Making Sense of the NFL Draft

By Dr. Michael Lee

Insights into the current NFL Draft process as a predictor of eventual player success in the NFL. Current draft ranking criteria are examined and de-bunked... and substitute criteria, supported by scientific research, are suggested. Round by round summaries of every drafted player since 2001 are in the book. Making Sense examines the careers of more than 2500 actual draftees and looks at the "draft process" rather than predicting the ranking of only 256 players for a single year.

The book analyzes the analyzers. It pokes fun at the media talking heads and explains how agents work with prospective draftees to achieve maximum visibility. The manuscript looks at the movers and the shakers in the background as well as the successes and the failures of the actual draftees. Making Sense of the NFL Draft explores the inner workings of the NFL owners and offers a behind the scenes look at the National Football League Players Association.

Making Sense is written in a “conversational” style, with numerous examples, lists, tables and references.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dr. Michael Lee
• Release date: Jan 16, 2011

Dr. Michael Lee

Michael Lee spent some time in the U.S. Army as a Paratrooper and as an administrative officer in the Army Reserve. He completed several degrees after high school, including a PhD in Academic Administration. Dr. Lee is an expert statistical analyst and is a trained historiographer. Lee is a published author and poet and holds a U.S. Patent in his own name. Motivated by dreams of adventure and fantasy and grounded by a Great Grandmother born just after the civil war, Lee’s writing journey began in the eighth grade with a short science fiction story. His experiences included paid sports writing for a daily newspaper while still in high school and eventually evolved into a passion for writing book-length works, both fiction and non-fiction. Dr. Lee takes pride in recently joining the company of other 1,000,000 word authors. He is grateful to the Florida Writers Association for their recent second place recognition of his book-length manuscript in the 2010 Royal Palm Literary Award Competition.

Book preview

Foreword

Electronic publishing, especially Smashwords, is a boon to authors and to readers, alike. Never before in the history of reading and writing has it been possible to manipulate the written page and to customize a readable manuscript. The reading experience now incorporates such things as swipes and taps to maximize the experience. It is now possible to adjust font size and screen brightness. A reader may also select the background color of the manuscript text. Interactive menus and tables of contents are available to the reader…something never before possible.

However, the electronic page requires a simplified format that prevents some content from being used. The simplified formatting requirement prohibits the use of tabs and other text formatting commands. When tabs are used, the flow of text is affected and many un-desirable arrangements result. Some expansive lists, with numbered or bulleted formatting, also make the type perform in un-expected ways. Most Microsoft Tables contain formatting elements that detract from the anticipated performance of text flow from reading platform to reading platform (Kindle, Nook, etc.).

The most likely books to be affected by formatting problems are non-fiction books with tables and formatted lists. You get it! Books such as "Making Sense of the NFL Draft."

We have elected to minimize the problem by moving our lists and tables to a place where you may refer to them at your leisure. We call the place where the information is stored the Data Warehouse. The Data Warehouse is a website dedicated to maintaining the lists and tables supporting the material in this book.

We will point out the sections where a list or table might have been and refer the reader to the Data Warehouse website to peruse the graphic information. However, our agreement with Smashwords allows all readers to preview the initial chapters of the book without a commitment to purchase. We have elected to only present the link to the Data Warehouse on pages available to those who purchased the book. We hope you are one of the Draft Fanatics who actually do buy the book and take advantage of the Data Warehouse component.

Everybody Loves Professional Football

Chapter 1

My Uncle bought me a football when I was in the second grade. I have an old black and white photo to prove it. My own parents were not into team sports very much. We lived in small towns, mostly, while I was growing up and I didn’t get to see much football. My Uncle, God bless him, got me a set of shoulder pads and a helmet when I was in the eighth grade (he was a Junior High coach). I vaguely remember tackling all the trees in the back yard after that.

Finally, we moved to a slightly larger town when I started the 10th grade. There was football in the high school and I signed up. The basketball coach was also the football coach and he required all of his basketball players to go out for football… just to get into basketball shape. My Father always thought I was too small to play football plus he was more of an individual sport kind of guy. He didn’t believe me when I told him I had to go out for football. It was the only time I can ever remember my Father questioning what I told him.

The coach backed me up and my Dad relented. The coach suspected a small kid who never played a down of football before was not a likely candidate for his team. There were more than 100 young men trying out for the varsity that year. I got the dregs of the equipment… I even received sophomore pads and high-topped shoes a size too large.

