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NFL Average draft slot by position based on 2018 snap count


Packer_ESP

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Hi, I'm Packer ESP - you might remember me from such nerdities as Strength & Conditioning - Injury Analysis for 2018

Troy_McClure.png

There's an ongoing debate in the Draft thread regarding the draft value for Tight Ends. I've been wanting to find the average draft slot for each position for a long time but I've never found any website with this information. Given that I have no desire to work this wonderful March morning, I've decided to obtain such information myself.

First, the sources:

The good thing about PFR is that if you turn the tables to CSV you get a unique code for each player - this helps A LOT when merging both sets of data since I don't have to rely on names or positions played to make sure the cross-reference is OK. I'm really excited by this, it was a big problem when I compiled the injury data.

Resultado de imagen de amy santiago nerd

The last thing I had to do is clean up the position list since PFR has things like FS, FSS, FSSS, FSSSS (for real) and for example Demaryus Thomas is a FSWR (did he ever play safety? maybe in kindergarten?).

Once I had all that sweet raw data I have assigned round 8 and draft slot 257 to all UDFAs (players that were not in the draft data I downloaded) and then calculated the weighted average for both round and slot. Just to be clear, this means that if we have 1000 snaps played at WR and 200 are played by round 1 receivers and 800 by round 4 receivers, the average is going to be round 3.4

So, without further ado, the results:

Position	AVG.Round	AVG.Pick
QB		2,3		53
DE		3,2		88
LB		3,6		103
OT		3,7		109
CB		3,8		114
DT		3,9		116
WR		4,1		122
RB		4,1		122
S		4,2		128
IOL		4,3		131
TE		4,5		138
FB		6,6		211
P		6,6		213
K		7,0		223
LS		7,7		248

A few observations / caveats:

  • The position list does not have EDGE or OLB, so the information for ILBs and 3-4 DEs is somewhat lost in translation there
  • The list is based on 2018 snaps so injuries do affect the rankings. However, trying to avoid this would probably only contaminate the data with too much personal bias, and I guess the injury effects are probably pretty equal across positions anyway.
  • The position rankings are pretty much what we expected, I don't think there are any surprises here.
  • Tight End - which is where this exercise started - is notably low. In fact, it's the last position other than FBs (almost extinct) and Special Teams
  • We were one of five teams to employ a drafted LS and we have the doubtful honor of being the only team along with Cincinatti in which all 3 ST players have been drafted.

As usual, now that I have the raw data I can obtain all kinds of exciting metrics and rankings, so I will be taking requests - please proceed in an orderly manner, thanks

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24 minutes ago, Packer_ESP said:

Hi, I'm Packer ESP - you might remember me from such nerdities as Strength & Conditioning - Injury Analysis for 2018

Troy_McClure.png

There's an ongoing debate in the Draft thread regarding the draft value for Tight Ends. I've been wanting to find the average draft slot for each position for a long time but I've never found any website with this information. Given that I have no desire to work this wonderful March morning, I've decided to obtain such information myself.

First, the sources:

The good thing about PFR is that if you turn the tables to CSV you get a unique code for each player - this helps A LOT when merging both sets of data since I don't have to rely on names or positions played to make sure the cross-reference is OK. I'm really excited by this, it was a big problem when I compiled the injury data.

Resultado de imagen de amy santiago nerd

The last thing I had to do is clean up the position list since PFR has things like FS, FSS, FSSS, FSSSS (for real) and for example Demaryus Thomas is a FSWR (did he ever play safety? maybe in kindergarten?).

