You can find limitless analysis on NFL Network, ESPN, Twitter, etc. But, I wanted more. I wanted to create my own opinions about prospects, because no analyst is perfect. No draft class is looked back without question marks. How did Keenan Allen fall all the way to the 3rd round before becoming one of the better wide receivers in the NFL? Why did Robert Meachem get drafted in the first round, but never have a 1,000 yd season?
This article contains my findings. The stats that I have found will never be intended to be used on their own as a predictor. Rather, these stats are another piece to add to the puzzle, as coachability, passion for the game, scheme fit, and injuries are hard to predict from an outsiders view.
With that out of the way, let's have some fun shall we?
Breakout Age
This stat was found on both playerprofiler.com and a few articles on rotoviz.com. Seriously, if you found this series even somewhat interesting, go check out one of these websites. Lots of valuable information is being put out on there.
Back to Breakout Age. To understand breakout age, we need to revisit the College Dominator stat from last the last article. Here’s a refresher. A player’s college dominator describes how large of a part of their college offense they were. For a receiver, their dominator just depends on their receiving yards and touchdowns.
According to playerprofiler.com, here is the definition of breakout age:
Breakout Age – the younger a person is when he/she first becomes a leader in their respective field, the more likely that person is to go on to become *phenom*enal at their craft. Following this logic, Frank DuPont and Shawn Siegele first examined each wide receiver’s breakout age on RotoViz.com.
The breakout age for wide receivers is defined by their age at midpoint of the college football season when they first posted a Dominator Rating at or above 20% (unless an or other extenuating circumstances prevented the player from playing a full complement of offensive snaps).
2017 NFL Season
Why are college dominator and breakout age important?
I pulled College Dominators and Breakout Ages for WRs from playerprofiler.com. In this busy season right before the draft, I haven't had the time to generate them myself. So, playerprofiler may be using a different formula than I would use, but there are still trends to be discovered.
Let's look at WRs that had more than 400 yards receiving in 2017.
Looking above, 75 WRs had 400 receiving yards in 2017. 56 of those 75 WRs had a college dominator over 30%.
Moving on to breakout age, 9 WRs had less than a 20% college dominator. So no Breakout age were recorded for these players. Tyreek Hill is one of these and most notable. He was never a large part of his college offense at Oklahoma St. or West Alabama, likely because he played more running back/offensive weapon and didn't rack up enough receiving yards which is what we're looking at today.
Of those 66 players that have breakout ages, 54 have 20.5 or less. Most players were able to breakout by age 20.5.
So, at least to me, it seems both college dominator and breakout age played a large part in a prospect’s profile for current NFL players.
History
How do these stats hold up in the past? I again, went to playerprofiler.com and made a list of players who were drafted in the first 3 rounds and compiled their College Dominator and Breakout age. Since their database has more recent wide receivers, 2010 was the oldest draft class where I could pull pretty much every player from.
This is the list I made. I used Hakeem Nicks as the dividing line. Nicks had 2 1,000 yard seasons as a pro, along with 5,000 career yards and 30 career TDs. If players fell below that, I colored them red and labeled them a bust. I colored players green if I felt they were a good player. Those left black were either a so-so player or I felt they still had a chance to make a career. Disagree with some, but I think there is definitely a pattern.
The rules I developed are pretty simple. First off, they need to have a 30% dominator. It’s very rare to see a good player in the NFL after never posting a college dominator above 30% in college. Secondly, I matched up Breakout Age and round drafted. Any player drafted in the first 3 rounds and had a Breakout Age in the 18s I put in the “Who to Draft” column. Also included were players taken by the second round with a Breakout Age in the 19s, players taken in round one with a 20.0-20.5 Breakout Age, and players taken in the top 10 of round one with a Breakout Age between 20.5 and 21.
Scanning the “Who to Draft” column we find a lot of good players, but also a few busts. I count about 28% busts make up this column.
The right column, “Who not to draft” contains the players remaining. I count about a 77% bust rate here. Also interesting, in my estimation, the last “good” player drafted in this column was back in 2010.
Before we move on, let’s take a moment to marvel at that 2014 WR class. There’s almost as many good players from that draft, as there is from the other 5 classes between 2010-2015 combined.
2018 Draft Class
What does the 2018 draft class look like? Here are some of the notable names.
Starting with the Dominator column. As we mentioned before, players with a college dominator under 30% have a slim chance of success in the NFL. One column over shows the breakout age for every prospect. (Player Profiler didn’t have a breakout age for Daurice Fountain). In the breakout age column, I put every age over 20.5 in red. Next, using the rules mentioned in the previous section, I greened every breakout age that fell in the proper draft rounds (based on NFL.com’s projected round). If I didn’t color their breakout age’s, they aren’t projected to be taken early enough to have their age matched up with a high enough round.