To make a long story short I was pretty fast and I had been tackling trees for years. I started every game my Junior and Senior years, mostly because I was the only guy fast enough to catch the opposing backs as they ran down the field. We didn’t have a very good team, but my love for football was sealed forever.

Over the years my love and fascination for the game has maintained. My football and athletic skills were never good enough to play beyond high school but my mind has improved. I am better, today, at analyzing what is happening on the field. My educational background expanded to include statistics, correlations and predictive theory. While enjoying the play on the field, I find myself attempting to make sense of what is happening in terms of relationships and team involvement.

Football is a unique team sport. In baseball it is common for six of the nine players on a team to stand scratching their backsides while two or three others do the work of putting a player out… or a single player from the opposing team bats while his teammates take a nap on the bench. Soccer amazes me, how many players rest a spell, then spurt a few seconds. Tell me, how much finesse is there in Rugby scrum? Basketball is also a team sport, but with fewer elements than in football. I have always considered basketball players the ultimate athletes. Basketball requires each player to be able to run, jump and throw. I always believed a good basketball player could play any other sport.

Now, having confessed a blasphemy, you should know I am utterly convinced football is still the ultimate Team sport. Twenty-two players play every down. Coaches strategize and assistant coaches game plan. In colleges and in the NFL recruiting and personnel decisions assemble the gladiators. Oh, how I love it!

How many watch professional football?

Plenty of others are just like me. They never made it past their teen-aged years with football as a participatory sport… but still yell and scream like a banshee on Saturday and Sunday. We have all come to realize how important all phases of the game are and seek personal involvement in some way. It is estimated at least 27 million play fantasy league football during the football season. Sometimes employers are not too happy because stats suggest each of the 27 million averages nine hours per week of involvement. The statistician in me begs me to break the number down into meaningful terms. Football fanatics spend the equivalent of more than 6 million work-weeks dabbling at fantasy football.

We devour college football magazines in mid-summer and Rivals gets millions of hits close to college signing day. However, the Grand-daddy event of them all is the NFL Draft. Talking heads pontificate on subjective evaluations of college players and make a good living from estimating where a player will end up drafted. They occupy airtime for months prior to the actual draft. More than 7 million households watched the 2010 Draft, all at the same time! (6.35 million watched on ESPN and about 1 million on the NFL channel.)

Is there evidence of eventual player success in any of the Combine tests?

Now here is the rub. Anybody who has watched the talking heads can see through the smoke. We notice agendas, institutional and individual prejudices and, sometimes, downright wishful thinking. Nevertheless, scouting organizations, team player personnel and talking heads evaluated 327 individuals at the 2010 Scouting Combine in Mobile, Alabama. Eventually 214 players from the group of 327 were drafted. The criteria for evaluation of the players were developed by and agreed upon by the organizers of the events. Casual observers can tell there is little correlation between pronouncements of the scouting professionals and actual player performance on the field.

Note: In a study performed by Frank Kuzmits and Arthur Adams titled The NFL Combine: Does It Predict Performance in the National Football League?, it is suggested there is no correlation between the events at the combine and eventual on-field performance. The authors called into question the overall usefulness of the combine. There are plenty of other studies we will talk about in our chapter on The NFL Combine and Other Predictors of Performance.

We began our research for this book with suspicions regarding the relevance of the suppositions used in determining the draft. We love the draft process and the pageantry. We are confident in the reliability of the testing procedures. (Reliability means the scores were recorded accurately and professionally (consistent results). Reliability does not have anything to do with effectively predicting a successful NFL career or athletic performance.)

Popularity of Football

American football is very popular in this country. USA Football cites 3.223 million young people between 6 and 14 play organized football in this country (2007 figures). The National Federation of State High School Associations provides oversight for more than 17,000 public school football programs with more than 850,000 participants. Private boarding schools, college prep and high school football programs bring the total to close to 1 million. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) projects about 5.8% of high school football players (less than a 1 in 17 chance) will eventually play football at an NCAA member institution.

When most Americans think of college football players they mentally place the players in a four-year institution. In fact, a large number of NFL players played for junior colleges or for community colleges before continuing to a four-year institution and eventually a career in the NFL. About 120 members of the National Junior College Athletic Association or the California Athletic Association provide football scholarships (or partial scholarships) to more than 10,000 athletes.

