More often than not, college football recruiting, and the scouting of those recruits all about projection. It’s about finding traits, finding athletic ability, finding special abilities, and figuring out how they can fit into whatever your team’s specific brand of football is. There are rarely seamless fits, because college offenses and defenses are wildly different than high school counterparts. The expectation is that the recruits will grow and continue to develop as football players, and that they will, eventually, fit into the system.
That’s the norm. Sometimes, less projection is needed. That’s usually reserved for five-star “plug and play” types like Trevor Lawrence or Garrett Wilson.