Once I had all that sweet raw data I have assigned round 8 and draft slot 257 to all UDFAs (players that were not in the draft data I downloaded) and then calculated the weighted average for both round and slot. Just to be clear, this means that if we have 1000 snaps played at WR and 200 are played by round 1 receivers and 800 by round 4 receivers, the average is going to be round 3.4

So, without further ado, the results:


Position	AVG.Round	AVG.Pick
QB		2,3		53
DE		3,2		88
LB		3,6		103
OT		3,7		109
CB		3,8		114
DT		3,9		116
WR		4,1		122
RB		4,1		122
S		4,2		128
IOL		4,3		131
TE		4,5		138
FB		6,6		211
P		6,6		213
K		7,0		223
LS		7,7		248

A few observations / caveats:

  • The position list does not have EDGE or OLB, so the information for ILBs and 3-4 DEs is somewhat lost in translation there
  • The list is based on 2018 snaps so injuries do affect the rankings. However, trying to avoid this would probably only contaminate the data with too much personal bias, and I guess the injury effects are probably pretty equal across positions anyway.
  • The position rankings are pretty much what we expected, I don't think there are any surprises here.
  • Tight End - which is where this exercise started - is notably low. In fact, it's the last position other than FBs (almost extinct) and Special Teams
  • We were one of five teams to employ a drafted LS and we have the doubtful honor of being the only team along with Cincinatti in which all 3 ST players have been drafted.

As usual, now that I have the raw data I can obtain all kinds of exciting metrics and rankings, so I will be taking requests - please proceed in an orderly manner, thanks

MadeupOblongDunnart-size_restricted.gif

 

This is really good work. Anyway you could post the histograms for each slot? I'd be really interested to see the breakdown of certain positions?

I would assume that QBs have a pretty skewed distribution with more than half the league being first rounders. 

I would imagine that once you get to WRs the distributions look pretty normal. 

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Just now, deathstar said:

I wonder if LB is skewed heavily because of OLBs in a 3-4. But even if it were, you wouldn't expect it to be just barely behind DEs. That's pretty interesting.

I imagine both positions are pulled down due to the number of IDL that are listed as DEs, and the number of ILBs that are listed at LB. 

Unfortunately there's probably no real way to make a distinction between 3T and NT because I'd be willing to bet that also would tell us something. 

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39 minutes ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

This is really good work. Anyway you could post the histograms for each slot? I'd be really interested to see the breakdown of certain positions?

I would assume that QBs have a pretty skewed distribution with more than half the league being first rounders. 

I would imagine that once you get to WRs the distributions look pretty normal. 

EDIT: this is raw snaps per round, I think this is what you meant right?

Offense.png

Defense.png

Special-Teams.png

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1 minute ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

That's fantastic.

Also holy **** do UDFAs play a lot of snaps in this league.

They do. Bonus graph with total snaps regardless of position:

total.png

If you want the Excel file drop me a PM with an email address and I'll send it to you, or share it via Google Drive.

By the way, I forgot to mention in the OP that each position is assigned to either Offense, Defense or STs and then I only consider snaps from that group. I did this to avoid bringing the averages down with say WRs that play only STs. These guys don't impact the WR average draft position at all (or just a tiny bit if they play some offensive snaps).

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5 minutes ago, pgwingman said:

This is pretty awesome work, thanks for digesting the data. I'd be curious to see what the bars look like if every Y axis is the same scale, which would give you a better picture of the importance of each position.

 

You should probably divide it by the total number of players on the field (not the same with 1 QB and 3 WR for example).

Great work BTW, zorionak.

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3 minutes ago, pgwingman said:

This is pretty awesome work, thanks for digesting the data. I'd be curious to see what the bars look like if every Y axis is the same scale, which would give you a better picture of the importance of each position.

 

Thanks. I think that's not easy to do since different positions have a different number of players in any given snap. For example one offensive snap will be one QB, three IOL, a variable number of WRs, etc. so it's hard to compare them on the same scale when we're talking about the raw number of snaps as in this case. I will give it some thought to see if I can normalize the data without adding any arbitrary information (such as assuming all offensive snaps are with 11 personnel).

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4 minutes ago, BrettFavre004 said:

Is that ggplot2?

Nope, just Excel

4 minutes ago, BrettFavre004 said:

Wonder how many of those 6th round QB snaps are just Tom Brady.

A bit over half:

  • BUF Derek Anderson - 118
  • CAR Garrett Gilbert - 13
  • CIN Jeff Driskel - 372
  • HOU Joe Webb - 35
  • PHI Nate Sudfeld - 11
  • NE Tom Brady - 1092
  • CLE Tyrod Taylor - 185
  • TOTAL 1826
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