Battle Red Blog
What is the history of RB and WR in round two?
As we continue our journey before the draft, we continue looking at the history of draft selections and their relative success. Someone wise along the way said that past was prologue. In other words, the past can help predict the future. The Houston Texans have no first rounders as of this writing, but they do have two second rounders.
Fortunately, if the season started today, the Texans could throw out a starting lineup on offense and defense capable of winning more games than it loses. That wasn’t true last year and in most seasons. So, when they do pick they have more options available to them. They can pick a position of relative weakness like defensive tackle, cornerback, linebacker, or safety. They can purely go best player available and just go with the highest rated player on the board regardless of position. They can also start planning for the future beyond 2025.
This is where running back and wide receiver come in as positions. The Texans are well-manned in both spots when looking at starters. Yet, four of the top five receivers currently on the roster are set to become free agents following 2024. Meanwhile, the Texans can feel good about Joe Mixon at running back, but who is backing him up?
I honestly don’t think Nick Caserio is reading this article or any like them. He is not doing in-depth study on the past because they have to do the work of evaluating current prospects. I wouldn’t expect anything less. That being said, we can certainly do that work and give a report on the likely success of each position.
To do that, we went back to the 2010 through 2019 period and looked just at second round running backs and wide receivers. We tracked through the number of Pro Bowls they attended, the number of seasons they were labeled as starters according to Pro Football Reference. We also looked at their weighted average value. It is a system the site uses to grade the contributions of a player. They are given points for each season they are on a roster, each season they are a starter, and when they reach certain statistical thresholds.
As you might imagine, most of these players had weighted average values (WAV) of ten or more. Few had WAVs of 40 or more. So, we are labeling anyone with a WAV of five or less as a relative bust and any player with 40 or more as a highly successful selection. Most players landed in between those two extremes.
26 running backs were taken in the second round between 2010 and 2019. Most of those players have retired, so we can feel pretty good about the numbers we are looking at. The highlight of the group would have to be Derrick Henry as he will likely go into the Hall of Fame when he is done playing. Ironically enough, Joe...
