Tennessee football: Does NFL Draft affect Vols recruiting? Data says no.

Regardless of what Tennessee football does in the 2020 NFL Draft, historical data shows it won’t affect the Volunteers recruiting.

If you analyze the NFL Draft classes and recruiting classes for Tennessee football, the top two of each came the same years. In fact, the top tier years of each are all in the same time frame and can be nearly identical.

Factoring in number of players picked and when they were drafted along with where recruiting rankings were, the Vols’ best draft classes were easily 2000, 2002 and 2007 in order. Their best recruiting classes were also 2000, 2002 and 2007. That would seem to suggest there’s a correlation between the two.

However, looking beyond those two years will provide a clear glimpse that those were one-offs. It just so happened that Tennessee football was still in its peak as a program in the early 2000s with players still from the 1998 national championship team, which in turn naturally meant for more NFL Draft picks and elite recruits.

After 2003, though, in which Phillip Fulmer failed to secure a top 10 class and was coming off an unranked season for the first time in his coaching career, the correlation fell apart. The elite 2007 draft class and top five recruiting ranking that year was a one-off.

Separating every recruiting class and draft class into four tiers of five each over the past two decades, only one tier, the top tier, had any of the same years in both columns. We already mentioned them as well. They were the top three: 2000, 2002 and 2007. If you separate them into a top and bottom half, exactly half the years are identical in each half.

UT had two top 10 classes the past decade in a year in which it produced one or fewer draft picks. Its highest-ranked class in the 2010s, the 2015 class, just happened to come the first year in decades the Vols had nobody drafted.

Now, let’s be fair. If the NFL Draft would impact Tennessee football in recruiting, it would naturally come the following year. After all, National Signing Day is in February, and the draft is in April. So what’s the case with that?

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In that case, we would eliminate the 2000 recruiting class and add the 2020 recruiting class. recruiting class would be paired with the draft class of the previous year. In that case, the second tier still has no pairings, and there is only one pairing in the other three tiers. Separating by bottom and top halves, there are six in each one, just slightly more than half but enough to call it random.

Heck, this past year, the Vols had nobody taken, and they just secured their best recruiting class in five seasons back in February. Now, there is a bit more correlation, we’d say overall, with something like this, but it’s nowhere near enough to say that the success of a program impacts its success on the recruiting trail.

You take both things into account, the classes of the same year and the recruiting class the following year. The reason being is to see if prospects pay attention to names called from different schools in the NFL Draft, or if they pay attention to players as draft prospects the minute the regular season comes to an end.

Either way, the data shows that they don’t. The most consistent theme for recruiting is the success of a program and the credibility of a coach. As a result, Tennessee football’s best chance at continuing to build recruiting classes has nothing to do with the draft, and they won’t have to worry about the lack of drafted players holding them back.