FootballScoop is proud to announce that Darrick Yray (Florida State) is the 2023 FootballScoop Player Personnel Director of the Year presented by AstroTurf as selected by prior winners.
The program had turned a corner.
Florida State, which largely had been somewhat rudderless in the years following its 2013 national title under Jimbo Fisher following Fisher’s departure a couple seasons later, finally broke through in Mike Norvell’s third season at the helm.
The 2022 Seminoles posted an 10-win season, won their bowl game and finished as high as No. 10 in the final college football rankings.
In the months before that watershed season, Norvell turned to the West Coast and hired Darrick Yray.
At Oregon State, Yray had served then-coach Jonathan Smith in essentially a general manager’s role. Norvell envisioned the same at FSU, which at the time was infusing its program with more off-the-field personnel to help the Seminoles turn the corner.
Now, two years after arriving at FSU, Yray has had quite the profound impact on Florida State’s roster construction – and he’s also been named FootballScoop’s 2023 Player Personnel Director of the Year as presented by AstroTurf and voted by previous winners.
“Darrick has truly become my right-hand man when it comes to personnel,” Norvell told FootballScoop. “When we hired him, we were looking for someone who could come in and oversee the entirety of roster management.
“He’s great at evaluation, but he also understands the (NCAA Transfer) Portal, building and maintaining relationships.”
All of those factors helped the Seminoles in 2023 sign what 247Sports dubbed the nation’s No. 6 Transfer Portal class, a group that became part of the bedrock of Florida State’s 13-0 undefeated 2023 regular season.
From that haul of players around the sport, FSU got myriad contributions.
Perhaps, however, none bigger than a pair of Portal stars who shined on both sides of the ball for the Seminoles: Keon Coleman, the wideout from Michigan State, became a revelation in the FSU offense; Braden Fiske, whom the Seminoles beat out Notre Dame to sign from Western Michigan, became a stalwart defensive lineman.
Fiske, just last week, dazzled scouts and NFL executives at the league ’s annual combine in Indianapolis.
What the Seminoles displayed throughout the season on the field and saw some of their former stars do last week at the Combine, Yray had helped facilitate with his nuanced approach to helping enhance and fine-tune the Florida State roster.
“He really has a cohesive approach to the entire process,” Norvell said. “He’s truly outstanding at what he does.
“This is a new age (in college football), and I couldn’t think of anyone better at managing a personnel operation than Darrick.”
Prior to Florida State, Yray worked in Oregon State's personnel department, rising from assistant director of player personnel, to coordinator of on-campus recruiting, to director of recruiting operations, and eventually to director of player personnel. The Fresno State grad started as an offensive assistant at his alma mater in 2008 before moving to the recruiting side in 2011.
Yray edged out Missouri’s Ryan Trichel and Washington’s Courtney Morgan in voting done by previous winners of FootballScoop’s top personnel honor.
Previous winners of the Player Personnel Director of the Year award are Tyler Siskey (Alabama, 2013), Mark Pantoni (Ohio State, 2014), Austin Thomas (LSU, 2015), Jody Wright (Alabama, 2016), Marshall Malchow (Georgia, 2017), Matt Lindsey (South Carolina, 2018), Annie Hanson and Drew Hill (Oklahoma, 2019), Lee Willbanks (Indiana, 2020), Zach Grant (Western Kentucky, 2021), and Will Redmond (LSU, 2022).
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