High school football recruits displeased with how they've been ranked by a recruiting service heading into Wednesday's National Signing Day should take solace: the NFL's very best players weren't all highly regarded as recruits.
Not nearly.
Of the 86 NFL players selected to the 2017 Pro Bowl in December, 50 of them were rated with three stars or fewer coming out of high school, per the 247sports.com database. In fact, more (14) were unranked entirely than ranked with the highest rating of five stars (12).
Among the top NFL players who were unranked as high school recruits: New England Patriots QB Tom Brady, Pittsburgh Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger, Oakland Raiders DE Khalil Mack, Pittsburgh Steelers WR Antonio Brown and Arizona Cardinals RB David Johnson.
A look at how each Pro Bowler was rated as a high school recruit:
5-star recruits (12)
4-star recruits (24)
3-star recruits (29)
Geno Atkins
Cliff Avril
Vic Beasley
Le'Veon Bell
Jurrell Casey
David DeCastro
Aaron Donald
Mike Evans
Travis Frederick
Dwayne Harris
Casey Heyward
Rodney Hudson*
Travis Kelce
Ryan Kerrigan
Luke Kuechly
Devin McCourty
Von Miller
Brian Orakpo
Kelechi Osemele
Marcus Peters
Dak Prescott
Xavier Rhodes
Aaron Rodgers
Matt Ryan
Brandon Scherff
Richard Sherman
Justin Tucker
Trent Williams
Marshal Yanda
* - Rivals.com ranking
2-star recruits (7)
Unranked recruits (14)
Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter *@ChaseGoodbread*.