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Jeremiah Payton

Apex Predator said:
Dugans may of been one of the worst evaluators of WR talent in program history.
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he’s definitely got competition for that trophy.

imo he was a hype recruiter who didn’t really evaluate at all and as a result the law of adverse selection meant he’d latch onto the highest rated kids that better evaluators we’re avoiding.
 
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FrancisSawyer said:
Excellent post and it really explains the entire phenomenon of over hyping certain kids very well. Its very easy to get caught up in and lost in that entire tendency and I have myself been guilty on multiple occasions.

Having said that I'm curious if there are any current players at WR or DE or any other position that you think may fall into this category or that fans may be setting themselves up for disappointment with? I know that Chanz Williams has received a good amount of hype since he signed here but he was also well regarded as a HS prospect.
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it’s a tough question because no one likes to talk negatively about kids on the roster. Or at least I don’t.

but i don’t think chantz fits the bill in part because i think his ratings were higher than his hype - his speed and strength are terrific so you’d almost expect more hype on him. i think people sense that there’s something that needs to develop and if it does he has great potential but it’s bot there yet.

we probably overate most of our wrs and are at risk of that continuing.

i like the last group but for a different reason i’m hoping is fixed in our recruiting. they were ranked around 25th - 34th range iirc. they’re not top 10 prospect types. but that’s partly size/frame driven. i’m optimistic that they’re all better with their hands and actually playing wr than we’ve had in a long while. thinking restreppo is also. we botched wr recruiting for the exact same reason we botched LB recruiting - we thought we were recruiting prototypes not people. We took talk kids, long striders, all these traits that you’re supposed to look for. But you have to start with can the kid play WR. thinking we’ve recognized that error at this point. ibieta also is an actual WR, imo.

harvey at DE is a kid we all expect a lot from, but imo it’s justified by his tape. he’s twitchy, has a good frame. hopefully he puts it together. if he doesn’t i’ll be surprised but not because I believed the whisper hype. I believed my
eyes with him.
 
Ethnicsands said:
it’s a tough question because no one likes to talk negatively about kids on the roster. Or at least I don’t.

but i don’t think chantz fits the bill in part because i think his ratings were higher than his hype - his speed and strength are terrific so you’d almost expect more hype on him. i think people sense that there’s something that needs to develop and if it does he has great potential but it’s bot there yet.

we probably overate most of our wrs and are at risk of that continuing.

i like the last group but for a different reason i’m hoping is fixed in our recruiting. they were ranked around 25th - 34th range iirc. they’re not top 10 prospect types. but that’s partly size/frame driven. i’m optimistic that they’re all better with their hands and actually playing wr than we’ve had in a long while. thinking restreppo is also. we botched wr recruiting for the exact same reason we botched LB recruiting - we thought we were recruiting prototypes not people. We took talk kids, long striders, all these traits that you’re supposed to look for. But you have to start with can the kid play WR. thinking we’ve recognized that error at this point. ibieta also is an actual WR, imo.

harvey at DE is a kid we all expect a lot from, but imo it’s justified by his tape. he’s twitchy, has a good frame. hopefully he puts it together. if he doesn’t i’ll be surprised but not because I believed the whisper hype. I believed my
eyes with him.
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Yeah I agree on all points. I don't like to bad mouth kids on the roster either. I also agree with you regarding Chanz Williams and Harvey.

I believe that we have solved the problem by realizing our error of recruiting prototypes and not people. Its like the Donofrio quote that he gets clowned for asking if the kid can play safety. Its not that he was wrong asking the general question. Its that he asked it in the context of a kid who didn't have anywhere close to having the athletic ability to be able to succeed here at UM. That's a question that Dugans never asked. Yeah this kid Payton has a great frame but can he actually play WR at this level?
 
FrancisSawyer said:
Yeah I agree on all points. I don't like to bad mouth kids on the roster either. I also agree with you regarding Chanz Williams and Harvey.

I believe that we have solved the problem by realizing our error of recruiting prototypes and not people. Its like the Donofrio quote that he gets clowned for asking if the kid can play safety. Its not that he was wrong asking the general question. Its that he asked it in the context of a kid who didn't have anywhere close to having the athletic ability to be able to succeed here at UM. That's a question that Dugans never asked. Yeah this kid Payton has a great frame but can he actually play WR at this level?
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totally agree - made a similar comment about that same dorito quote recently.

i wouldn’t say we’ve solved the problem. it’s never ‘solved’ because human beings are predictably flawed. fear and greed. everyone knows how to recruit grandma kids. when you can’t get them, you have to either trust your instincts (and have good instincts!) at risk of being mocked or fired, or you sign the higher rated decent measurable kids and blame bad luck.

