It’s our annual tradition of re-grading the UCF Knights’ Football recruiting class from five years prior. This year’s class is 2015 - George O’Leary’s final class as head coach - a group that came to UCF in the wake of a conference championship, and then survived a disastrous freshman year to see the program through two head coaching changes, two undefeated regular seasons and a national title.

This class was a mixed bag. Several stayed through the struggle and saw great success under Scott Frost and Josh Heupel. Others abandoned what they saw was a sinking ship. Either way, this class turned out to be one of the most important, with four of them earning all-conference honors and ten finishing their time at UCF.

Our evaluations are graded like this:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Star player and bonafide NFL Draft talent. Need not have stayed all four years.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ – All-conference-level or solid starter, possible late-round NFL draftee or UDFA pickup.

⭐⭐⭐ – Played and finished career at UCF, graduated (or at least should have). Not NFL talent.

⭐⭐ – Played but didn’t finish at UCF. Transferred, quit football, or something like that.

⭐ – Never played, probably on a milk carton somewhere.

To see our full evaluations going back to 2004, click here.

Analysis

George O’Leary’s last class at UCF was actually a pretty good one. They had an average initial rating (according to Rivals’ ratings) of 2.78, the third-highest of his tenure behind 2011 and 2012.

But their final average rating was the exact same - 2.78 - making it the fourth-best class since 2004. Of the 18 players in the class, 10 were hits (defined as a player who finished his undergraduate eligibility at UCF). That corresponds to a hit rate of 55.6%, which was seventh-best of the 12 classes we’ve looked at.

Here’s the breakdown: