Ranking the 2026 Undrafted Free Agents by How Likely They'll Make Rosters
The guaranteed bonuses for undrafted free agents have been released. Can we use this to predict which ones will make NFL rosters?
Every year, the NFL brings in about 450 undrafted free agent rookies into training camp. About 45 of them make the roster the week prior to the NFL season. Even fewer make it to Week 1 as teams sign veterans to fill out the roster. In total, about nine percent of undrafted free agents make the opening-day roster.
That means about one or two per UDFA class for each team should make the roster, which is a bit higher than we typically see in 53-man roster projections. This doesn’t include the undrafted free agents who end up on practice squads only to make the roster later.
We know about the star stories — Adam Thielen, James Harrison, Tony Romo and Kurt Warner — but many UDFAs contribute in more ways than becoming leading stars at their position. Even more provide outstanding and critical rotational value or do meaningful work on special teams.
Key starters like Reed Blankenship, Ronnie Hickman, Jalen Sundell, Charvarius Ward, Alaric Jackson, Rashid Shaheed and Carl Granderson join essential role players like Jalen Coker, Jordan Mason, Emmanuel Wilson, Gage Larvadain, Nazir Stackhouse and Danny Strigow as important undrafted contributors for their respective teams.
That’s not to mention a bevy of special teamers, who include Devon Key, Del’Shawn Phillips, Jeremy Reaves, Joe Andreessen, George Odum, Jake Hansen and Brenden Schooler.
We know that undrafted free agents play a critical part in putting together a winning team, but the nature of UDFAs — teams generally didn’t think they were even good enough to draft — makes them difficult to predict.
Nevertheless, we’ve got some key clues: guaranteed money and the Consensus Big Board.
Roster-Make Rates
Every so often, you might see a graphic on a television broadcast or online showcasing how important UDFAs are to roster construction that can be interpreted incorrectly by those presenting the data or those looking at it without context.
Some broadcasters use this to say that you’re more likely to make an impact as a UDFA than as a seventh-round pick, which really isn’t the case. There are more UDFAs on rosters than there are in any Day Three pick group, as you can see.
In the example above, Yahoo! Sports’ Jay Busbee does bring up why this is the case – more than ten times as many UDFAs sign with teams than are drafted in any particular round – but still quotes former Jets general manager Mike Tannenbaum as saying, “You could make the argument that not getting drafted is better than going in later rounds.”
In either case, we can do better – we can use post-training camp cutdown rosters to estimate make rates for each individual round and compare them to the UDFA population.
From there, we can estimate how much guaranteed money and pre-draft acclaim can help us predict which undrafted free agents are most likely to end up on a roster or make an impact.
I gathered 2018 to 2024 data on the roster-make percentage on cutdown day for each draft round. This data isn’t completely definitive; it treats those put on injured reserve as “misses,” which means that players like Jameson Williams and J.J. McCarthy didn’t “make” their teams.
Nevertheless, it’s useful because injury risk is (mostly) evenly distributed across rounds, even though you’d expect players with injury concerns to be drafted later.
If we look at data from 2021 to 2025, the roster-make rate for UDFAs has slightly risen to 9.5 percent, but this is a pretty good baseline to work from.
But that’s all it is, just a baseline. We know that teams put much more stock in some undrafted free agents than others. Using guaranteed money, we might be able to predict which players have the best odds of making the roster.
Combining that with the consensus rank of those UDFAs gives us an even better model for figuring out which players have the best odds of making the roster.
Validating the Approach
Is the model any good? It turned out to be pretty good in 2025 and has been fairly predictive for several years running.
Last year, ten percent of the undrafted free agent class — 46 of 460 players — were given roster-make estimates between 18.0 and 25.0 percent, for an average roster-make rate of 19.9 percent. In order to approximately meet that mark, we’d need nine (9.2) of them to make the roster on opening day.
That’s exactly what happened; Brandon Crenshaw-Dickson (Titans), Bam Martin-Scott (Panthers), Benjamin Yurosek (Vikings), Max Brosmer (Vikings), Beaux Collins (Giants), Efton Chism III (Patriots), Karene Reid (Broncos), Torricelli Simpkins III (Saints), and Johnathan Edwards (Colts) all made their respective team rosters.
152 of the free agents were given a five percent chance or less of making the roster for an average estimated roster-make rate of 3.5 percent. That gives us an expected value of five (5.3) players making their rosters. Six of them did, further validating the exercise.
Those six — Keyon Martin (Ravens), Rueben Lowery III (Ravens), Cooper McDonald (Chiefs), Marlow Wax (Chargers), Myles Price (Vikings) and John Bullock (Buccaneers) — put in outstanding efforts to personally beat the odds.
At a large scale, however, the numbers are what they are. Guarantees tell us what teams think of a player’s talent level and the Consensus Board seemingly gives us an eye into talent level that teams may have missed.
This holds up over a larger sample — from 2021 to 2025, there were 166 players given roster-make rates between 25.0 percent and 18.0 percent and 36 of them made the opening-day roster (21.7 percent). The estimated number (34) and rate (20.5 percent) was very close.
Which Matters More? Money or Rank?
These models only estimate likelihood and cannot provide certainties. Players without significant guaranteed money or acclaim from analysts make rosters every year.
Last year, six unranked players made rosters. Three were mentioned above — Martin (Ravens), Lowery (Ravens) and McDonald (Chiefs) — and three more earned high guarantees, giving them better odds. They were Darius Cooper Jr. (Eagles), Nick Kallerup (Seahawks) and Ale Kaho (Commanders). Martin, Lowery and McDonald earned nothing in guaranteed money while Kaho ($75,000), Cooper ($90,000) and Kallerup ($259,000) earned significant guarantees.
