The Draft Codex looks at all players drafted in the NFL Draft and records the readily available and consistent public/nonproprietary information about their playing history. At the moment, it focuses on each player’s first five years in the league. This number was chosen because it is the point at which each player has already played his entire rookie contract and either been offered a new contract or had his fifth-year club option picked up. In the author’s mind, at that point, the player is no longer a draft selection. He is a successful NFL player.

Note that because the focus on this site is studying what types of players are available at what points in the draft and in figuring out what is and is not a reasonable expectation of players, it does not matter if the player changes teams for the purposes of tracking in the database. A player capable of 40 sacks did that, regardless of whether or not it took being cut, traded, or sat on a bench for a year.

At this moment, the Draft Codex records all players drafted 2011-2020, meaning it includes more than 2500 selections. The current plan is to add the 2021 Draft Class by the start of the 2026 season and 2022 by the time of the 2027 Draft. The database is also building out as a reference point the first two years of performance for all of the players in the database as a way of understanding reasonable markers for progress, but right now only the first two rounds are included.