67 Days Until Kansas Football: Rating Individual Players on the Roster

The Kansas Jayhawks have a lot of talent around the roster. While we are gearing up to look at some recent Jayhawks in terms of how they would rate in the new video game, there are multiple guys on this roster worth highlighting.

Last week on the countdown, we looked at the news surrounding the return of the EA NCAA Football video game, and I mentioned that I was working on putting something together to look at how some of the players that didn't have a chance to be in the game might rate out.

On today's episode of the Rock Chalk Podcast, I welcomed Nicholas Ian Allen onto the show to talk about his player and team rating system, CFB Winning Edge. I'll let him describe a little bit about what they do:

"CFB Winning Edge is an independent outlet focused on college football analytics. We have developed team, player and coach ratings based on a wide range of current and historical data.

Our Patreon supporters have access to our FBS Team Profiles, which includes ratings for over 11,000 individual players across all 131 FBS teams, as well as ratings for every head coach, offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator, and strength of schedule metrics. In addition to stats, recruiting data, injury reports, and player movement information, we also offer three sets of projected point spreads for every FBS game based on our separate projection models, as well as projected win totals."

My favorite part about this system, and why I was so keen to share it, is that it takes the wealth of information that is contained in recruiting rankings and updates it with actual results from on the field production. This overall view can really help to put a player's career in context, especially moving from one school to another.

If you want to hear a bit more about how the system got started and some of the things that it can tell you, make sure you go listen to today's episode.

The numbers from this system will be supporting our series looking back at recent players. But before we do that, I wanted to take a quick look at some of the interesting things I found looking through the numbers. If you want to look for yourself, you can sign up for the service through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/CFBWinningEdge

Huge Success in the Transfer Portal

Early indications are that the Jayhawks added quite a bit of talent through the transfer portal this offseason. Kansas picked up two players with ratings in the 90s, and nearly every player that transferred in was one of the highest two or three players in his position group.

The coaching staff talked about shoring up holes through the transfer portal, and nowhere was that more evident than in the defensive secondary. Behind Kenny Logan Jr., Kalon Gervin, Jarrett Paul and Marvin Grant are easily the highest rated defensive backs on the team, which is a huge upgrade for a position that definitely needed it.

Big Gains for the Running Backs

In our running backs preview yesterday, I mentioned how big of an addition Ky Thomas and Sevion Morrison were to a good running back room. I might have undersold it a little bit.

Morrison is actually the third-highest rated running back on the roster coming into the season, a few points behind Devin Neal and Thomas. But while splitting time with two other backs at Minnesota, Thomas was able to put up a comparable amount of production to what Neal did this last season.

Anyone who saw Neal last season is excited for what he can do this year. But make sure to keep an eye out for Thomas, who could give the Jayhawks another legitimate weapon in the backfield.

Still A Long Way To Go

It's nice to see all this new talent that is coming into the program. But anyone who has been paying attention to advanced stats can tell you that Kansas has a big gap to make up. The gap between the rating for the Jayhawks and West Virginia right above them is almost as wide as the gap between West Virginia and Oklahoma, who is the best team in these ratings.

But the beauty of a system like this is that it will update as teams play this season. So not only will you get to see improvement year over year, but even potentially week by week.

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