2019 Draft Board Review

I started my Draft Board project in 2020 to help give myself a way of better evaluating the talent entering the draft. I wanted to see if there was anything in a player's college production or Combine results that led to success. Instead I found a bunch of things for each position that typically led to failure.

I took those results and applied them to the 2020 draft class and then used them on the 2018 and 2019 classes to try and see the returns a little earlier. Because the stats I take are meant to be from a ten year span starting 12 years prior to each draft class I'm evaluating, the application to the 2018 and 2019 classes isn't as accurate as I would have preferred. But it still gives me an idea of how I'm doing, so for that I'm grateful.

Below you will see a board with all of the players from the 2019 class that received a successful grade from me through their first three seasons as a pro. You'll also see their PSR that they received from me going into the draft. If instead they have a letter D or E it means that they were removed from my board with D representing Depleted and E representing Empty. A depleted label meant they had a factor that led to a very low chance of success, and an empty label meant they had a factor that (at the time at least) led to no success.

Below that I've included a table with the rest of the players that were selected in the first round, who have failed to find success as a pro so far (meaning they haven't hit the low end of the statistical threshold I've set for each position). If a player isn't on either list it's because they were drafted after the first round and failed to receive a grade. The success grades are either A, B or C, with A being the best.

Before we get to the boards here are some statistics for what percentage of players succeeded based on where I had them graded out. I'll put out a combined 2018 and 2019 article later for these stats since the accuracy of the application was tainted a little for each of those seasons.

% of successful players that I gave the Empty label to: 1.8%

% of successful players that I gave the Depleted label to: 12.2%

Total % of successful players that I removed from my board: 6.7%

Total % of successful players that I kept on my board: 16.8%

Of the successful players, % that I kept on my board: 84.4%

% of successful players that I gave a 1st round grade to: 50%

% of successful players that I gave a 1st-2nd round grade to: 31.6%

Successful Players

Unsuccessful First Round Picks