NFL Draft: Analyzing the Success Rate of Mid-Round Picks

We are about three weeks into the NFL offseason, which means that the only big NFL event left on the calendar is the draft. Fans across the country are either mocking their picks, reading up on scouting report or drawing up scenarios in their head. Most of these scenarios and mocking usually just involve first and second round picks simply because they are fairly easy to predict. At the same time, 3^rd and 4^th round picks—the mid round picks—are often ignored, even though these picks seem to have a ton of value.

Think of it this way: last year the Baltimore Ravens landed a former Pro Bowl receiver for a 3^rd round draft choice and change. The New York Jets landed a former All Pro cornerback for about the same price. This trend of trading away these mid round picks are quite common in the NFL, but the question is who gets the better end of the deal? Is it the team that received those picks or the team that received the proven NFL veteran?

Of course, each situation is different, and the team receiving the draft pick doesn’t always receive the better end of the deal, neither does the team receiving the former Pro Bowler. Last year, the team receiving the player got the better end of the deal with the Jets receiving a great complementary corner to Darrelle Revis and the Ravens finally getting a number one receiver.  However, that hasn’t always been the case.

Take, for example, the deal Cleveland made to send a third round pick and cornerback Leigh Bodden to Detroit a couple of years ago. Rogers is no longer in the roster and had been inconsistent at best in his time in Cleveland. In turn, the Lions turned that pick into Cliff Avril, a player that has been one of the top two sack guys on the team since entering the league and notched nine sacks last season.

The fact is that there is no consistent, universal way of measuring which team got the better end of the deal. However, we can take a look back at past drafts and find out just how many 3^rd and 4^th round draft picks are successful. Doing so would give us, the fans, a general sense of how much value these often forgotten, but critically important draft picks are.

Before I even get into how many of the mid round picks I consider to be successful, I think its best to share my criteria of what I considered to be a “successful” pick. To me, a 3^rd or 4^th round pick is successful if the player lasted at least four seasons in the NFL, and started at least one or significantly contributed as a backup. I believe that this is a good definition for a “successful” career simply because this is usually the term of their first contract, and if a player can fully play out a contract, then he is in some ways moderately successful.

Below are charts of players drafted in the 3^rd and 4^th round that I think are successful from each year’s draft between 2002 and 2006. I chose this period of time because it means that they have had enough time in the NFL to prove themselves and start in the NFL.

Now that I have listed all of the draft picks that I think have been successful, we can look at some numbers. To begin, there were 165 3^rd round picks between 2002 and 2006. Out of those picks, 76 were deemed to be successful based on the formula above (4 seasons in the NFL, 1 starting or significant contributions). That means that about 46% of the 3^rd round picks in that five year period were considered to be successful.

Looking at the 4^th round, there were 176 total draft choices in the five year span we’re talking about. Out of those 176, 77 were thought to be successful, which gives us a rate of about 44% of 4^th rounders being successful.  So, when a team trades away a 3^rd round pick for an aging player, there is basically a 50/50 chance that the player they will be drafting will be an NFL starter or a significant contributor.

Of course, teams don’t trade away players for draft picks without reason. More often than not, it is because the team can no longer afford that player like Arizona couldn’t afford Anquan Boldin (or was too cheap to pay him). Other times, its because of the off the field issues that a player has issues that the current team simply doesn’t want to deal with, which was the case with Antonio Cromartie and the Chargers.

In either case, the team that trades away the player receives something in return, which is not always the case for the team getting the player, and statically one in two chances that a player turns out to be something aren’t bad odds at all. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense that NFL general managers ship away perennial Pro Bowler for what is deemed a “cheap price” at the time.

Latif Masud is a Featured Contributor for NFL Spinzone and the Editor of House of Spears, a blog dedicated to the Detroit Lions