One of the biggest advantages in fantasy football is being able to recognize the NFL controls all the chess pieces. Once that’s accepted, there’s a lot of information that can be mined.
When the regular season comes to a close, there’s always an urge to determine new trends and ideas based on what happened in that most recent season. For prospect purposes, this is an enormous issue, and a big reason why these probability charts came about. It’s essential to recognize the NFL is a consistent system, and the most successful players are consistently coming from the same buckets in the draft. A few outliers here and there are not going to average out the hundreds of prospects that came before them.
There’s a large number of variables that make where a player gets drafted an incredible indicator of future NFL success, and a few of them aren’t talent related. A portion of it is the teams, general managers and organizations want/need to be right. A portion of it is lack of opportunity for late round picks. However, the overwhelming chunk of the pie is that the NFL gets it right most of the time. Let’s say that once more, with feeling! THE NFL GETS IT RIGHT MOST OF THE TIME.
Even before accounting for players that ‘bust’ because of injuries and off-field issues, the NFL is incredibly efficient. With that information accounted for, on a macro scale, it would be very hard to find a more efficient way of evaluating future success as an outsider. The reality of the situation is the NFL has A LOT of people working FULL TIME to figure these prospects out, and those folks have access to A LOT of information the public does not. All decision-makers may not be great, but over 32 teams, the good FAR outweigh the bad.
There’s a lot of debate over organizations and their competence as a whole. When it comes to free agency, salary cap management, trades and head coach signings, there’s credence to the ideas that these franchises are being led astray. For NFL draft purposes that is not the case.
Having already addressed running backs and wide receivers in the first section, today we’ll be focusing on Quarterback (QB) and Tight End (TE), the sometimes maligned fantasy positions.
What Are Positional Probability Charts? Why Is This Information Important?
Positional probability charts use statistical thresholds to determine how successful players have been, separated by NFL draft round. Separating players by where they went in the NFL draft is a simple way to create buckets for evaluation. While there’s clearly a ton of context with each prospect, and a huge variance in what they bring to the table on the field, taking a step back and seeing the success rates based on round can be eye-opening.
NOTE: Thresholds used for these charts are “Career Seasons with 3000+ Passing Yards for QBs” and “Career Seasons with 600+ Receiving Yards for TEs”
I’ve tested out other thresholds as well, but these ended up making the most sense. If pushing the line higher, the success rates become low for all rounds. If pushing the line lower, it’s a jumbled mess. Career yard thresholds was another way of measurement that got consideration. It worked in a similar fashion to single season totals, but with little-to-no difference, a lane had to be picked. Ultimately defining if a player was successful or not is a tough game, so there’s always going to be an abstract feel
(ProFootballReference.com is an incredible resource, and if ya’ll want to fool around with the season finder, it’s waiting for you!)
For each round, all players that reached each success marker were totaled up and divided by the total amount of players drafted in that round. The number in each color-coded box represents the percentage of players in that round that reached the specified number of seasons hitting the threshold.
It can be difficult to shift to viewing players as an odds investment, but when I first saw these, it made things much easier to wrap my head around. There’s probably a general idea that the earlier a player gets drafted, the higher the likelihood of success. But, considering how stark the difference is, there isn’t enough emphasis on how significant it is. Outliers are outliers, and while these sample sizes aren’t big, a single player succeeding or failing in a draft round only makes a 2.1 percent difference at a maximum.
While I call this ‘probability’, it’s not quite like a poker hand. Obviously, this is an ever-growing mass of data, and players are constantly succeeding and failing within certain rounds. What’s important to recognize here is that these percentages were created out of hundreds of prospects over 19 drafts, and it’s remained stable over these two decades. In terms of differences from 2017 to 2018, no percentage changed more than 3.0 percent.
QUARTERBACKS
TOTAL CAREER SEASONS WITH 3,000+ PASSING YARDS
ROUND BREAKDOWN
- Of the 32 QB selected in the fifth round of the NFL draft, zero have surpassed 3,000 passing yards in a single season
- Tom Brady is the only QB drafted beyond the third round (sixth) to have more than four seasons (16) with 3,000+ passing yards
- 5% of QBs selected in the NFL draft went in Round One (Since 2000)
2018 OUTLIERS
Dak Prescott (4th Round), Cowboys – Prescott finished off his third straight season with 3,000+ passing yards in 2018. Prescott, despite his flaws, has set himself up to be one of the best late round QB selections of the decade.
Ryan Fitzpatrick (7th Round), Buccaneers – Fitzpatrick only managed 2,366 passing yards in 2018, but he’s still worth discussing career-wise. As of 2018, Fitzpatrick is (by far) second in career passing yards (since 2000) among. QBs who were drafted beyond round three of the NFL draft, with 29,357. He’s a lighthearted figure, but Fitzpatrick has had a special career.
Russell Wilson (3rd Round), Seahawks – Wilson is the gem of round three. Wilson polished off his seventh season with 3,000+ passing yards in 2018, three more than any other player in that round (Matt Schaub had four).
2018 REVIEW
Of the 21 QBs to have 3,000+ Passing Yards in 2018, 16 of them were selected in the top two rounds of the NFL draft (76.2%), 17 if including top three rounds (81%). Six of those QBs were drafted first overall (28.6%). This is about where things have stagnated over the last decade, and beyond Tom Brady, elite late round QBs simply haven’t emerged. Case Keenum has done his best to take over for Tony Romo (seven seasons with 3,000+ passing yards) representing undrafted players, posting 3,000+ passing yards in each of the last two seasons, but after his trade to Washington and the rumors swirling about them addressing QB through the draft, it seems his reign as a starter is on thin ice.
TIGHT ENDS
TOTAL CAREER SEASONS WITH 600+ RECEIVING YARDS
ROUND BREAKDOWN
- Just 22 TEs have been drafted in Round one Since 2000, making up just 7.8% of total TEs drafted. This is the inverse of the QB position.
- Jason Witten (3rd round) is the only drafted (Antonio Gates did, but went Undrafted) TE (since 2000) to have more than 7 seasons with 600+ receiving yards. Witten has 13 (Gates has 11!).
- Of the 50 TEs to have at least one 600+ receiving yard season (since 2000), 44 (88%) were selected in the top four rounds, and 36 (72%) were selected in the top three rounds.
2018 OUTLIERS
George Kittle (5th Round), 49ers – Kittle was the only player drafted outside the top three rounds of the NFL draft to have 600+ receiving yards in 2018. If that isn’t a statement in itself, I don’t know what is.
2018 REVIEW
As Mentioned, of the 11 TEs to have 600+ receiving yards in 2018, 10 (90.9 %) of them were drafted in the top three rounds of the NFL draft. There were only two first round TEs to accomplish this (Eric Ebron and David Njoku), but between O.J. Howard, Evan Engram and Greg Olsen all missing significant time due to injuries, it makes sense that round was down overall. With the “retirement” of Rob Gronkowski, and the slow dissipation of former top-end talents like Antonio Gates and Jimmy Graham, there’s new blood emerging among high pedigree TEs, and it will be an interesting few seasons to see who asserts themselves.
