Buffalo Bills: What Stefon Diggs can teach us about uncovering NFL draft value

Buffalo Bills, Stefon Diggs, Eli Apple (Mandatory Credit: Gregory Fisher-USA TODAY Sports)

What is a five-star high school recruit?

Stefon Diggs was a consensus five-star high school recruit after playing football and running track at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Montgomery Maryland. But what exactly does it mean to be a five-star recruit?

Basically it means that it was universally agreed that Diggs was one of the top overall football prospects in the world. There are multiple scouting agencies with different scouts and slightly different criteria such as Rivals, ESPN and 247.

Rivals describes a five-star recruit as follow:

"“A five-star prospect is considered to be one of the nation’s top 25-30 players, four star is a top 250-300 or so player, three-stars is a top 750 level player, two stars means the player is a mid-major prospect, and one star means the player is not ranked.”"

So Diggs was widely recognized as one of the top football players in the nation. As such, he could have gone to any college he wanted on scholarship. Ultimately he chose to attend the University of Maryland in order to stay close to home because he had become a father-figure to his two younger brothers, Darez and Trevon after his father died due to congestive heart failure in 2008.