NFL veterans with junior college backgrounds

There were 119 athletes who played for junior college or community college teams and were recently on active rosters in the NFL.

*The expanded list of players may be found in the Chapter 1 section of the Data Warehouse. The link to the Data Warehouse website is located at the end of Chapter 5.

The eligibility requirements for the NFL require only that an athlete has been out of high school for at least three years to be eligible for the NFL. While most junior college athletes actually do eventually spend one or more years at a four-year institution they would actually be eligible if they played only two years at the college and then bagged groceries for a year, like Kurt Warner.

Club teams

There are a number of institutions where organized football is played but no college scholarships are offered… the teams are not supported by the athletic department at the academic institution but do comply with NCAA regulations. Such teams are called club teams. Club-teams usually have student coaches. Some of the club teams are located on campuses where scholarship football is also played. We were unable to identify a single club football player on an active NFL roster. We have listed some of the most active club programs below.

Clemson University

Columbus State University

George Mason University

Marquette University

Miami University

Ohio State University at Newark

Central Ohio Technical College

Radford University

Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville

University of Maine

University of Michigan at Flint

University of New Orleans

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of South Carolina

University of Texas at Arlington

University of Vermont

University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee

Wright State University

Degree granting institutions with football programs

Major colleges and universities offer four-year scholarships for football players. The NCAA approved scholarships usually include tuition, fees, room and board, books and living expenses. A recent offer for a full scholarship at Stanford was valued at $134,000 for four years. Note: NCAA scholarships must be renewed annually. The NCAA recognizes 236 Division I and 156 Division II institutions where full scholarships to play football are available. About 235 Division III schools support football programs but offer only partial scholarships consisting of tuition waivers and second party financial aid. Division III programs also arrange work-study programs to assist the student athlete. There are 92 NAIA affiliated institutions offering partial scholarships for football players. The philosophy of the Ivy League schools (8 schools) does not include full scholarships, either.

Figuring there are 727 four year, degree granting institutions with football programs and each program is entitled by the NCAA to 85 players… there are roughly 61,795 football receiving some kind of assistance. The 2010 NCAA statistics of 5.8% of high school athletes eventually playing college ball at an NCAA school is very close to our own estimate. The NCAA percentage would extrapolate to 58,000. Our estimate is 61,795 or 6.18% of high school students achieving college ball status at an NCAA school. As many as 10,200 junior college players receive some kind of scholarship assistance, as well. Note: Walk-on players are not figured in the calculations.

Chances of making it to the NFL

All of the college seniors in 2010 (1/4 of 71,995 total players) were eligible for the draft. Another 17,998 athletes just finishing their junior years were also eligible for the 2010 NFL draft. Out of the possible 35,996 eligible players only 327 showed up at the NFL Scouting Combine held in Mobile, Alabama. Over seven rounds of the draft 255 players were selected.

The NCAA study by Clint Newlin in 2010 suggested 1.7% of college seniors would make it to the NFL. If we take the 627 NCAA schools and extrapolate senior football players we get 13,324 ((627 x 85) / 4). The number of seniors for all colleges offering football scholarships (when the NAIA and Ivy League is included) the number is 17,998. In the former instance the NCAA statistic would result in 227 (13,324 x 1.7%) NFL draftees. The latter instance would provide 306 (17,998 x 1.7%) draftees.

The actual number of NFL draftees in 2010 was 255. If the NCAA number is correct there were actually 14,999 seniors in the draft pool. Using our own example, the percentage would be 1.42% instead of 1.7%… a lower potential than suggested by the NCAA study. Of course our own example is not scientific and we have no way to know exactly what the number of seniors used by the NCAA was based upon.

Whether the number is 1.7% or 1.42% of college football seniors, very few eligible college football players can expect to make it in the NFL by way of the draft.

Note: Cam Newton, the 2010 Heisman winner, played on a National Championship NCAA team (Florida), a second NCAA National Championship team (Auburn) and led his Junior College team (Blinn College) to a National Championship.

Note 2: On November 21, 2008, Newton was arrested for alleged theft of a laptop computer from a student at the University of Florida. It remains to be seen if the laptop and other academic faux pas affect the draft status of Newton.

The Myth of the Best Available Player

Chapter 2

What is your draft strategy this year?" the reporter with no name asked the head of player personnel for the NFL team.

We are going to fill our needs but we will draft the best available player, the team VP answered.

What in hell does the best available player really mean?

