Agree. It has to have a heavy lean to HS ranking, at least for the backup players. Alexander transferring to Clemson was a news story on the ESPN website. How is that even news?Just guessing, but it appears that a good bit of the “portal ranking” is based on their HS “recruiting ranking”. Pritchett was a 5 star according to some in his HS rankings. As is in many cases they miss by a mile. Alabama has let 4 HS 5 stars go this off season: Pritchett, Haynes, ?Oatis?, ?. They miss on many, does not mean they are worthless, but for any specific player to depend on their evaluation is foolish. A personal observation: I thought Haynes was a can’t miss prospect and couldn’t wait til others left so he could show his stuff. You just never know.
Btw, it’s not Pritchett’s fault that he was misevaluated and hopefully he will find success elsewhere. It’s unfortunate that some will say he is throwing away his talent or that Alabama did not do a good job developing him. In reality, it appears that he was simply misevaluated. It’s a rare talent and even real experts like Saban miss close to 50%. Especially for OL & QBs.
I don’t necessarily like losing players to the portal, but I realize it’s just part of the game now and we haven’t lost anyone that would be a key starter next year. On the flip side, we’ve probably added at least one or two starters for next year, so I see it as a net improvement, particularly when you factor in that we had to reduce numbers.