This is precisely why I have been blabbering about evaluations on these sites for 20 years now. we have sucked at it. we do not need assistant coaches to all be good evaluators. not sure we need any of them to be. they need to be salesmen and evals are extra. but we need an evaluation process, either run by a HC or head of recruiting or recruiting committee or whatever. it isn’t rocket science and this board could moderate an eval discussion to a productive place. it just takes some skepticism and obvious Q&A. you won’t always get it right but you’ll certainly reduce your errors. We’ve taken so many kids over so long who were known by local football observers to be terrible. we’ve passed on too many kids over too long who were known to local football observers to be really good. it’s all fixable. but the fix has to start with self assessment.

i honesty believe manny has started to see the light on this. i hope so.
 
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further to that, per rivals he committed well before his senior year and took no other OVs. he was a bad eval and was not hotly recruited by other programs from what I recall or can see from the record. it all makes sense when you think about it. unless you tell yourself the typical hype narrative about stars.
 
Ethnicsands said:
totally agree - made a similar comment about that same dorito quote recently.

i wouldn’t say we’ve solved the problem. it’s never ‘solved’ because human beings are predictably flawed. fear and greed. everyone knows how to recruit grandma kids. when you can’t get them, you have to either trust your instincts (and have good instincts!) at risk of being mocked or fired, or you sign the higher rated decent measurable kids and blame bad luck.

This is precisely why I have been blabbering about evaluations on these sites for 20 years now. we have sucked at it. we do not need assistant coaches to all be good evaluators. not sure we need any of them to be. they need to be salesmen and evals are extra. but we need an evaluation process, either run by a HC or head of recruiting or recruiting committee or whatever. it isn’t rocket science and this board could moderate an eval discussion to a productive place. it just takes some skepticism and obvious Q&A. you won’t always get it right but you’ll certainly reduce your errors. We’ve taken so many kids over so long who were known by local football observers to be terrible. we’ve passed on too many kids over too long who were known to local football observers to be really good. it’s all fixable. but the fix has to start with self assessment.

i honesty believe manny has started to see the light on this. i hope so.
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Player evaluations have been very inconsistent over the years. I would probably go so far as to say we have been consistently mediocre in this facet for a very long time.

I didn't really mean that I thought it was fixed but like you said the light seems to be coming on in this regard. Having a consistent eval process in place is something that I think most casual fans take for granted. The reality is that it is something that is not as common as most would believe. Take our situation for example. We obviously have not had a solid framework in terms of what exactly we are looking for or a process to guide potential evaluations. This is very much influenced by the head coach. We all have seen that both Jimmy Johnson and Butch Davis had a very clear idea of exactly what they were looking for in each position and those processes served them both extremely well.

I was admittedly a bit shocked that Mark Richt never had a good enough handle on this. His WR coach Dugans was an atrocious evaluator of talent for example. When Diaz was hired I was talking with one of my best friends who is also a Cane diehard(He was a scholarship WR for UM from Colonial HS here in Orlando in the mid 70's who had to retire because of a heart problem). Anyway this friend has an excellent football mind and we have had similar discussions over the years. Anyway when Manny was hired we didn't necessarily like the hire as we thought we could do better. What we both agreed on was that this would be a learning experience for Diaz and that he would have to learn/grow on the job. The most crucial thing we said was that Diaz surround himself with the best possible staff. Looking back Diaz obviously thought that going forward with guys like Baker, Banda, Rumph, Stroud, Enos(We hated that hire), and Stubblefield was going to be good enough. Wrong! However I give him credit for always addressing the obvious problems. Diaz obviously isn't stupid and he clearly wants to succeed and in turn make the decisions that will ultimately enable him to do so. Revamping the recruiting department and upgrading the staff on both sides of the ball was sorely needed and rewards have already been reaped with hopefully much more to come. If the way we are going about recruiting this cycle is any indication of what we can expect in the future then I think we may be on solid ground. We will see as this drama continues to unfold.
 