The system (combination of combine results, talent scouts, team evaluation and talking heads) ranks each of the possible defensive and offensive positions according to the top ten or so players in the country at each position. Punters and kickers are also ranked. The system is arbitrary and subjective so the results are also of questionable validity. (Validity suggests the extent to which practical tests developed from the system theory actually do measure what the theory says they do.)

Picture a chart with forty-five columns (twenty two offensive positions, twenty two defensive positions and one column for punters and kickers and kick return specialists). Each column contains ten or twelve names, ranking in order of potential contribution to an NFL franchise team. The total chart contains a minimum of 450 names. Seven rounds of the annual draft will use only a little over half of the names. (A draft without special supplemental selections will call the names of about 255 or 256 athletes.)

Draft odds by position

If we look at the draft in purely statistical terms we can see there are twenty-three positions (assuming punters and kickers count ½ each). Each position, if randomly selected, should have a 4.35 % likelihood of being drafted for any particular pick (1/23rd). Note: a random selection is like a lottery selection. There would be no provision for the special needs of any team if every selection were random.

The NFL Draft system was designed to maintain parity among all teams. The logic behind the current system is for teams with a losing record to have the first chance at drafting the best new players out of college. Presumably, by adding better players the losing teams will get better and increase their chances of winning in later seasons. An example of the number of players equally distributed by position follows.

Given a draft with 255 players, the total number of offensive right tackles taken in the draft should be projected at 11.0869 (255 / 23). Projections would be the same for offensive left tackles so the total number of offensive tackles taken in any typical draft would be about 22.1738 offensive tackles (11.0869 x 2). Tackles should be selected at the rate of about 3 offensive tackles in each round of the thirty-two picks.

Ten years of the NFL draft by position (and comparative random selection odds)

The 2010 draft breakdown by position totaled (255 selections):

23 offensive tackles (statistics suggest 22.1738 when 255 selections are possible)

09 offensive guards (statistics suggest 22.1738)

06 centers (statistics suggest 11.0869)

20 tight ends (statistics suggest 11.0869 when tight ends are used with a wide receiver)

27 wide receivers (statistics suggest 22.1738) (including 1 return specialist)

14 running backs (statistics suggest 11.0869)

02 fullbacks (statistics suggest 11.0869)

15 quarterbacks (statistics suggest 11.0869)

116 subtotal= (statistics suggest 121.956)

25 defensive tackles (statistics suggest 22.1738)

31 defensive ends (statistics suggest 22.1738)

28 linebackers (statistics suggest 33.2604)

33 cornerbacks (statistics suggest 22.1738)

19 safeties (statistics suggest 22.1738)

136 subtotal= (statistics suggest 121.956)

03 punters (statistics suggest 05.5435)

00 kickers (statistics suggest 05.5435)

03 subtotal (statistics suggest 11.087)

255 Total (statistics suggest 254.999)

The myth of the best available player

Assume each team has an active roster of 53 players. We are deep into round three of the draft. The Falcons might desperately need a center but the top three centers have been taken off the board of available players. The highest rated player left on the board is the number two rated safety, a free safety from Michigan. If the Falcons take the best available player, they will take the safety. They will still need the center and will force an adequate safety from the existing roster out into the cold. They will presumably sign a younger player, un-tested and with a higher salary. They will have trade and salary problems with the existing safety and a contributing center no where in sight! To cap it all off, the draft is a crap-shoot and there is no kind of guarantee the best available player on the board was the best available player in the first place.

Somebody was lying about the 2010 draft when they told the anonymous reporter they were drafting the best available player. When the statistics indicate a shortage at one position and more than expected draftees at another, the best available player thing isn’t working! Note the 2010 difference in offensive guards and tight end discrepancies, for instance.

Each draft has it’s own character and seems to exhibit a group think about team needs. Let us examine the other drafts over the past ten years.

The 2009 draft breakdown by position totaled (256 selections):

20 offensive tackles (statistics suggest 22.26 out of 256 selections)

13 offensive guards (statistics suggest 22.26)

08 centers (statistics suggest 11.13)

20 tight ends (statistics suggest 11.13 when tight ends are used with a wide receiver)

34 wide receivers (statistics suggest 22.26)

20 running backs (statistics suggest 11.13)

02 fullbacks (statistics suggest 11.13)

11 quarterbacks (statistics suggest 11.13)

128 subtotal= (statistics suggest 122.43)

20 defensive tackles (statistics