Undrafted Player Deals

croberts

Ramblin' Wreck
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874
bobongo said:
No, they were 11-2 and ranked most of the season. That's not where we are.
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Fair enough. My point was that we had a similar talent pool with a school that started it’s program less than 20 years ago, surpassing a program that has 5 national championships and roughly 100 more years of history.☹️
 

jgtengineer

Helluva Engineer
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3,047
Just for fun i want to add that Jerry Howard also signed an UDFA at running back for the eagles. Which means at one point we had him and mason in the b back slot and both wound up getting shots longshots in the pros.
 

Billygoat91

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
487
jgtengineer said:
Just for fun i want to add that Jerry Howard also signed an UDFA at running back for the eagles. Which means at one point we had him and mason in the b back slot and both wound up getting shots longshots in the pros.
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Our players that changed positions with their prospective pro deals (Howard, Carpenter) from what we played them is frustrating. Howard may have been signed for special teams purposes like Cottrell was. Carpenter more so because outside of Charlie Thomas, linebacker has been a position that has lacked depth and playmaking ability

I don't think our problem with NFL players has been undrafted deals. It is longevity, or lack there of, of their careers that is concerning from a recruiting stand point. Waller, Gotsis, Mason, Butker, Attacochu, and Harvin are our primary talented players in the NFL and we have pretty good bang for our buck there. Waller, Shaq Mason, and Butker are all widely respected in league circles and top 5 at their positions, but only having 6 active NFL veterans is a small number for a P-5 school. When accounting for undrafted deals this year, we have 14 players in the NFL right now, Duke has 18..... I think we all consider GT a superior program to Duke in just about every facet. We have to put more guys in the league to help with recruiting if we want to run systems similar to the rest of college football and win.

Obviously, if we run an unorthodox system, the whole number of players we have in the league thing is rendered somewhat irrelevant if we can get our NIL machine up and running.
 
CuseJacket

CuseJacket

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19,624
I'm as disappointed as anyone re: on-field coaching and results. There is plenty of evidence and reason to be concerned about what we're capable of with the current HC.

That said, pointing to this year's NFL draft and free agent signings/mini-camps as an indictment on X's and O's coaching is not the proof folks should point to. A single draft pick does not prove we had the talent. That is the opposite. Nor do free agent signings and mini-camp invites that happen with every school.

For comparison, here's a sampling of schools that had more NFL draft picks:
  • UTSA
  • Western Kentucky
  • Central Michigan
  • Toledo
  • Tulsa
  • Washington State
  • California
  • Illinois
  • Montana State (FCS)
Here's a few that matched us:
  • 21 FCS and Division II schools
  • South Alabama
  • Kansas
  • Indiana
The good news is a lot of our "on paper" roster talent was younger i.e., still marinating.

Some caution is, will we keep those guys and will they develop?
 

yeti92

Helluva Engineer
Messages
3,179
CuseJacket said:
I'm as disappointed as anyone re: on-field coaching and results. There is plenty of evidence and reason to be concerned about what we're capable of with the current HC.

That said, pointing to this year's NFL draft and free agent signings/mini-camps as an indictment on X's and O's coaching is not the proof folks should point to. A single draft pick does not prove we had the talent. That is the opposite. Nor do free agent signings and mini-camp invites that happen with every school.

For comparison, here's a sampling of schools that had more NFL draft picks:
  • UTSA
  • Western Kentucky
  • Central Michigan
  • Toledo
  • Tulsa
  • Washington State
  • California
  • Illinois
  • Montana State (FCS)
Here's a few that matched us:
  • 21 FCS and Division II schools
  • South Alabama
  • Kansas
  • Indiana
The good news is a lot of our "on paper" roster talent was younger i.e., still marinating.

Some caution is, will we keep those guys and will they develop?
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Here are some more that matched us with 1 draft pick:

-Auburn
-Stanford
-Oregon
-Oregon State
-Florida State
-Miami
-Virginia
-Boston College
-UCF
-BYU
 

CEB

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,766
And to me, it’s irrelevant. Same as recruiting rankings. Saturdays matter. The rest of this is window dressing or bragging rights or something I just don’t care to understand. I want our guys to be successful in the NFL but success at GT on Saturday afternoon is really all that matters. The rest will take care of itself.
 
bobongo

bobongo

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7,721
CEB said:
And to me, it’s irrelevant. Same as recruiting rankings. Saturdays matter. The rest of this is window dressing or bragging rights or something I just don’t care to understand. I want our guys to be successful in the NFL but success at GT on Saturday afternoon is really all that matters. The rest will take care of itself.
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Saturday afternoon is indeed the only relevant thing, which is why going 3-9 with seven guys signing NFL contracts means this team didn't equal the sum of its parts.
CuseJacket said:
For comparison, here's a sampling of schools that had more NFL draft picks:
  • UTSA
  • Western Kentucky
  • Central Michigan
  • Toledo
  • Tulsa
  • Washington State
  • California
  • Illinois
  • Montana State (FCS)
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How many of those teams had a total of seven guys sign NFL contracts? And if there were any, did they go 3-9?
 