Ethnicsands said:
100% disagree. i remember his recruitment clearly and explained myself. you sound like the revisionist based on some star ratings retrospective.
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I absolutely disagree. No need to go back and forth on this one. He didn’t have success here but no need to rewrite how he was seen as a prospect.
 
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FrancisSawyer said:
Player evaluations have been very inconsistent over the years. I would probably go so far as to say we have been consistently mediocre in this facet for a very long time.

I didn't really mean that I thought it was fixed but like you said the light seems to be coming on in this regard. Having a consistent eval process in place is something that I think most casual fans take for granted. The reality is that it is something that is not as common as most would believe. Take our situation for example. We obviously have not had a solid framework in terms of what exactly we are looking for or a process to guide potential evaluations. This is very much influenced by the head coach. We all have seen that both Jimmy Johnson and Butch Davis had a very clear idea of exactly what they were looking for in each position and those processes served them both extremely well.

I was admittedly a bit shocked that Mark Richt never had a good enough handle on this. His WR coach Dugans was an atrocious evaluator of talent for example. When Diaz was hired I was talking with one of my best friends who is also a Cane diehard(He was a scholarship WR for UM from Colonial HS here in Orlando in the mid 70's who had to retire because of a heart problem). Anyway this friend has an excellent football mind and we have had similar discussions over the years. Anyway when Manny was hired we didn't necessarily like the hire as we thought we could do better. What we both agreed on was that this would be a learning experience for Diaz and that he would have to learn/grow on the job. The most crucial thing we said was that Diaz surround himself with the best possible staff. Looking back Diaz obviously thought that going forward with guys like Baker, Banda, Rumph, Stroud, Enos(We hated that hire), and Stubblefield was going to be good enough. Wrong! However I give him credit for always addressing the obvious problems. Diaz obviously isn't stupid and he clearly wants to succeed and in turn make the decisions that will ultimately enable him to do so. Revamping the recruiting department and upgrading the staff on both sides of the ball was sorely needed and rewards have already been reaped with hopefully much more to come. If the way we are going about recruiting this cycle is any indication of what we can expect in the future then I think we may be on solid ground. We will see as this drama continues to unfold.
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I agree with all this.

thing is, i started a recruiting thread after manny was hired before he’d coached a game, basically saying that i didn’t think he was a good recruiter or evaluator, but he didn’t need to be as could recruit well as a program if he’d just put in good, disciplined processes for evaluating and recruiting. he obviously didn’t do that.

i do think the light bulb has sort of gone off for him here. i hope it’s not just that we need more hero recruiters like t rob (tho we do). we need data and process also.
 
AllAboutTheU said:
I absolutely disagree. No need to go back and forth on this one. He didn’t have success here but no need to rewrite how he was seen as a prospect.
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how was he seen? committed a year before nsd and took no other OVs. WhT are these recruiting facts you point to other than some ‘rating’ that tell you how hotly he was recruited by top teams?
 
Ethnicsands said:
I agree with all this.

thing is, i started a recruiting thread after manny was hired before he’d coached a game, basically saying that i didn’t think he was a good recruiter or evaluator, but he didn’t need to be as could recruit well as a program if he’d just put in good, disciplined processes for evaluating and recruiting. he obviously didn’t do that.

i do think the light bulb has sort of gone off for him here. i hope it’s not just that we need more hero recruiters like t rob (tho we do). we need data and process also.
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Most definitely. We most certainly need more hero recruiters like T. Rob but obviously that isn't going to be some magical panacea if we don't have a process to guide us.

I think Manny is beginning to see things much more clearly both in general and in terms of this issue. I have been a bit concerned since the beginning that Diaz's obsession with analytics could preclude him from taking an obviously talented kid who for whatever reason didn't fit the prototype. However I do think that he is starting to get it and combine the analytics with the common sense eye test.
 
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FrancisSawyer said:
Player evaluations have been very inconsistent over the years. I would probably go so far as to say we have been consistently mediocre in this facet for a very long time.

I didn't really mean that I thought it was fixed but like you said the light seems to be coming on in this regard. Having a consistent eval process in place is something that I think most casual fans take for granted. The reality is that it is something that is not as common as most would believe. Take our situation for example. We obviously have not had a solid framework in terms of what exactly we are looking for or a process to guide potential evaluations. This is very much influenced by the head coach. We all have seen that both Jimmy Johnson and Butch Davis had a very clear idea of exactly what they were looking for in each position and those processes served them both extremely well.

