National Signing Day was a relatively uneventful day in Evanston. The Wildcats’ day both began and ended at 6:01 a.m., when head coach Pat Fitzgerald tweeted that running back Evan Hull had sent in his signed national letter of intent.
Northwestern capped off its 2019 recruiting class by signing Hull, the only recruit of the day. The Wildcats added Hull to the 18 players they signed in December to form a 2019 class that didn’t wow many experts.
The Wildcats’ 2019 class ranks 50th in the nation and 11th in the Big Ten, ahead of only Rutgers, Maryland and Illinois. The addition of Hull, the only two-star in a class full of three-stars, actually drove the class’s ranking down a few pegs when he officially joined the class by committing just a week ago.
Those rankings are actually better than last year, when the class ranked 60th and dead-last in the Big Ten. And that group had a four-star in defensive end Devin O’Rourke, eventual rushing leader Isaiah Bowser and quite a few others that made an instant impact, like cornerback Greg Newsome and wide receiver J.J. Jefferson.
So why does this class rank so low? For one, it lacks a true headliner. Eighteen three-stars and one two-star won’t get recruiting analysts’ blood racing. What’s more, there’s only one player, linebacker Michael Jansey Jr., who has a 5.7 Rivals Rating, the highest mark for a three-star prospect. The rest have a rating of 5.5 (lowest) or 5.6 (middle). (Not coincidentally, Jansey was chosen to play in the Under Armour All-America game.)
But the primary reason for the low ranking is the size of the class. The Rivals ranking formula is based, to a degree, on how many recruits are in a class. It adds Rivals Rating points to Rivals250 bonus points (there were no NU signees in the Rivals250) to determine the rankings. NU’s class had just 19 members, so their point total is going to be five-percent lower right off the top.
This year, however, that’s not too damaging, as five other Big Ten schools (43 percent of the league) didn’t have 20 signees, either. Ohio State (17 signees) ranked fourth, Wisconsin (19) sixth, Michigan State (19) seventh, Maryland (17) 13th and Illinois (13) in last place at 14th.
If that fourth spot seems low for big, bad Ohio State, it’s because it is. The Buckeyes were No. 1 in the league for an incredible eight straight years, yet in this cycle they find themselves looking up at Michigan, Penn State and Nebraska, in order.
But don’t be fooled: this is still a typical Buckeye battle-tank of a class, with one five-star and 10 four-stars. Because Ohio State only had 17 signees, they dropped to fourth with 2,040 points, 420 less than No. 1 Michigan, even though their average star rating of 3.71 was No. 1 in the conference.
Northwestern’s average star rating of 2.95 would put them in 11th place. However, the Wildcats are one of just two teams that didn’t pull in a single four-star. Rutgers is the other.
Rankings and star ratings don’t matter to head coach Pat Fitzgerald and his staff. This season, the Wildcats won the West conference and appeared in the Big Ten championship game with a team made up of five classes that averaged just 12th in the league. The Wildcats’ classes never ranked higher than ninth (2016), with a low of 14th (2018).
If Fitzgerald and his staff have proven one thing, it’s that they can develop talent. They routinely take three-star prospects and turn them into productive Big Ten players, and in some cases, send them to the NFL. Wildcats in the league include three-stars like Dean Lowry, Tyler Lancaster and Ibraheim Campbell, and two-stars like Sherrick McManis and Dan Vitale.
That’s why if Northwestern’s new Walter Athletics Center can raise the caliber of players coming into the program just a touch, the results could push the program to the next level.
