A History of NFL Draft Value from 2014 to 2018

Looking at our past can help inform our future. Let’s use the last 5 years of draft data to get a sneak peek into our history.

This chart is filterable. Look over the different years by selecting a year in the upper right, starting with the most recent draft that happened in 2018. Click a state to see the prospects drafted from that state in that year. Feel free to maximize the chart using the button on the lower right.

Some thoughts on these charts:

• Something must have been in the water in Florida in 2015. 28 players from the state of Florida were drafted, including three of the top ten picks.
• California has quietly assumed the title of most valuable state, even though it was most valuable only two of the last five years. Even the “off” years have produced pretty reliable value.
• The University of Alabama and Ohio State are perennial providers of prospects, so their states both make the top five, but the other three states in the top five (Texas, California, and Florida) make their way by having both large and small schools provide their talent.

The rough methodology used for this Leagify draft history chart is this: Each player is given a point value based on their draft position, with the top player in the draft being worth 40 points and the last pick in the draft being worth 5 points. Undrafted free agents are ignored in this particular chart, so the Phillip Lindsay’s of the world don’t get love here because they didn’t get love on draft day.

Keep in mind that these values show how the team valued the player at draft time, not how they ended up actually performing on the field. Those calculations will be shown at a later time.