NFL Draft 2019: How the 1st-round picks were rated as high school recruits

Do recruiting rankings matter?

That’s the question that gets debated every single recruiting cycle, and yet, the NFL Draft  and college football as a whole continue to prove they do matter.

It’s always fun to look back at the first-round draft picks to see how they were rated as high school recruits. Every year, we see several 5-stars, 4-stars, 3-stars and unranked recruits become first-round picks.

Here’s the breakdown of all 32 picks in the first round of Thursday night’s draft (247Sports Composite):

• 5-stars: 8
• 4-stars: 10
• 3-stars: 11
• 2-stars: 1
• UR: 2

Those compare very favorably to last year’s numbers — 7 5-stars, 10 4-stars, 12 3-stars, 1 2-star and 2 UR.

RELATED: SEC stars who were 1st round picks are very rich

Of the SEC’s nine first-round picks, Alabama’s Jonah Williams and Mississippi State’s Jeffery Simmons were rated 5-star prospects. Alabama’s Quinnen Williams and LSU’s Devin White were rated 4-stars. Alabama’s Josh Jacobs, Mississippi State’s Montez Sweat and Johnathan Abram and Georgia’s Deandre Baker were all 3-star prospects. Kentucky’s Josh Allen was the SEC’s lone 2-star prospect to be a first-round pick at No. 7 overall to the Jaguars.

Two first-round picks were unranked by evaluators — Duke QB Daniel Jones and Alabama State OT Tytus Howard. Jones was developed by David Cutcliffe, while Howard was a walk-on at Alabama State who wanted to play QB. Really. Thankfully for him, he gained a bunch of weight and blew into a first-round pick at tackle.

Here’s the full first round and star ranking:

SDS Staff

Saturday Down South reports and comments on the news around the Southeastern Conference as well as larger college football topics.