Clemson Recruiting Class of 2023: Numbers Behind the Class

Clemson’s Class of 2023 is pretty much in the books and once again the Tigers are one of the best in the country. The table below has the details on Clemson’s class, all information has been pulled from 247Sports including recruiter, offers, and ratings.

This class has an average star ranking of 3.77 and an average player rating of .9089 (We counted Jamarius Haynes as a 3 star with the same rating as Jarvis Green since the 247 Composite doesn’t have Haynes listed) . We will show the data later, but this is one of the better classes rating wise in the last few years and a big improvement on last year’s rating of 3.45. Unsurprisingly the player rating is also up, .9089 from .8570 last year. All of this leads to a Blue Chip Ratio of 73% for the Class of 2023.

Now when we look at what the overall Blue Chip Ratio of the 2023 Roster is, Clemson makes a huge jump up to 72%. The important caveat here though is that this is a 4 year rolling count of recruiting numbers. It does not account for transfers out of Clemson, walk ons awarded scholarship, or try to determine who has left early, redshirted, etc.

But this is the highest ratio we’ve seen at Clemson, ever. A good 5% higher than the previous high in 2021. Granted we saw how that season turned out, so it is a reminder that the Blue Chip Ratio is just a starting point. It shows us how much talent is there, but the players have to execute and more importantly the staff still has to actually coach them up.

Now when we look at the position breakdown, a lot of our complaints about position performance tend to show up in the recruiting numbers. It does show that talent is critical to performance.

You look at it, Clemson has no 5 star players at WR, CB, and S over the last 4 years. And while some of the guys at these positions are great, we don’t quite have the studs from years past. But you look at the defensive line, linebacker, and running back you get to see where the Tigers really have talent and the performance to match.

Another interesting one is the OL. We talk a lot about the problems along the OL, but we are getting the talent. Or at least what everyone thinks is talent. We’ve discussed it before, but OL is the hardest position to project coming out of HS, which makes it hard to say high rankings are definitely going to equate to performance. I am comfortable in saying that the onus is now on Thomas Austin to convert that potential into performance though.

All of this is a long winded way to say Clemson continues to recruit well. There are always areas we’ll be concerned about, like the OL, did we meet needs, etc. But at a team level the Tigers continue to do well. The key is converting that talent into performance on the field. That’s where the Tigers haven’t quite gotten it done, hopefully 2023 will be better.