they're doing.

Again, it isn't the schools behind this. It's the players. They see each other out at camps, tournaments, pick-up games and on social media, chat it up, and try to build super teams. The coaches may have an idea of what's going on, but I don't think they're directing or guiding it. Not directly, anyway. It's pretty easy for everyone to see where a team could use help. And they all know who the best players at those positions in the area are. So, the dominoes can fall pretty quickly without a coach saying/doing anything.

I couldn't comment on how good those guys are. But, I can say there's a long history of evidence showing that lighter, quicker, faster DLs are preferable to bigger kids that may project better at the college level. The reason probably being that HS OL's often lack the cohesion, alertness and quickness to fully utilize any size advantage they may have. So, even though a critic may say they lack the +250lb guys, I'm willing to believe it is possible this could be the best unit at the high school level, even if other DLs have more guys with more college success.

Traveling long distances for games in which a sponsor is not footing most/all of the bill are bad ideas for all public school teams (and most privates, too). We shouldn't mock some for not playing such games, while letting others off the hook. Teams should play other teams within no more than a couple hours' drive. This means that teams in urban areas with several good teams are more likely to play more elite teams.