How Analysts Spot Winners Before The Crowd Catches On

The two games, from an analyst’s point of view, are so different. When it comes to recruiting top talent, a wide range of metrics is used to identify promising athletes with a much higher level of clarity than is possible simply by watching a college player perform. In this article, we take a look at how talent is identified by analysts.

Overview

There are a lot of armchair analysts out there, college sports fans who think they can spot a strong NFL draft candidate. There is, perhaps, a small degree of truth to this belief. It’s not very hard, most of the time, to spot a top-five draft pick, particularly given how much attention they tend to get on sports talk shows.

But the most anticipated NFL prospects generally make up the barest fraction of the players who actually enter the league. Inevitably, there’s also often at least one or two athletes who get picked late in the draft or go undrafted altogether and wind up having excellent careers.

It’s a trickier process than most people realize because it’s not just about spotting who was good in college. Analysts look for a wide variety of traits that aggregate into professional potential. In the next few headings, we’ll take a look at what some of these traits are.

Competition

This is arguably the biggest differentiator between draft prospects. An NFL recruiter may have hundreds or even thousands of players with nearly identical stat lines, but performance alone does not speak to a player’s professional potential.

What conference were they playing in? That’s often the more clarifying consideration. A good player in the SEC has a lot more credence than someone who’s found success in a tiny Midwest conference no one’s ever heard of.

The NFL isn’t looking for good players. They’re looking for elite athletes who can win at the highest imaginable level.

The same thing happens with horses that eventually go and compete in the Kentucky Derby. They are not only supposed to be fast or strong, but they also need to have the competitive edge to be able to endure the pressure of high-level competitions.

If you’re hoping to bet on the Derby, you can get a good breakdown of the odds here: https://www.twinspires.com/kentuckyderby/odds/

Technique

Perhaps naturally enough, analysts will also look at the technical details of an athlete’s performance, not just the numbers they’re producing, but the way they get there. Fundamentals are enormously important in the NFL. At the collegiate level, it is possible for a player to succeed based primarily on native ability. However, once athletes reach the NFL, even small mistakes or technique deficits can amount to big trouble.

Behavior

Player behavior is another core consideration. It probably doesn’t get as much attention from an analyst’s perspective as the stat line or any of the other considerations that we’ve taken a look at to this point, but it’s factored in because analysts know that players who are noted for not working very hard or partying excessively can be a significant liability to the team.

In certain cases, they may prefer someone with a hard work ethic but a more modest stat line over someone with ridiculous numbers who might burn out within the season. There have been recent examples of player personality directly correlating with their draft pick placement. Deion Sanders is a good example. He was drafted considerably later than had been anticipated, not necessarily due to his ability, though that might have been a factor as well, but because he was known for being very difficult.

It’s An Imperfect Science

Even with all of the data that goes into player analysis, it’s still an imperfect science. There are countless examples of players who have been underestimated in the draft, or, for that matter, overestimated. Part of the reason for this is that no matter how good a collegiate conference is, it’ll never truly match the rigorous competitive environment of the NFL.

If you think about it, even an amazing college team might only have one to three players who are draft eligible. That means that even the best college athletes have very limited exposure to the level of competition that is present in the professional environment.

Some people rise to the challenges of the NFL much better than expected. Others never quite find their stride. Analysts can only guess at what will happen. From there, it’s our pleasure as members of the audience to watch our favorite college athletes adjust to the challenges of professional competition.

It’s funny. Analysts have all of the numbers in the world. It’s their full-time job to study them and draw conclusions that will shape the future of the game. Even with all of that, their best guesses are just that. At the end of the day, no one knows exactly how a prospect will perform. What players are you interested in this year?