2013 Comprehensive NFL Draft Database

[Monk4thaHALL]

Glad to see Monk bringing up DJ Hayden. Before the freak injury he was seen as a potential long term starter. I believe I read somewhere he was only allowing 42% of completions his way the last year before he had the injury. Right now I'm really high on Blidi Wreh-Wilson and he fits exactly what Mike Shanahan seems to like in his players

Good that you brought this up.

There's this as well:

Prior to his injury, just 45 of 362 pass attempts (12.4%) from UH opponents went Hayden's way. Of the 45, just 11 were completed, representing just 5% of the 216 completions from UH opponents with Hayden in the lineup. The senior also had eight pass breakups, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery. - Houston football

^ 11 of 45 = 24%

When I watched Hayden, I put his skills and his name in the conversation of Wreh-Wilson, McFadden and Davis. You know I saw him as a mid-round guy, with lots of upside.

You can see the speed. The cut-ups posted showed him chasing things down, tracking free runners in the open field, running them down from a back-starting position of 10 + yards. You can see the speed coupled with long strides, covering ground.

Coverage skills were good to my eye. Even the pass interference in the UCLA game, he actually didn't even need to place his right hand of the receivers shoulder. The receiver is at full speed, Hayden flips his hips, the receiver has a couple yards (2,3) lead and in about two strides Hayden is even. And his arm length was enough to high-point it and deflect the pass easily. I can only guess that the only reason to get that right hand on the shoulder was to torque himself around a bit. But it wasn't actually necessary or egregious.

Due to his injury I would be surprised if NFL teams get spooked and don't draft him. We've seen them not draft guys for far less injuries. Yet he probably provides one of the highest upsides, especially if he goes undrafted, if he can return to normal activity and continue to play the game.

I actually still rank him in the mid-rounds with an asterisk detailing the injury recovery timetable. And while I rank him where he used to be, where he ought to stay if it were not for the injury, I also mark him down at the end of the draft (6th - 7th) or undrafted. I would use a draft pick on him, but I'm just being realistic. I like him enough to use a draft pick in order to secure him from the open market of the undrafted rookie free agent waters.

It's been reported he won't workout at the Combine, but he will show up to do the interview and other stuff like that.

On that note however, I was not very fond of L.Ryan whenever I watched him. I just wasn't seeing what others were championing. Same with J. Taylor. I think both are overrated. And both I'm scratching my head a bit with the draftnik love given their way, especially CBS. Then I read this:

http://www.rotoworld.com/headlines/c...-times-in-2012

Rutgers CB Ryan 'burned' 41 times in 2012

Rutgers CB Logan Ryan was "burned" 41 times in 2012 by the opposing receiver, according to STATS.
This accounts for 42.7 percent of the total targets he faced. The percentage lands Ryan in the middle of the five player study, which included Xavier Rhodes (40.8), Dee Milliner (42.6), Desmond Trufant (44.2), and Johnthan Banks (50), although Ryan's total was much higher (15) than any other cornerback listed, likely due to the higher number of targets he faced.

Source: John Pollard on Twitter

Feb 13 - 8:50 AM

https://twitter.com/JPSTATS/status/3...000000/photo/1

[Dukes and Skins]

If theres a chance to take Hayden in the 6th round area I'd do it in a heartbeat. Has a ton of potential and if he comes back healthy and all reports are that he will, he can be a CB we'll really like

[panahoo]

To me this would be a great draft:

2. Philip Thomas FS Fresno State
3. Robert Lester SS Alabama
4. B. W. Webb CB William & Mary
5. Khaled Holmes OC USC
5. Micah Hyde CB Iowa
6. David Bakhtiari OG Colorado
7. Eric Martin DE Nebraska

[JamesMadisonSkins]

To me this would be a great draft:

