Throughout my football fandom, statistical analysis was something that always interested me. I undertook various projects over the years dissecting statistics as sort of a “yeoman analytics”. By no means do I possess any professional experience analyzing stats. However, doing side projects based off my own thought experiments is something I still like to do as a hobby.
The latest project I undertook involves determining how current top-end talent in the National Football League performed during their college days and then applying these numbers to the most recent crop of NFL draft picks. This may indicate which recently drafted players may possess similar traits as those who are now on an elite level. I labeled this methodology as the “minimal traits approach” and I applied it to four positional sets that I will publish in a series of blog posts: quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers and tight ends.
My inspiration in coming up with the minimal traits approach started when thinking if there was a statistical way to determine which college football quarterbacks would turn into “franchise-caliber” signal callers on the pro level. I then applied this approach across the other skill positions – specifically players that gained over 1,000 yards rushing or receiving.
I decided to utilize my first blog post toward tight ends, as the amount of data is the smallest and, theoretically, should be easiest to explain the methodology. I will use the same statistical categories for wide receivers, tweak them for running backs while my quarterback data will be drastically different.
The first step was to take accumulate the final college year data for every tight end that reached the 1,000-yard receiving benchmark during the 2019 NFL season. There were only three to reach this plateau: George Kittle, Travis Kelce and Darren Waller. I then went onto Sports-Reference.com and compiled their final season’s receptions, receiving yards, yard per reception, receiving touchdowns and determined their Body Mass Index (BMI). I also noted which round each player was selected in for a future step.
The data set looks like this:
Rec Yds Avg TD BMI Drafted Round
George Kittle 22 314 14.3 4 30.1 Round 5
Travis Kelce 45 722 16.0 8 30.0 Round 3
Darren Waller 26 442 17.0 6 27.5 Round 6
The next step is to note the lowest totals amongst each of the statistical categories. This would be the minimal amount a draftee needed to achieve in their final season of college football.
The minimal amounts are as follows:
Minimum Receptions: 22
Minimum Yards: 314
Minimum Average: 14.3
Minimum BMI: 27.5
The next part involves which round the 1,000-yard receiving tight ends were selected. Of the three, two were picked on Day 3 of the draft, one on Day 2 and none on Day 1. Therefore, the minimal amounts determined above are applied to just tight ends selected on Day 3 of the 2020 NFL Draft since that is where the most players were selected from in the data set (albeit a slim amount).
So now a final determination can be made. Which tight ends in the latest draft meet all the criteria? Well, just one: Harrison Bryant from Florida Atlantic University who was selected by the Cleveland Browns in Round 5.
There is no doubt about the logjam at the top of Cleveland’s depth chart at tight end with Austin Hooper and David Njoku, but Bryant may be a player to keep an eye on long-term. Bryant was super productive in college. His senior year, he led the Owls in receptions with 65, receiving yards with 1,004 receiving yards and receiving touchdowns, reaching pay-dirt seven times. He won the John Mackey Award – given to the top tight end in FBS that season. Coming from a non-power school likely hurt his draft stock, but production like that should not be completely ignored at the FBS level even among Group of 5 schools.
I recognize that this approach is not foolproof, but I do think it is one that can be flexible on a yearly basis and does provide an amateur critical analysis on which players may possess potential that is under-the-radar or confirm that in which is blatantly obvious. It provides a little food for thought.
I hope you thought this blog was, at minimal, interesting and look ahead to my next post reviewing the 2020 wide receiver class using this approach.
You can follow DJ Jarka on Twitter: @jarkaster and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jarkaster.
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