CuseJacket

CuseJacket

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Staff member
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19,624
yeti92 said:
Here are some more that matched us with 1 draft pick:

-Auburn
-Stanford
-Oregon -
-Oregon State
-Florida State
-Miami
-Virginia
-Boston College
-UCF
-BYU
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So do we want to be more like the 3-9 Stanford Cardinal or no? ;)
bobongo said:
Saturday afternoon is indeed the only relevant thing, which is why going 3-9 with seven guys signing NFL contracts means this team didn't equal the sum of its parts.

How many of those teams had a total of seven guys sign NFL contracts? And if there were any, did they go 3-9?
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That's a good question. Please share the answer if/when you have it because I don't have the time to do all the work. I'm curious if I have a bias based on news sources. My sense is you think we were hugely successful based on some comparative information.

As for records, that isn't a great barometer imo based on schedules played. Despite our coaching I think we would have fared better than 3 wins against many of the comparative schedules. Heck, we took the 9-win MAC champions to the wire ;)

There are many examples of NFL signings just like ours, where the vast majority are cut and don't meaningfully make it. There is little committed ($$$) by NFL teams to get guys to a camp.

Most schools didn't do a convenient roll-up on Twitter, but scanning their feeds its seems like ~7 is likely.




 

Billygoat91

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
487
CuseJacket said:
So do we want to be more like the 3-9 Stanford Cardinal or no? ;)

That's a good question. Please share the answer if/when you have it because I don't have the time to do all the work. I'm curious if I have a bias based on news sources. My sense is you think we were hugely successful based on some comparative information.

As for records, that isn't a great barometer imo based on schedules played. Despite our coaching I think we would have fared better than 3 wins against many of the comparative schedules. Heck, we took the 9-win MAC champions to the wire ;)

There are many examples of NFL signings just like ours, where the vast majority are cut and don't meaningfully make it. There is little committed ($$$) by NFL teams to get guys to a camp.

Most schools didn't do a convenient roll-up on Twitter, but scanning their feeds its seems like ~7 is likely.




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I actually agree with this. I don't like CGC but stronger arguments have to be made to trash him because the team supposedly underperformed because we had one drafted player and 6 udfa deals. One drafted player and several undrafted free agents is not a good showing at all with respect to the draft. The only reason why we think otherwise, is because we have been about the same if not worse than that over the last 5 years. I thing Cuse hits the nail on the head that a 3 win season against our schedule is better than what most of the G-5 schools in that list have. Our schedule year-in and year-out is brutal. Also, we were fairly competitive in many of our games with the exception of the last 2. Put us in the Pac-12 and we may be a 5-7 team, in the G-5, an 8-4 team (I would hope)

The only reason why we can even compare # of NFL deals with record is because we are now running a more "main-line" offensive and defensive scheme. I think it goes without saying that many teams and systems throughout the years of college football do great without superb NFL talent. Snyder's great Kansas State team comes to mind along with some of our teams with Paul Johnson.
 
bobongo

bobongo

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CuseJacket said:
So do we want to be more like the 3-9 Stanford Cardinal or no? ;)
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Stanford had one NFL draft pick, just like us, and ZERO UDFA signed contracts compared to our SIX. This would be the closest apples to apples comparison available.
So we had seven total NFL signees to their one, but ended up with the same record. Again I reiterate - we were less than the sum of our parts.

Undrafted rookie free agents: Team signings after 2022 NFL Draft

www.nfl.com

And once again, I'm talking about SIGNED CONTRACTS, not camp invitees.
 

GT33

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,259
The average NFL tenure is 3.3 yrs. With multiple top tier players lasting a decade or more, the highest percentage of NFL players only last 2 seasons then they flame out. Next year basically any GT-NFL roster issues if you want to call it that is all on CGC. He owns at least 2/3 of the overall problem now, but honestly he probably owns damn near all of it.
 
okiemon

okiemon

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1,793
SteamWhistle said:
Man, Sucks to think about but Ivey and Gibbs had a chance to break out and really put a Tech player back into the early rounds of the draft.
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I agree. In fact, one of the way-too-early mock drafts for 2023 I saw has Gibbs going in the 1st round.
 

takethepoints

Helluva Engineer
Messages
6,137
Personally, I was surprised that Mason didn't get drafted in one of the lower rounds. I wouldn't be surprised if both he and Howard stuck with somebody. They are the kind of players the pros are looking for at RB: big, hard to bring down on the first lick, decent speed, can catch, and can block. But … a lot of this is a matter of numbers and luck.
 
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