2. Philip Thomas FS Fresno State
3. Robert Lester SS Alabama
4. B. W. Webb CB William & Mary
5. Khaled Holmes OC USC
5. Micah Hyde CB Iowa
6. David Bakhtiari OG Colorado
7. Eric Martin DE Nebraska

I can't see the team going safety in the 2nd and 3rd ... let alone secondary with 4 picks. I would love:

2nd: Philip Thomas, FS Fresno State
3rd: Markus Wheaton, WR Oregon State
4th: BW Webb, CB W&M
5th: Kenyon Barner, RB Oregon
5th: Kevin Reddick, ILB UNC
6th: David Bakhtiari, OT/OG Colorado
7th: Phillip Steward, OLB Houston

[darrelgreenie]

2nd: Eric Reid S
3rd: Terron Armstead OT
4th: Zaviar Gooden ILB
5th: Theo Riddick WR/RB
5th: Duke Williams S
6th: Sean Renfree QB
7th: Marcus Davis WR

---------- Post added February-16th-2013 at 03:07 PM ----------

2nd: Phillip Thomas S
3rd: David Amerson CB
4th: David Quessenberry OT
5th: Theo Riddick WR/RB
5th: Duke Williams S
6th: Sean Renfree QB
7th: Marcus Davis WR



2nd: Terrance Williams WR
3rd: DJ Swearinger S
4th: David Quessenberry OT
5th: Theo Riddick WR/RB
5th: Duke Williams S
6th: Sean Renfree QB
7th: Marcus Davis WR

[panahoo]

Re-ran the simulator with a more balanced needs input. Here is what i got:

2. David Amerson CB NC State
3. Tavon Austin WR WVU
4. D.J. Swearinger FS South Carolina
5. Khaled Holmes OC USC
5. Micah Hyde CB Iowa
6. David Bakhtiari OG Colorado
7. Craig Roh DE Michigan

[TheShredSkinz]

Re-ran the simulator with a more balanced needs input. Here is what i got:

2. David Amerson CB NC State
3. Tavon Austin WR WVU
4. D.J. Swearinger FS South Carolina
5. Khaled Holmes OC USC
5. Micah Hyde CB Iowa
6. David Bakhtiari OG Colorado
7. Craig Roh DE Michigan

If we get Austin in the 3rd and Bakhtiari in the 6th I'll dance a jig.

[B&GVol24]

2nd: Terrance Williams WR

^^I didn't expect to see that one. Why the change? and I like Williams too, but just wondering

[panahoo]

^^I didn't expect to see that one. Why the change? and I like Williams too, but just wondering

I dont see him available that late in the second round.. Imo... I have him going to St. Louis at #46 overall

[rk3025]

Does John Pollard have stats on Darius Slay from Miss St?

[Monk4thaHALL]

Read this:
http://secondroundstats.com/2013/02/04/tier1-wrs/

Tier 1 WRs:

Where Are They Catching the Ball?

I promise this will be the only chart like the one in the QB post, the rest aren’t so similar. This represents what zones they caught the ball in, before yards after the catch. Unfortunately, I don’t have the exact routes or what side of the field they caught it on. That will have to wait until the next iteration of this.

Keenan Allen lives on the short passes. 63.3% of Allen’s passes were caught within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage. Only 3.33% of his passes were past 20 yards. A low for all WRs I looked at. This may not be a bad thing if his yards after the catch are good.

Stedman Bailey’s game consisted of a lot of screens. Unlike Keenan Allen though, we see a much more distributed catching range. 18% of his passes were caught in the 11-20 yard range with 10.5% deep catches.

Surprisingly, Hopkins was a major deep threat. This surprised me because I thought of Hopkins as a guy who ran a lot of curls and mid-range outside routes. We see that 70% of his catches were past 6 yards. The highest in the major WRs for this class, excepting Terrance Williams

Patterson’s numbers are just interesting. We don’t see many passes caught past 20 yards, but 33% of his passes were caught in the 11-20 yard range. It’s like he decided to ignore catching the ball in the screen and 20+ yard game and just catch intermediate passes.

