2011 Clemson vs. Auburn Depth Chart Comparison

Today we'll compare the Clemson and Auburn depth charts as presented via the Clemson University athletic website, www.clemsontigers.com.  The Clemson side has shaped up to more of a two-deep than we showed in the season opener and should give you a better average of the talent on this squad.

We should not have to tell you this, but some folks debate what to take from these articles.  We expect you, the reader, to form an opinion of your own.  Often we will give you our take on things, but you should independently form your own thoughts based on information out there.  This article shows recruiting data for the depth chart roster as referenced above.  It does not weigh experience nor does it evaluate coaching, preparation, etc...  We think this is an interesting and valuable tool that is useful in overall program evaluation because there is a link between these star ratings and other metrics in both college football and the NFL.

Keep in mind as you look through this data that only players who were officially signed were given a "Star Rating".  Players who were not signed could not be quantitatively assessed a recruiting rating.  Such players get a "NA" rating and were not included in the averaged data.  Again, all data was attained from www.Scout.com and www.Rivals.com.  Players whose Scout/Rivals data was not available but were signed were assigned a "NR".  We picked carefully through the data and believe all is correct.  However, if we've overlooked an item we apologize in advance and ask that you point it out so that we can make the correction in our database.

Figure 1 and Table I both show an average of offensive players, defensive players, and specialist listed on the two-deep roster.   Tables II through IV show the two-deep roster used for analysis along with the recruiting ratings for each player on the roster.  Clemson completely dominates this comparison.

As shown below, Auburn is, on average, more talented on offense, defense, and special teams when compared to Clemson on a Scout/Rivals star basis.  None of these averages is over 0.10 stars (special teams), however.  Offensively Auburn averages 0.05 stars per player better than Clemson.  Defensively, their Tigers are 0.04 stars per player better than our Tigers. Each of these is a fairly small and nearly insignificant margin.  It is worth pointing out that both teams have a lot of talented youngsters and will play these folks during the game on Saturday.

Figure 1:  Depth Chart Averages