By contrast, fewer than a third of the impact receivers were taken by then. Two-thirds of the impact edge rushers were taken before the 35th selection in each of their drafts, making the chances of finding one in the later rounds minimal, at best. Finally, trends over these eight years show that impact-level off-ball linebackers, running backs, tight ends, and wide receivers are more readily available later in the draft, and therefore should be deprioritized (again, barring other information or goals).Īs a simple illustration of this concept, consider the 24 players found at wide receiver, and edge rusher. Meanwhile, it’s a coin toss whether or not it’s worth spending a prime pick on guards or safeties. In fact, if the goal is to have impact players at as many positions as possible, teams would be better off prioritizing offensive tackle, center, defensive line, edge rusher, and cornerback somewhat urgently. Now, it is obviously more than fair to point out that more picks are spent prospecting for these impact players in the later rounds, but the fact remains that those players are being reliably found. Under those definitions, here are the positions where the majority of the impact players (Pro Bowlers who appeared in at least 40 games) were drafted in the top 34 picks, compared to how many players at those positions were drafted afterward. Because even “position” can be debated, I defaulted to the drafted position listed on Pro Football Reference and then (if there was ambiguity) the player’s contract data as reported on Over The Cap. However, it is actually far more nuanced than that, because results vary substantially by position. If you want this Pro Bowler to be more than a 1-year wonder–say, you want him to appear in 40 games–you don’t change the median pick or average round very much, but you do rule out four players (including two quarterbacks). While the “average” Pro Bowler was taken in the second round and with pick #53, the median pick spent to select a Pro Bowler was actually #34. However, the urgency in finding stars early is even greater than that. Of the 214 players drafted in these eight years to earn a Pro Bowl in their first five years, only 37 of them were taken with a pick outside of the first three rounds. If you want a Pro Bowler, you probably need to invest a high pick to get one. That means that each draft contained an average of 65 regular starters, or basically enough for two starters per team per draft. It’s difficult to ask for starts from kickers, punters, and long snappers, but if we narrow the pool down to the remaining 2003 draftees, only 520 of them started at least 40 games in their first five years. The definition of starter I used for the draft research project was much stricter, asking that a player started at least half of the games available to him in his first five years in order to be deemed a starter (with 40 starts as a consistent cutoff despite the growing season). However, just because a team designated a player as a starter does not mean that he was able to keep that position, and many of the players designated as starters did not hold that position once their teams had enough of a chance to replace them. That allows for exactly four starters per team per draft. More than a thousand players (1024) earned a “starter” designation from Pro Football Reference for at least a single season. Sometimes, likely, there is also pressure to start a player who was highly drafted regardless of whether or not he is the best available option from a football perspective.Ĭonventional wisdom says that teams should find three starters per draft, but is that really true? Probably, at least in the sense that teams need players to start games and the draft is the primary source of those players. Sometimes it’s because he’s good, but sometimes it’s because the alternative is worse. It should be noted that simply starting a game does not necessarily make a player good, it simply means that he was the person chosen to start. This obviously leaves about 10% of all drafted players in a middle category. On the other hand, I am deeming as a success the players who earned a fifth year in the NFL (with their team or with another, showing that they succeeded at getting a team to reinvest in them) thus 1,178 players were success stories (58%). By this standard, 647 draftees (32%) failed. I am defining a failure as a player with a career of three years or less, in the sense that those players failed to play out their first contracts. Only 11% of the drafted players earned at least one Pro Bowl in his first five years (and only 4% earned a 1st-Team All Pro selection in that time). On average, if a player was drafted, he appeared in 42 games but only start 22 (with a median of 46 games and 11 starts).
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