Windy City Gridiron
Wide receivers, tight ends, and running backs garner attention in box scores and draft profiles. How hard is it, exactly, to find a star? What production is normal?
Offensive lines have one job to do, but what about the rest of the offensive players taken in the NFL Draft?
Ostensibly, each of these players has two jobs to do–they either directly acquire yards and subsequent first downs and scores or they help others do the same. However, the way NFL teams and fans of NFL teams view these positions is very different. One thing that needs to be emphasized is that in a typical formation, teams need three wide receivers but only one running back and only one tight end. Even when teams flex into other formations, the reality is that a “middle-of-the-road” passing offense in the NFL is likely to have twice as many snaps to hand out to receivers than tight ends and fewer snaps for running backs and fullbacks than for tight ends.
This is reflected in the number of picks invested in these positions up to a point. Teams spent 315 selections on wide receivers, or 31.5 per year. That’s basically one per team per year. Meanwhile, teams spent 140 selections on tight ends, or just under half as many. So far, this makes sense. However, teams spent 235 selections on running backs, or nearly 24 per year. That means that even though NFL teams are giving 25% more snaps to tight ends than they are to running backs, they are drafting running backs at a 68% higher rate. In short, teams churn and burn running backs while they develop tight ends.
Wide Receiver: The NFL spent almost four first-round picks on wide receivers per year, and the teams that invested at wide receiver did so to affect the scoreboard. The average first-round wide receiver will have 20 touchdowns (between running and receiving) in his first five years, and he will offer 3,199 total offensive yards from scrimmage. The median number of touchdowns is the same, but the median yards is higher (3,398). Obviously, performance falls somewhat steadily after that. As has been noted in prior versions of the Draft Research Project, there’s a weird dip in Round 4 for wide receivers followed by a short-lived surge in Round 5.
Tight End: Tight ends aren’t likely to produce as many yards as receivers, but they do tend to deliver when it comes to scoring. There were only 8 first-round tight ends, or less than one per year (a little over one-fifth the rate that teams spent first-round picks on receivers). However, this group managed to put up an average of 18 touchdowns and 2,351 yards. The decline in tight end production is almost exactly what one would expect, to the degree that the data almost seems “too clean.”
Running Backs: There was pretty wild variation across running backs in terms of touchdowns, and it seemed a little too dependent on offenses....