I was admittedly a bit shocked that Mark Richt never had a good enough handle on this. His WR coach Dugans was an atrocious evaluator of talent for example. When Diaz was hired I was talking with one of my best friends who is also a Cane diehard(He was a scholarship WR for UM from Colonial HS here in Orlando in the mid 70's who had to retire because of a heart problem). Anyway this friend has an excellent football mind and we have had similar discussions over the years. Anyway when Manny was hired we didn't necessarily like the hire as we thought we could do better. What we both agreed on was that this would be a learning experience for Diaz and that he would have to learn/grow on the job. The most crucial thing we said was that Diaz surround himself with the best possible staff. Looking back Diaz obviously thought that going forward with guys like Baker, Banda, Rumph, Stroud, Enos(We hated that hire), and Stubblefield was going to be good enough. Wrong! However I give him credit for always addressing the obvious problems. Diaz obviously isn't stupid and he clearly wants to succeed and in turn make the decisions that will ultimately enable him to do so. Revamping the recruiting department and upgrading the staff on both sides of the ball was sorely needed and rewards have already been reaped with hopefully much more to come. If the way we are going about recruiting this cycle is any indication of what we can expect in the future then I think we may be on solid ground. We will see as this drama continues to unfold.
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Baker, Banda, Rumph, Stroud, Enos, Stubblefield, & Dugans, lord what an awful staff!
 
ZuCrew said:
Baker, Banda, Rumph, Stroud, Enos, Stubblefield, & Dugans, lord what an awful staff!
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Yes it was. How any of us actually believed that the team had any chance of doing anything special with that motley crew of mediocre assistants is a mystery to me. That was an absolutely putrid staff and it actually looks worse the more time goes by.
 
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AllAboutTheU said:
Payton was a high 4 star, Composite and 247 Top 100 player. Acting like he was just a hyped up Greentree player is completely revisionist history.
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This! Lol.

Can we go down the hindsight 20/20 WR list real quick (Only focusing on top 300 players in the nation):

2016:
-Sam Bruce: Top 100 player in the country (#11 WR overall)
-Ahmon Richards: Top 150 player in the country (#27 WR overall)
-Dionte Mullen: Top 300 player in the country (#48 WR overall)

2017:
-Jeff Thomas: Top 50 player in the country
(#5 WR overall)

2018:
-Mark Pope: Top 75 player in the country
(#11 WR overall)
-Brian Hightower: Top 200 player in the country
(#27 WR overall)

2019:
-Jeremiah Payton: Top 75 player in the country
(#10 WR overall)

2020:
-Michael Redding: Top 200 player in the country
(#31 WR overall)

2021:
-Romello Brinson: Top 150 player in the country
(#25 WR overall)
-Jacolby George: Top 200 player in the country
(#29 WR overall)
-Breshard Smith: Top 250 player in the country
(#36 WR overall)

The class of ‘21 is TBD, but their top 300 predecessors? Yikes, outside of Richards. I’m not sure what fan base, based upon these rankings, wouldn’t be happy having any of these guys commit. Payton was our highest rated recruit in 2019 & a top 75 player, OVERALL! Lol.

For whatever reason, our top rated WRs ain’t putting it together sans Ahmon. Again, Class of ‘21 is TBD & hoping they end an eery trend.
 
Ethnicsands said:
he’s definitely got competition for that trophy.

imo he was a hype recruiter who didn’t really evaluate at all and as a result the law of adverse selection meant he’d latch onto the highest rated kids that better evaluators we’re avoiding.
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I don't know man. I think he may be the worst talent evaluator in program history bar none. What makes him the worst is the level of attrition he sustained in his position room. In 16' he recruited Bruce, Richards, Mullins, & Dayall Harris. In 17' he recruited JT, Harley, & Njoku. In 18' he recruited Pope, Wiggins, Hightower, & Ezzard. And in 19' he was the primary recruiter for Payton. Out of all of the WR's he recruited 9 out of 12 ended up leaving the program either because of poor fit, poor intangibles, or injury. I'm counting JT because had Dugans been WR coach, he would've never came back to the program after being dismissed. Out of the 3 that stayed, 2 are Pope & Wiggins. Not only is the jury still out on those 2, but they may still end up leaving. So that makes his attrition rate potentially more than 75%. Which is an absolute insane number. Correct me if i'm wrong, but has this ever happened before in program history?
 
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