Ranking the UDFA Classes With the Consensus Big Board
Some teams grabbed some guys you might have heard of in undrafted free agency. Does that matter?
The draft is tiring. We hear about the same ten prospects 1,000 times and then hear about the next 40 prospects 100 times. But the UDFAs are new! And exciting! And probably not going to make it.
That last sentence is a buzzkill, but that’s the point — the fact that they don’t make it is what makes it so tremendously cool when they do. There’s a real sense that these players beat the odds. Over time, that feeling may fade (see Tony Romo) but for the most part, people love the stories of Adam Thielen, Doug Baldwin, Kurt Warner, John Randle, Jason Peters, Antonio Gates and James Harrison.
And we love them because they were probably not going to make it.
But that reality should at least characterize our understanding of how “good” an undrafted class is. Undrafted players didn’t get drafted for a reason. Most teams have run out of players with draftable grades by the time they hit the sixth round.
The rankings can’t be meaningless, can they?
Can The Rankings Be Meaningless?
I put a little bit less work into investigating this than I did the success of the Consensus Big Board against drafted players, but it was notable to me that in 2023, the Vikings secured the top-ranked UDFA and the eighth-ranked UDFA in Andre Carter II and Ivan Pace Jr. Carter made the roster and Pace was a (distant) candidate for defensive rookie of the year.
I checked the 2020 and 2021 outcomes of undrafted free agents to see if there was perhaps some signal there. 2020 turned out to be a crazy year to include for two reasons — first, because this was probably one of the best undrafted classes we’ve seen in some time and second, because this was the year that seemingly fewer top-300 players were drafted by the NFL than any other year I can recall running the Consensus Big Board.
These are probably related; players like Terence Steele, Calvin Throckmorton, James Robinson, Essang Bassey, Malcolm Roach, Javelin Guidry, JaMycal Hasty, Lamar Jackson (the cornerback), A.J. Green (the cornerback) and Benito Jones were all considered draftable by the Consensus Big Board (ranked above 260) and were among the snap leaders of undrafted free agents.
Other Top 300 players included Myles Bryant, Juwan Johnson, Bryce Huff, Mitchell Wilcox and Tyler Huntley. Huntley, technically, made a Pro Bowl.
That’s not to say that there weren’t impactful undrafted free agents outside of the Top 300 in 2020. That includes Jonah Williams (the defensive lineman), TerShawn Wharton, Krys Barnes, Marquez Callaway, Myles Hartfield and Teair Tart. They were all outside of the Top 300.
But far more success came from that Top 300 group than otherwise. Of the 56 undrafted players that earned more than 200 snaps from the 2020 class, 20 of them were from the Top 300 and 36 came from outside of that group.
Given that there were 77 players inside the Top 300 and 532 outside of it who were both on the Consensus Big Board and unselected in the draft, that’s an enormous hit rate; 25.9 percent to 6.7 percent.
Of those with at least 800 snaps in the 2020 undrafted free agent class, 17 players, 11 of them were in the Top 300.
The 2021 UDFA class wasn’t nearly as impressive, but there were some pretty good names there. The standouts from inside the Top 300 — 62 players in total were in the Top 300 and did not get selected in the 2021 draft — include Alaric Jackson, Robert Jones, David Moore, Naquan Jones, Kayode Awosika, Quintin Mooris and Drake Jackson.
Outside of the Top 300, Jerry Jacobs, Jack Stoll, Brock Wright, Nick McCloud, Nick Leverett, Jake Curhan, Chris Jackson and Reggie Gilliam stood out.
When using the same analysis, players with 200-plus snaps, 10 came from the Top 300 and 25 came from outside of it, 15.9 percent to 4.6 percent. When looking at those with 150-plus snaps (because there is one fewer possible season to accumulate snaps in this set), the advantage slightly diminishes — 17.5 percent to 6.3 percent.
The correlation between Consensus Big Board Rank and snaps played per season is .315, which is fairly remarkable for football. So it looks like it still provides some predictive value.
Who Won Undrafted Free Agency?
For this, I used the tracker provided by Alex Katson from the Two Gap Substack to isolate undrafted free agents — and to separate them out from players offered a tryout.
I matched those players to the Consensus Big Board, which needed to be expanded to include some players that were signed and on multiple boards. I was asked earlier why I didn’t share the rankings outside of the Top 300 and the reason is because it both puts strain on mobile browsers and/or website infrastructure and that it lacks a bit of fidelity outside of 300.
With new UDFAs signed, I can add more players to the Consensus Board, so long as they are ranked by at least three analysts. The good news is that this did not produce any players that sneaked into the Top 300, or even the Top 500. Only 21 players were signed by teams that were not ranked by at least three analysts, compared to the 371 that we have a record of having signed a team.
If you want it, a spreadsheet of the Top 874 players can be found at the original Top 300 link, but in the tab labeled “Bigger Board”.
To grade the teams, I used a different definition of “value,” essentially giving 999 points of value to the top-ranked player (Marvin Harrison) and going down the board, subtracting 1,000 from a player’s rank to produce their point value. I wanted to use this instead of a logarithmic definition of value like that’s used in the draft because the values between players don’t drop off all that dramatically after the draft is over.
Total value and value of the top five players signed by the teams below:
The Vikings led the league, once again, in UDFA value. Their class is headlined by the top-ranked UDFA Gabriel Murphy, an edge rusher from UCLA and the ninth-ranked UDFA Dwight McGlothern, CB from Arkansas.
By Consensus, they ranked 111th and 189th — not just Top 300 players, but Top 200 players. The Vikings were the only team with two players signed from the Top 200.
They added one more in the Top 300: Trey Knox, TE from South Carolina, ranked 294th.
The Panthers led the league in Top 300 signings, having acquired Jalen Coker (243rd), Andrew Raym (255th), Willie Drew (266th), Demani Richardson (287th) and Jaden Shirden (300th).
I don’t have data on this, but I imagine no one ranked Adam Thielen very highly in 2013; he was the 161st-ranked receiver by DraftScout.com that year and wasn’t signed to a team — he had to earn a contract by succeeding in a minicamp tryout. Jaleel McLaughlin ranked 509th last year. Rashid Shaheed ranked 592nd in 2022 and Brendan Aubrey was completely unranked.
Anything is possible.
Arif,
This is great. I love the way you don't hew to RAS, but rather you use position-specific metrics demonstrated to be predictive with respect to outcomes. Have you shared these metrics by positon? If not, can you do so? Do you have a database that compares athletes based on these position specific metrics? I have long thought RAS was much too broad a brush and that its broad brush was more relevant for some positions than others. I have read, for example, that bench press is an important metric for WR's, and that the short shuttle is predictve for OT's and the 3-come for CB's. Would be super helpful to see what your analysis has shown by position group. Cheers! Your posts are great.
You mention Jaquan Brisker as being a notable name here, but he was a 2nd round pick in 2022