Positional Success Rates

[Grizzled]

36.4 percent of Pro Bowl and first-team All-Pro receivers over the past decade were taken in Rounds 2 or 3

46.2 percent of Pro Bowl and first-team All Pro guards were selected in the second or third round. 34.6 of first-rounders and 19.2 percent of Day 3 picks meet this criteria

Twenty-seven tackles have earned Pro Bowl or All-Pro accolades in the last 10 years and 63 percent of them were drafted in Round 1 — the second-highest for any position group. That number plummeted to 18.5 percent in Rounds 2-3 and 18.5 percent again for Rounds 4-7

Safety ranked second in terms of its share of Pro Bowlers (28.1 percent) being selected in Round 4 or later

The best corners are still found in Round 1, but 26.3 percent of the Pro Bowl corners have been drafted on Day 3, which ranks third

These numbers bode well for where the Bears are drafting.

Some of these numbers are influenced by the number of guys drafted in each round. For example, more guards are drafted in lower rounds (3-7).

[Moriarty]

Yeah, trying to find a quality LT in R2 makes me nervous. That's a high pick to burn on a failure.

[karhu]

Interesting analysis and all, but we don't need Pro Bowlers (whatever that distinction is worth these days). We need good, solid players, some of whom have the upside to become excellent.

This should be a bedrock draft IMSO. And since it's already an anomalous one because of the pandemic, I'm more inclined to trust the new brass than a narrow interpretation of precedent.

[Grizzled]

Good points. I've been trying to find stats listing starters by position and draft round for that very reason.

[karhu]

Good points. I've been trying to find stats listing starters by position and draft round for that very reason.

Yeah, it's tough. I don't have a PFF subscription, but toward the end of the season I used Pro Football Reference's AVV to do a little study of how many players per position per round seemed to stick in the league. Never adjusted the defensive assignments toward our new alignment, so it's all pretty worthless, but here are some interesting bits from the 2015-2020 drafts:


WRs rise in the second, then fall from >92% to 63% and hover around that point until falling off in the seventh.
Tackles only slide gently through three rounds, dip down to ~70% in the fourth, and rise back up in the fifth before tailing off.
Centers fall off in the fourth, then rise back up again--the seventh is nearly as well represented as the third.
Guards drop waaaaayyyy off after the second, but the seventh nearly matches the third.
Same thing, a bit less dramatically, for LBs.
DTs are represented consistently through the first five founds, with only a little dip in the sixth before falling off the map in the seventh.
For CBs, the third and fifth rounds are nearly as good as the first.
Safeties start out strong and peak in the third, but only take a momentary dip in the fifth.

[karhu]

For what it's worth, a draft guided only by the statistical likelihood of guys sticking would look something like this:

39: WR
48: G
71: T
148: CB
150: CB/DT
186: S