If you look around at the offensive linemen who will likely end up in the NFL next year, most of them were 3-star recruits (or lower). Here’s a smattering I grabbed from Rivals:

Riley Reiff | 3-star (Iowa)
David DeCastro | 3-star (Stanford)
Jonathan Martin | 3-star (Stanford)
Kelechi Osemele | 3-star (Iowa St)
Levy Adcock | NR (Oklahoma St)
Ben Jones | 3-star (UGA)
Andrew Datko | 3-star (FSU)
Kevin Zeitler | 3-star (Wisconsin)
Nate Potter | 2-star (Boise)
Senio Kelemete | 3-star (Washington)

• Couldn’t locate any info on Mike Adams of Ohio St.

This is from a list of about ~15 linemen (not counting TE’s) that project well in the 2012 draft.

You could extrapolate that about 2/3 of elite offensive linemen are not blue chip HS recruits. You might also note that there’s probably a bias on the part of the recruiting analysts to give high school linemen from the Southeast a higher grade than lineman from west of the Mississipp’. Or maybe the currency of linemen is inflated in the midwest because there are so many? Or, most likely, it’s hard to gauge if a 6’6" manchild has the intangible requirements to mature into a good linemen, so it becomes a talent evaluation issue or a numbers game.

If Clemson’s track record is any indication, it seems we often do better with the kids who fly in under the radar, underestimated, and with a chip on their shoulder than we do with the 4 and 5-star darlings. Contrast people like Price, Pilgrim, Tommy Sharpe (maybe Dave Smith, and the Frys too) with some of the notable busts. In general, the self-motivated people become the heroes and often outperform their bigger and “more talented” teammates. How do we find more people like that? How do we make the most out of the big guys who are just good enough?Coaching. When our coaches recruit a guy who comes in as a wad of cookie, after a few years he should be carved out of wood (or sitting on it).