Introduction
The NFL Draft is annual event held in different cities across the country. At this draft, all 32 NFL teams select draft eligible players from different schools around the country. The NFL Draft has seven rounds, where each team is given at least one chance to select a player every round. The order of the draft is determined by the previous years records. The teams with the worst records draft earliest in every round, while the teams with the better records select players later on. The purpose of this draft is to gives teams a chance to bring young talent to their roster.
Every year, media members and draft pundits use their experience to try and predict draft results and career trajectories of these players. Each person has different skills and qualities they look for in each player, and use these parameters to rank these players. The reason people watch the NFL Draft goes beyond seeing what player their favorite team is going to draft. There is a mystery that comes with the draft, no matter how sure someone is there will always be a pick nobody predicted. This feeling of suspense and mystery brings viewers every year.
About the Data
For this project, my primary data set consists of data from the first three rounds of the 2021 NFL Draft. This data set includes information about round, pick, player, team, position, height, weight, rating, and school. More information about the data is listed below:
Round: This section of the data frame covers which round each players was selected in from rounds 1-3.
Pick: This section of the data frame covers which pick the players was selected with. Rounds one and two of the data have 32 picks each, but round three has 41 picks because of a combination of forfeited and compensatory picks.
Player: Selected player’s name.
Team: This shows which team made the selection.
Position:Shows which position the selected player plays.
Height: Selected player’s height
Weight: Selected player’s weight
Rating: Selected players high school recruiting rating from 247 Sports. Scale from 0.0-1.0, with 1.0 being the perfect prospect.
School: Shows which school the selected player previously attended.
This is a link to the full data set:
Analysis
The main goal of this report is to look at the trends in NFL draft data to better understand why players are drafted. Also, the report should look at the qualities and attributes of players to understand why some are chosen over others. Another goal is to review how well recruiters predicted the success of many high school athletes.
How does the average height and weight change by round?
The first thing I wanted to look at is how does the height and weight of an athlete impact where they are located in the draft. Height and weight vary significantly by position in the NFL, and I wanted to see if their was any trend in the data.
| Round | Average Weight (lbs) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 231.1 |
| 2 | 241.6 |
| 3 | 233.0 |
| Round | Avg Height (inches) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 75.0 |
| 2 | 74.6 |
| 3 | 74.9 |
Looking at these two tables the is no clear trend in the data. In fact, both the height and weight are very similar between the first three rounds. Only the weight during the second round can be seen at an change in trend.
How many of the top 3 positions are picked each round?
Using the results from the previous section, I decided to see if there was any difference in positions between the three rounds. The goal was to figure out what positions are getting drafted the most in the first three rounds.
| round | position | count |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | DB | 5 |
| 1 | DE | 5 |
| 1 | QB | 5 |
| 1 | WR | 5 |
| 2 | OT | 7 |
| 2 | DB | 6 |
| 2 | WR | 5 |
| 3 | DB | 10 |
| 3 | LB | 5 |
| 3 | OG | 5 |
| 3 | WR | 5 |
This data table shows the most picked position in round one and three being DB. The second most picked position in round two was also DB. From this data table, can hypothesize that the roughly 10 pound weight increase seen in round two of the draft can be explained by the 7 offensive tackles taken in round 2.
How many players were drafted at each position?
After viewing the top three positions drafted in each round. I wanted to get a better understanding of how many of each position were drafted in the first three rounds of the 2021 NFL draft.
DB was the most selected player in the first three rounds. Over 20 defensive backs were selected during these rounds. I found this surprising because of how high the average weight was. I was expecting a DL or OL position to be the highest pick since these positions usually carry the most weight.
What schools have the most players drafted?
I wanted to see if there were any trends in amount of players drafted by the same school. I asked this question to see if there was any pattern in which players were being consistently drafted from the same school.
This data table shows the top five schools with the most draft picks are Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Michigan. These schools are all large state schools with the exception of Notre Dame. This could shows school size influencing the number of players being drafted.
Which schools produce the most selections by position?
