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, and top-100 picks at their position from the past four drafts.

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.

We’ve done the EDGE class and the interior defensive line class. Now, we’re on to off-ball linebackers.

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

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

Note that none of this year’s prospects fall into the upper right quadrant, which is the “blue chip” quadrant, where prospects are shown to test way above average athletically and way above average in production. The closest are UCLA’s Carson Schwesinger and Alabama’s Jihaad Campbell.

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

The next chart, purple lines, reflects how this year’s top LB prospects compare to the average of the past top 100 pick over the past four years at LB, so basically any linebacker taken in the first three rounds.

The intersecting purple lines represent the average athleticism and production of LB 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 LB prospects compare to the average of all linebackers drafted over the past four years.

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

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

Next up: CB prospects.

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