Which North Carolina Football Position is Most Talented?

This weekend, Tar Heel beat writer Harold Gutmann tweeted out North Carolina’s preseason depth chart.

That got us thinking- what is the most talented position for North Carolina football according to the latest depth chart? We used the 247Sports Composite rating to measure talent. Don’t know what the 247Sports Composite Rating is? Here is how the metric is explained on the 247sports website.

"The 247Sports Composite Rating is a proprietary algorithm that compiles prospect “rankings” and “ratings” listed in the public domain by the major media recruiting services. It converts average industry ranks and ratings into a linear composite index capping at 1.0000, which indicates a consensus No. 1 prospect across all services.The 247Sports Composite Rating is the industry’s most comprehensive and unbiased prospect ranking and is also used to generate 247Sports Team Recruiting Rankings."

We looked up the rating for each player and averaged it with the score of other starters and backups at their position. For example, the quarterbacks are listed below as shown on the depth chart. We took each of their 247Sports Composite rankings, averaged them together and multiplied by 100 to get our final score. This score doesn’t account for position battles that haven’t been decided yet, like who will start at QB between Marquise and Mitch.

First string- Marquise Williams: 0.8931
First string- Mitch Trubisky: 0.9135
3rd string- Kanler Coker: 0.8332
Average: 0.8799333333
Final Score: 87.99

Before I show you the results, there are a couple of things we must address. Obviously, a player’s talent level rises and falls over time. By the time a four star prospect leaves UNC, he may be much better and an NFL prospect or be much worse. So this analysis really measures the talent level of positions as if everyone was a rising freshman. Or, to put it another way, ranking positions by number of highly rated recruits. But I think it still works. A five star recruit is more talented than a two star recruit, so a position with all four star recruits should be more talented than a position with five walk-ons. (Nothing against walk-ons!)

Also, this metric doesn’t take into account experience or depth or individual improvement or performance or anything else, beside how the players were rated coming out of high school. So keep all that in mind as you read the results.

Look at the depth chart in the tweet above to see who plays at each position.

[table id=4 /]

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I think Coach Fedora would agree that the running backs are the most talented position. No only is the group talented, with four star freshman Elijah Hood leading the way, but the group is deep as well. All four players listed on the depth chart scored well in the 247Sports Composite metric.

I was very surprised that three of the top six most talented position groups were offensive lineman. That shows that although the offensive line is inexperienced going into next season, the group is still very talented.

Strong safety comes in as the least talented group of players on the team. None of the trio of Dominique Green, Sam Smiley or Jeff Battle were very highly recruited coming out of high school, but they are an example of where this ranking fails. Green started all 13 games last season, recording 59 tackles as a freshman. He also ranked second on the team with three interceptions. Even though Green wasn’t a highly rated recruit and thus not very talented according to this study, the strong safety position is still one of the stronger ones on the defense. (Pun totally intended.)

What do you think is the most talented position for Carolina? Let us know in the comments below.