After finding out which schools produced the most draft picks, next I wanted to see which schools produced the most picks by position. I figured it would be interesting to compare the schools with the most draft picks with the schools with the most picks by position.
| position | school | num_picks |
|---|---|---|
| C | OKLA | 1 |
| DB | SYR | 2 |
| DE | MIA | 2 |
| DT | BAMA | 1 |
| LB | OHST | 2 |
| OG | BAMA | 1 |
| OT | ND | 2 |
| QB | BAMA | 1 |
| RB | BAMA | 1 |
| TE | BC | 1 |
| WR | BAMA | 2 |
From this output we can see similarities between the last figure. Alabama, Ohio St, and Notre Dame all appear in the data table as well. Could hypothesize these programs having strong football programs given their consistency in this analysis.
How well does a players rating impact their draft selection?
Next, I wanted to see how player recruiting rating out of high school predicted next level success. Using the 247 Sports rating of the players drafted in the first three rounds of the 2021 NFL draft I compared player selections with rating.
This scatter plot shows a slight trend towards high rated players being picked earlier, and lower rated players being selected in the later rounds. From this data, it appears the can’t miss prospects were selected early in the draft and as the rounds went by the lower ranked players became more occuring.
What position are recruiters best at predicting?
After looking at the impact player rating has on draft selection, I wanted to see which positions these recruiting websites like 247 Sports were best at predicting. I wanted to see where 247 Sports was right, and where they went wrong.
| position | avg_rating |
|---|---|
| C | 0.8962000 |
| DB | 0.8999619 |
| DE | 0.8837545 |
| DT | 0.9065667 |
| LB | 0.8922462 |
| OG | 0.9343429 |
| OT | 0.9205083 |
| QB | 0.9107000 |
| RB | 0.9182750 |
| TE | 0.8857400 |
| WR | 0.9191467 |
From this data table, we can see that OG has the highest average rating out of the players selected in the first three rounds. The lowest average rating was DE. The rating were not far apart, but it seems that OG is one of the easier positions to project to the NFL, whereas DE may be more difficult to project.
Is there any correlation between variables?
Lastly, I wanted to see if their were any correlation between round drafted, player weight, player height, and recruiting rating. I wanted to see if these variables increased the chances of a player to be drafted.
There is of course a correlation between height and weight, however I was surprised the correlation between rating and height, weight, and round was not stronger.
What are NFL Scouts looking for in players?
My secondary data source consisted of player reviews from Bleacher Report about the top prospects in the 2021 NFL draft class. I chose this for my secondary data source because I wanted to get a good idea of what scouts and analysts were looking for in players. I felt like this was important in answering the question of why players get drafted. I used a simple word count table to demonstrate the ten most used words during these evaluations.
| word | n |
|---|---|
| rush | 6 |
| athlete | 5 |
| length | 5 |
| play | 5 |
| agility | 4 |
| burst | 4 |
| coverage | 4 |
| level | 4 |
| limited | 4 |
| physical | 4 |
From this data table, several clear trends are present. Words such as physical, burst, agility, length are used multiple times in this article. These words do a good job of describing the type of talent teams are looking for in the draft. Not only size, but athleticism is also important to scouts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, my main goal for this report was to look at the trends in NFL draft data to better understand why players are drafted. Also, I wanted to learn the qualities and attributes of players to understand why some are chosen over others. Another goal was to review how well recruiters predicted the success of many high school athletes. Some trends that were identified included the school that was attended. Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Michigan were the schools with the five most players drafted. These schools had strong football programs and helped produce the most draft picks. Also, DB’s were selected the most out of any position. This tells us NFL teams value this position more than any other since they were committed to drafting this position this early and often. When I calculated the average rating by position I discovered that OG had the highest average rating out of the players selected in the first three rounds. The lowest average rating was DE. This told me that some positions may be harder to project than other. In this case, it seemed 247 Sports was better at predicting the success of OG’s than DE’s. Finally, using a simple word count I was able to find the 10 most used words by Bleacher Report in their player evaluations. Words like physical, burst, agility, length tell me NFL teams value players with rare athletic characteristics over players with height and weight advantages. In the end, player’s school, athletic characteristics, production impact where they will be drafted.