Draftmetrics

Comparing Draft Years and Building A Winning NFL Roster

Before the draft, there are plenty of discussions about whether the upcoming draft is expected to be a good one. How do they look in retrospect? In this section, the issue of good years and bad years will be examined in the cost of snap counts and contributors.

Let’s start by reviewing the complete outcomes for each draft year.

As a reminder, these numbers exclude punters, kickers and long snappers.

With that as a backdrop, the years were compared using two metrics. The first metric will be the number of Significant Contributors for each year. The following chart show the number of Significant Contributors for the draft classes from 2012 through 2019.

The second metric is based on the number of snap counts for the 2012-2019 draft classes. The problem with this is that 2012 has 10 years of snaps, 2013 has 9 years, etc. To address this problem, we compared totals at the end of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth years after the draft. From the data an index was developed with the index value being a percentage calculate by dividing the snaps from each year divided by the number of snaps of the year with the most snaps. Confusing? Hopefully, not too confusing. In the chart the 2012 draft has a value of 90%. That indicates that 2012 had 90% of number of snaps of 2018, the year with the most snaps after Year 3.

Here is an example that explains the calculations in the table. After Year 3, the 2018 draft class produced the most snaps and accounted for 247,818 snaps while the 2012 class accounted for 223,313, Dividing 247,818 by 223,313 yielding a quotient of 90%, which is reflected in the table below.

The above information leads to several conclusions:

• There were fairly significant differences between draft classes

• The 2018 draft class is shaping up to have the best draft results of the years analyzed

• The 2016 draft class appears to be the next best

• The worst year is a “split decision

o Using SCs, the 2012 and 2015 draft classes appear worst

o Using snaps counts, the 2013 draft class is the worst

How about the trajectory of a draft class? Said another way, when is the maximum benefit from a draft class felt? This chart shows the average number of snaps in each year following the selection of a draft class.

• Scrimmage snaps tend to increase from year 1 to year 2 and then begin to decline after year 2.

• Years 3 and 4 are still higher than rookie-year participation.

• For the 2017 and 2018 draft classes, though, the trend has been that Year 3 also shows an increase before beginning to decline. There is no apparent reason for this difference but as the chart indicates the change between Years 3 and 4 is very small even for those years where the decline has begun.