A good example of that. Especially after he was injured freshman year and the effort level was increased to recover and excell from that point forward.

My other roommate was the opposite. Three year starter at DB and a leader on the 1988 title team. Both of them played for the same high school and the DE was the higher rated recruit.

are gathered to begin with.

Everyone's highlight tape looks really good. Sometimes, if you go to a particular camp you can look better than you are depending on who is on the other side (which is why most coaches want you at their camp). Much of the time, the guys on the recruitnik sites have no idea what they're actually evaluating; while they may see a pancake block, a coach might see a kid that has bad feet that dominates lesser competition and is slow to get off the ground after said block.

And some guys just don't make it even if they jump off the tape. I recall one coach talking to me about Chris Martin, who was a big time recruit in '09. He stopped by this particular school and nobody had heard of him yet. They slapped on his tape which was just some random game and within 3 plays the recruiting coordinator was on the phone to the DC to get his ass in there and meet the kid. I think that the kid ended up being one of the top recruits (if not the top recruit) in the nation. Long story short, he had all kinds of issues wherever he went (and there was a hint of that in high school), he transferred a bunch and I think he ended up at New Mexico Highlands University (bonus points to you if you had actually heard of that school before now).