BYU's 2023 Recruiting Class by the Numbers

Taking a closer look at the numbers behind BYU's 2023 recruiting class

On Wednesday, BYU put a bow on the 2023 class with national signing day. The Cougars signed highly-touted running back LJ Martin. They also signed more help for the defensive line in Snow College transfer David Latu and Timpview standout Motekiai Mo'unga. Meanwhile, BYU received commitments from multiple preferred walk-ons that turned down other opportunities to walk on at BYU. Today, let's look at the data behind the 2023 class and compare it to prior classes under Kalani Sitake.

Recruiting Ranking

As of early Thursday morning, BYU's recruiting class is ranked no. 53 in the country. A class in the 50's won't make national headlines, but it is BYU's highest-ranked class since 2016. What makes this class unique is the transfer ranking. BYU's class of transfer portal players ranks no. 39 in the country and the traditional signing class ranks no. 66. When you put those two together, BYU's total signing class ranks 53rd.

Eventually, BYU's high school signing class will need to eclipse the top 50 to annually compete in the Big 12. This year, however, BYU's signing class was smaller, and only 17 signees counted towards the class ranking. Even though a smaller class won't rank very high, there are multiple data points that BYU's high school/JUCO recruiting is trending in the right direction. More on that in a moment.

Author note: From this point on, these numbers exclude transfers and preferred walk-ons for comparability

Average Composite Rating

247Sports does a composite rating for each player. The composite rating is an equally-weighted average rating between the three recruiting services: 247Sports, Rivals, and ESPN. From an average rating perspective, this is Kalani Sitake's best recruiting class since he became the head coach at BYU, and frankly it's not even close. You have to go clear back to 2010 to find a BYU class with an average rating beyond .85.

In the span of three years, BYU's average signee has improved from a low three-star recruit to a mid three-star recruit. For those that don't follow recruiting closely, that might not mean much. But that's a material improvement and, in the opinion of this author, is more meaningful than recruiting rankings. Most importantly, this statistic indicates that BYU fans will start to see more, better players suiting up for the Cougars in the coming years.

Competing Offers

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One of my favorite ways to grade a BYU recruiting class is looking at the percentage of commits that have competing offers to play at other FBS schools. It's not a perfect measure, but it tells an interesting story, especially this year. First let's look at the percentage of 2023 commits that turned down P5 schools to play for BYU.

From this perspective, BYU's 2023 class is one of the best in the Sitake era. More than half of the signees turned down Power Five schools to sign with BYU. That's important. In the future as BYU competes in the Big 12, the gold standard for this metric will be around 70%-75%.

Next, let's look at the percentage of 2023 signees that held a competing FBS offer when they signed with BYU.

This is the most important encouraging metric of the 2023 class. BYU took on more head-to-head recruiting battles in this class and won. That's an important ingredient to building a Power Five program with depth. The only signee without a competing FBS offer was quarterback Ryder Burton, and you could argue that he was an exception to this statistic. Burton was locked in with BYU when other schools inquired, and he played in a Springville offense that was run-focused.

The goal for the 2024 class will be to continue to build on the recruiting momentum that BYU has established over the last 18 months. If BYU's new defensive staff can start to recruit at the same level that the offensive staff has recruited over the last few years, BYU's recruiting classes will start to crack the top 50 on an annual basis.

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