Overview analysis
Most of the players drafted from 2011-2020 (58%) had careers that lasted at least five years in some capacity. By contrast, less than a third (31%) were out of the league in three years or less. As might be expected, first-round have disproportionate value in the draft, and the first round is reasonably split into two groups. While elsewhere the Codex defers to popular sentiment in splitting out a “Top Ten”, in truth the 11th spot behaves more like the top of the draft than the next 21 spots.
More than half of all players drafted in the Top 11 will make a Pro Bowl in the first five years and roughly a quarter of them will be first-team All-Pro at least once in that time. After the T11, however, just under a third (31%) of the remaining first-rounders make a Pro Bowl in the first five years and only 10% are named first-team All-Pro. Likewise, only one T11 player in the entire group of 110 played in fewer than one season worth of games, and only 14 (13%) failed to have at least 40 starts. Meanwhile, 79 of the other first-rounders (38%) fail to have at least 40 starts.
Most of the “steals” and “difference makers” are found in the next two rounds. In a given year, about 68 picks will be made (679 over ten years) in order to find 27 starters (272 over ten years). That means that two-fifths of the starters found in the draft will be taken with barely one-quarter of the picks available.
General managers might not be able to reliably “get ahead” in the second round, but they can absolutely fall off the pace or “lose serve”, so to speak. Managers who do not turn second-round picks into starters fall behind in terms of team building, and trading away a second-round pick is essentially giving away a better-than-even chance to find a capable starter on a price-controlled contract.
The draft concludes with four rounds that will constitute just over 1500 selections. Only around 10% of these picks (153 total) will become regular starters over their first five years. Under one-quarter of them (23%) will be reliable contributors in the league. A very small handful of these players will be stars (38 in total). Roughly equal numbers will be out of the league in three years or less (662) than will make it to at least five years (672).
In the “typical” draft year, then, fewer than half of the teams in the league will find even a single regular starter on Day 3. There will be roughly one regular contributor per year per team. There are fewer than four “stars” per draft class found after the first two days.
However, despite all of these struggles, the third day of the draft still represents a massive pool of resources for NFL teams. Through it, franchises discover players who will collectively contribute 18,147 starts to the league, more than either of the two previous days. Nearly 50,000 games of play (more than the other two days combined) are offered by the players drafted in these four rounds. Day Three players who do not start have in no way busted or disappointed. They have instead succeeded by making it on the field after one of the hardest “audition” processes in the world.
Setting aside the 362 starters and reliable contributors in the group, there are still 944 other players who made it into an NFL game, Most of those (634) even earned at least one start in the league. Many of these players found yards or stopped them from being gained, caught touchdowns or tipped passes, sacked the quarterback, or blocked to buy him an extra quarter second. Some of these players fall through the cracks in any set of definitions (Folorunso Fatukasi, for example, played in 59 games and started in 36 of them). The Codex addresses general trends, not every player in every draft.
The Draft Codex 