What’s Happening After the Catch?

This chart represents the yards from the LOS that they caught the ball before YAC and then the yardage after the catch in the second bar.

DeAndre Hopkins shows us how much deeper he caught the ball than the others. On average he caught the ball 12 yards from the LOS, before YAC.

Stedman Bailey’s yards after the catch is great. In this class, most WRs YAC hovers around 5.3-5.5 yards. Bailey’s is the highest at 6.24. Even though 33% of his catches were screens, having good yard after the catch skills makes it worthwhile.

Allen’s numbers are not so superb. On average he caught the ball 4.57 yards from the LOS. This is 3 yards lower than the next wide receiver (Quinton Patton). Plus his yards after the catch is simply average

How Did Their Systems Help/Hurt Them?

This one is going to require a little explaining. I didn’t just chart their catches, I charted every pass thrown to each wide receiver. In that, I was able to derive how often a QB targets his number one wide receiver and how often QBs miss their wide receiver.

Thus I averaged out the percentage of targets, miss percentage, and average amount of throws per game, to give each WR the same amount of targets. Then I adjusted to see how their season numbers would have been, had they been in an average system.

Patterson is helped by this the most, by far. First off, Tyler Bray was just bad in terms of missing his wide receivers. However, Patterson was also targeted far less than a normal number 1. Had he been targeted at the same rate, he would have gained 549 yards, for a season total of 1327 yards. There were certainly be no questions about his production with those numbers.

Bailey incidentally is hurt by this. This of course is due to the high powered passing offense of West Virginia. I don’t think this drops Bailey’s value at all, because he’d still have 1378 yards, but it shows you the influence of WV’s offense.

Hopkins numbers would be obscene with more targets. He’s looking at north of 1600 yards with more targets, this of course is due to his high average catch distance.

Allen’s numbers remain mostly unchanged. This means in terms of targets and misses, Allen represents the average number 1 WR. I understand Maynard wasn’t the best QB and it doesn’t take into account sacks and whatnot, but it’s a start.

*One final note on all of this. I realize this is imperfect. Would Hopkins have been as much of a deep threat without Tajh Boyd? Thus if he had a different QB, would he have caught as many deep passes with more targets? Possibly. I’m trying to work on a way to solve this, but this is my first pass at the WRs.

I’m going to present a few more charts without comment. You’ll find drop percentage, yardage by quarter, yardage by down, red zone yardage.

I’ll be tweeting out interesting stats that I come across (today I found out Justin Hunter drops ~10% of his passes)

*This one was extrapolated from a 6 game set of data, thus it won’t be perfect, but it’ll give you a feel for each WR

[ConnSKINS26]

That is fascinating. I knew Allen caught a huge number of passes near the LOS. I do think his game translates well down the field though, despite not doing it much in college. He's such a natural, smooth receiver. Doesn't have elite anything, except maybe catch radius. But he's a natural receiver. I wish he was more explosive, though.

[Monk4thaHALL]

Read this too:
http://secondroundstats.com/2013/02/06/tier2-wrs/

Tier 2 WRs:

I had a few people question why I chose the tier 1 of wide receivers like I did. To answer that question, when I initially did the film study, those were the first four I picked as the top. To be honest, after doing the analysis I don’t think those are the top 4 anymore, but I’ll let you decide for yourselves based on the stats. This grouping consists of some intriguing prospects that could be as high as first rounders or go as low as the third round. Let’s call this group the boom or bust group.

Where Are They Catching the Ball?

This represents what zones they caught the ball in, before yards after the catch. Unfortunately, I don’t have the exact routes or what side of the field they caught it on. That will have to wait until the next iteration of this.

Terrance Williams is the ultimate deep threat of this class. Around 39% of his catches were past 10 yards and over 79% of his passes were past 5 yards. Of course this shows up on tape, but it’s good to confirm it. We then have to wonder if he can translate that deep threat to the NFL or if he’ll get jammed at the line of scrimmage.

