Inside The Data

With the NFL Draft approaching this month, I looked at the top prospects from all positions groups and measured their athleticism and production, using scatter charts to compare their profiles to other players at their position in this year’s draft, along with first-round picks from their position in the past four drafts, top-100 picks at their position from the past four drafts and all prospects drafted in the past four drafts.

We’ve done EDGEs,  interior defensive line, off-ball linebackers, and cornerbacks. The latest is the safety class.

You can hear my podcast version with Geoff Mosher on all""> Inside The Birds podcast platforms.

In each scatter chart, the colored horizontal line represents the average score of college production from the prospect position group. The intersecting vertical line represents the average score of athletic testing of the prospect position group.

This first scatter chart shows how the top prospects of this year’s CB class compare to the average of the first-round picks of the past four drafts.

Note that South Carolina S Nick Emmanwori is the only safety in the “blue chip” quadrant and none fall into the lower, right “safe” quadrant for those who are highly productive.

The next chart is the same as the first, but with Eagles safeties from the past four drafts added in for comparison and perspective.

In the next chart, purple lines reflect how this year’s top S prospects compare to the average of the past top-100 picks over the past four years at CB, so basically any safety taken in the first three rounds.

The intersecting purple lines represent the average athleticism and production of safeties drafted in the top 1oo over the past four drafts.

Like we did before, we’ve now added the Eagles draft picks over the past four years into the same chart for comparison and perspective.

For the final charts, using red lines, we looked at how this year’s top safety prospects compare to the average of all safeties drafted over the past four years.

The intersecting red lines represent the average athleticism and production of all safeties drafted over the past four drafts.

And once again, we used the same chart and added in Eagles S selections from the past four years.

Next up: We go to the offensive side.

– Sam Finkel is a staff writer for InsideTheBirds.com whose focus is on analytics.