It may seem weird that a player with a Breakout Age of 20 has to be taken in the first round for them to be good. But, draft round is one of the biggest predictors of success in the NFL, so it is a very important part of this analysis. I view it as if a player is taken in the first round, but has a breakout age of 20, he's so good that the fact that he was 20 when he first broke out isn't as much of a concern. If the same player is taken in the second or third round, then NFL scouts didn’t see him as great of a prospect and the breakout age of 20 is more concerning.
The Comparison column is more than just a player type comp. It is a column where I try to project success as well. First I looked for a player in the NFL that closely fits the same dominator, breakout age, and draft round. After that I tried to match height/weight, but that didn’t always get accomplished. For example, I compared Antonio Callaway to Aaron Dobson. Dobson had similar stats and was taken at around the same projected round. This means that I think Callaway has a similar amount of success that Dobson had (out of the NFL in 4 years). That may be a bit harsh, but that’s what Callaway compares to.
The last column, titled “Bust Chances”, shows how often players drafted in the projected round and similar stats busted. Not just a mediocre career, legitimately busted. So, the lower the percentage, the better.
Let’s discuss a few of the prospects. Calvin Ridley is a player I’ve seen first on many top 5 lists. I have legitimate concerns for him. First and foremost, his Breakout Age is 20.7 and that’s a little higher than I’d like. Second, his best college dominator in a season was just barely over 30%. I get it, he was easily the most polished receiver at the combine, but he is getting fairly old for a prospect. These stats compare him to Nelson Agholar, who was a good route runner entering the NFL if I remember correctly. Agholar hasn’t exactly set the world on fire and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ridley have similar success. Players busted 37% of the time that compare similarly to Ridley.
Moving quickly now, DJ Moore, Courtland Sutton, James Washington, Christian Kirk, and Jordan Lasley all have the greenlight on both stats. Lasley may be the most surprising. It is highly important that Lasley sneaks into round 2. His chances of success rise much higher if that happens. These guys are the ones I'm most excited about in this draft class. I'm not guaranteeing that these 5 guys will be stars, but applying what we learned in the previous section, you'll be very hard pressed to find successful starters elsewhere.
DJ Chark and Equanimeous St. Brown are two prospects talked about a lot that I have concerns about. Chark and St. Brown both didn’t produce as well as you’d like. Both had about a 25% dominator in their best season according to playerprofiler.com. I don’t care if the QB didn’t help them out, most NFL caliber players should be able to have a 30% market share to prove they have what it takes. Even if a QB only passed for 500 yards in a whole season you’d like to see the wide receiver contribute for a larger portion of that.
If you're looking for a late round gem, look no further than Justin Watson out of Penn. Justin Watson is 6’2” 215 pound wide receiver. Here are his college stats.
Watson posted a 60.3% college dominator and a 19.4 breakout age at Penn. He is 1 out of 9 total players with a 60%+ dominator in the playerprofiler database. Keelan Cole was undrafted last year and had over 700 receiving yards last season with the Jaguars. Leonte Carroo was drafted in the 3rd round by the Dolphins and hasn't done anything yet. Those two remain to be seen. Ramses Barden (3rd round) and Paul McRoberts (undrafted) are the two I'd considered busts. That leaves 4 non busts Demaryius Thomas (1st round), Dez Bryant (1st round), Vincent Jackson (2nd round), and Nate Washington (undrafted).
Obviously, you can't compare Watson to high profile picks Thomas and Bryant if he goes late in the draft. But, there are notable names taken late like Cole and Washington.
I'll be keeping my eye on him for sure. I even placed a bet on Watson vs my fellow podcasters in episode 3 when we broke down the WRs and DL.
Conclusion
Wow, that’s a lot of information to digest. I’ll try to wrap it up here. D.J. Moore, Courtland Sutton, Christian Kirk, James Washington, and Jordan Lasley have me the most intrigued in this class with good college dominators and breakout ages. I have questions about Calvin Ridley, D.J. Chark, and Equanimeous St. Brown. Finally, pay attention to where Justin Watson goes. If he finds a good landing spot, he may become a contributor.
With that said, the NFL draft is almost upon us. I’m looking forward to sitting back and keeping an eye on the guys I’ve outlined in this series. Hopefully you all are able to enjoy the as well.
Next week I plan to put out a follow-up article after we know what round every player is taken. I still maintain that is the single biggest factor of determining success in the NFL.
2016-2017 Draft Class
I didn’t include the last two draft classes above, because we have yet to get a perfectly clear read on these WRs. In fact, we just saw a few WRs from the 2014 class finally break out this year. So, I’m still going to wait and see with the past couple of draft classes.
Here they are:
By Austin Goering
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