This is true but also depends somewhat on position. On average, 6th and 7th rounders will make the final roster over half the time at best. In some position groups, that can drop precipitously.
In this case, the Bears didn’t really need a late round rookie WR who would probably have been a special teams player at best this season or a late round rookie DB who didn’t even play ball in 2020 due to COVID. They did need shoring up in the WR corp and secondary but pickings are really slim in those later rounds, and I’m not going to fault a GM who can’t find diamonds in the rough.
It’s a coin flip at best anyway in the later rounds and odds are that even if they got picked up this year, they’d be cut within a season or two anyway. Whatever the odds are that 6th or 7th round picks make the roster, the odds they remain on any NFL roster for even 2 or 3 seasons are grim.
And, among specialists (kickers, punters, and long snappers), relatively few are drafted, even in the low rounds, and most of those who play in the NFL started out as UFAs.
This article notes that only four specialists – one kicker, one punter, and two long snappers – were taken in this year’s draft.
Probably not cherry picked directly but the caveats are that QB success is still dependent on the rest of the team and (here’s where the cherry picking really does apply) a single stat on a single type of down and distance is a rather one dimensional and limited way to evaluate a QB.
Any stat/chart that shows Jameis Winston among the league leading QBs is one that should be taken with a block of salt.
Aaron Rodgers is #16. Clearly a middle-of-the-road, average QB, unlike such powerhouses as Marcus Mariota. He’s almost as good as Tyrod Taylor though, he has that going for him.
Cool, thanks for the numbers. At first glance, that kind of adds up: over three years, a team will typically have 6 (maybe 7 or 8 when you add in compensatory picks) late-rounders, so 2-3 make the team. 2-3 UDFAs is about where my intuition was as well. Without knowing the sign-rate, it’s hard to draw a real conclusion, but I’d guess that ends up being 5-10%.
Now, where I’m surprised is that a third of the players are UDFAs. Is that really the 53-man roster (or whatever number it is now?) Maybe this is complicated by the number of UDFAs who don’t make the team, end up on a practice squad somewhere, and then land on a 53-man roster a year or two down the line.
It makes a certain amount of sense. On average, an NFL career lasts 3-4 years and on average a team gets 7 draftees a year (plus a few supplemental picks). That’s less than 30 slots on average out of 53 roster spots assuming they all make it, which we know doesn’t happen.
That said, the early round ones are more likely to play past their rookie contract, so the average career length for regular starters is going to be more than 4 years, but that still leaves a lot of potential slots that need to be filled from somewhere.
Sorry, yes, that’s obvious. I quoted your text, changed tabs to do some other things, came back and wrote my response, completely forgetting that you’d actually provided a link.
I got curious so I looked up some numbers. Looks like 1st rounders average out at a little more than 9 year careers. That drops steadily per round until you get just under 4 year for 7th rounders. It’ll average out to something around 6 years if you include all rounds and only players who make rosters.
Given the percentage of draftees that make rosters (essentially 100% for first rounders and just over half for late rounds), a team is getting ~5-5.5 roster players per year via the draft. With a ~6 year average for players who aren’t cut, that’s ~30-40 drafted players out of 53 leaving somewhere between 15-20 slots for undrafted players to fill. And, let’s be honest, most likely your kicker, punter, long snappers, etc are going to be undrafted. There are more of them out there than we really need to fill out NFL rosters.