Wheaton is another deep threat in this class. He’s of a completely different build than Williams, but 41% of his passes were past 10 yards. Interestingly, 55% of his passes were within 5 yards. Most of the time he was catching short or deep passes, nothing in the middle.

Quinton Patton is well distributed across all zones. He doesn’t show a tendency to get past 20 yards, but there’s no zone in which he is simply not catching the ball. That tells us he’s a pretty versatile wide receiver who wasn’t pigeon holed in the offense.

Hunter seems to work the intermediate zones the most. We don’t see a whole lot of completions in the screen or deep game, but the majority (78%) of his completions coming between 1 and 20 yards. Only8.3% of Patterson’s catches were screens, so the screen game wasn’t a big part of the Tennessee offense, for whatever reason.

What’s Happening After the Catch?

Averaging around 19 yards per catch, Williams got most of his yardage before YAC. His yards after the catch are average at 5.2, but he caught the ball on average 14 yards past the line of scrimmage. That’s extremely high, the highest of this class by 3 yards

Quinton Patton is excellent after the catch. At 6.15 yards after the catch, Patton’s YAC is second best in this class behind Stedman Bailey. He also averages 6.3 yards/ screen catch. The fact that these numbers are close indicate he’s adept at getting similar amount of yardage on all types of catches.

Markus Wheaton’s yards after catch is a paltry 3.48. This is a little scary, this is more than two yards below the average for all wide receivers in this class. Why is it so low? Did he fall down as soon as he caught the ball? Did his size limit him from garnering more yards? It’s possible the sub-par QB rotation at Oregon State limited him.

Justin Hunter is still running backwards trying to get more yards after the catch. Hunter owns the second worst yards after the catch in this class. However, he was catching the ball relatively deep at 9.2 yards. Your evaluation is going to depend on if you value a deeper catcher or someone with better YAC.

***In the chart section below, there is a chart detailing how much YAC each receiver gained on average on screen passes. I highly recommend you check that out to complement this chart.

How Did Their Systems Help/Hurt Them?

This one is going to require a little explaining. I was able to derive how often a QB targets his number one wide receiver and how often QBs miss their wide receiver. Thus I averaged out the percentage of targets, miss percentage, and average amount of throws per game, to give each WR the same amount of targets. Then I adjusted to see how their season numbers would have been, had they been in an average system.

**I’m going to try out a new system to account for system, but to keep this post consistent with the previous post, I’ll keep the same system. I’ll do a separate post on that statistic.

Tyler Bray didn’t do Justin Hunter many favors. While Hunter was targeted often enough, Bray missed him extremely often, taking away some yardage he may have gained.

Patton’s case is similar to Stedman Bailey’s. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that they played in a pass happy offense, especially because his overall production was still very high at 1281 yards. Had it dropped down to a “non-elite” level, then we would be more concerned.

Wheaton and Williams’ QBs were about average in terms of misses and targets. This doesn’t mean their QBs were good, but rather compared to the QBs in this system, they were average. I don’t think many people would call Sean Mannion a world beater. The new system will adjust for this better.

I’m going to present a few more charts without comment. You’ll find average yardage/ screen, drop percentage, yardage by quarter, yardage by down, red zone yardage. I highly recommend you check out the first one, if you look at any.

[Dukes and Skins]

Monk this is amazing stuff to read through. The YAC for Wheaton is very surprising though. Have to wonder like the author if it was him or also due to some of the QB play

[ConnSKINS26]

Monk this is amazing stuff to read through. The YAC for Wheaton is very surprising though. Have to wonder like the author if it was him or also due to some of the QB play

Agreed. For a guy that can fly, its worrisome that he doesn't create for himself with the ball in his hands...that's usually basic Playmaking 101 stuff that you look for in quick receivers, gives you some hope that their explosiveness will carry over to other facets of the game they have yet to develop.