The Super Bowl is the biggest game in football. But every player in the game had to start somewhere. And most were recruited out of high school and evaluated by scouts.

With the help of the 247Sports Composite, we’ve got a time machine that tells us how almost every player in Super Bowl 52’s Eagles-Patriots game was rated coming out of high school. Not counting kickers and punters (who’ve rarely been rated), each team has a handful of starters who didn’t get ranked before college, either because they weren’t scouted well enough, developed late, or came through high school before the modern recruiting industry. Recruits have been ranked publicly only since the early 2000s.

How the Patriots’ starters rated as recruits Player Stars College Player Stars College WR Chris Hogan 0 or N/A Monmouth LT Trent Brown 3 Florida LG Joe Thuney 2 NC State C David Andrews 3 Georgia RG Shaq Mason 3 Georgia Tech RT Marcus Cannon 3 TCU TE Rob Gronkowski 4 Arizona WR Julian Edelman 3 Kent State QB Tom Brady 4* Michigan RB Sony Michel 5 Georgia RB James White 3 Wisconsin DE Trey Flowers 3 Arkansas DT Lawrence Guy 4 Arizona State DT Malcolm Brown 5 Texas DE Deatrich Wise Jr. 3 Arkansas LB Dont'a Hightower 4 Alabama LB Elandon Roberts 0 or N/A Houston LB Kyle Van Noy 4 BYU CB Stephon Gilmore 4 South Carolina CB Jason McCourty 0 or N/A Rutgers S Patrick Chung 2 Oregon S Devin McCourty 2 Rutgers

Though 17 out of 22 Patriots starters were rated at least three-stars, the Patriots average star rating sits at 2.7, thanks to five unrated recruits.

* Tom Brady was around before recruiting rankings, but we’ve retroactively made him a four-star with an asterisk. From California, he was a Michigan signee with plenty of offers from other national powers and attention in national media outlets. In today’s landscape, he would’ve unquestionably been a blue-chip.

*Chris Hogan was actually a lacrosse player in college, for Penn State. And he was a damn good one, being selected as a 2006 Under Armour High School All-American.

The Eagles are a much different story.

How the Rams’ starters rated as recruits Player Stars College Player Stars College QB Jared Goff 4 Cal RB Todd Gurley 4 Georgia WR Brandin Cooks 3 Oregon State WR Robert Woods 5 USC WR Josh Reynolds 3 Texas A&M TE Tyler Higbee 2 WKU LT Andrew Whitworth 5 LSU LG Roger Saffold 2 Indiana C John Sullivan 4 Notre Dame RG Austin Blythe 4 Iowa RT Rob Havenstein 3 Wisconsin DE Michael Brockers 4 LSU NT Ndamukong Suh 4 Nebraska DT Aaron Donald 3 Pitt WLB Dante Fowler Jr. 5 Florida OLB Samson Ebukam 0 or N/A Eastern Washington ILB Corey Littleton 3 Washington ILB Mark Barron 4 Alabama CB Marcus Peters 3 Washington CB Aqib Talib 2 Kansas S John Johnson III 2 Boston College S Lamarcus Joyner 5 Florida State

The Eagles on the other hand, skew much, much higher, with an average star rating of 3.5. Recruiting fans scanning the Eagles’ roster will be familiar with those like Nelson Agholor, Tim Jernigan, Brandon Graham, Nigel Bradham, Ronald Darby, and Alshon Jeffery.

Perhaps the most interesting story on the Eagles is Lane Johnson. In high school, Johnson was 6’5 and 202 pounds. He went to junior college and just kept growing. And growing. And growing.

Eventually, Johnson wound up as a 6’6, 317-pounder. He went from a QB to a left tackle. That is rather unheard of:

“He was starving himself to play at 270 (pounds) to play D-end,” coach Bob Stoops said. “I asked (strength) Coach (Jerry) Schmidt how long it would take him to get to 300 pounds. He said, ‘About a week and a cheeseburger.’

Let’s get nerdy

Five-stars: The Patriots have one, while the Eagles have five.

Four-stars: The Patriots have four, while the Eagles have seven.

Three-stars: The Patriots have 12, while the Eagles have seven.

Two-stars or lower: The Patriots have five, while the Eagles have three.

Thirty-nine percent of the Super Bowl starters were four- or five-star recruits. To put it another way, about two in every five Super Bowl starters were four- or five-star recruits, but only about one in every 770 recruits are rated as such. So yes, your odds of starting in the Super Bowl are, unsurprisingly, much higher if you were a superstar recruit in high school.