Fitzgerald-Spielberger NFL Draft Trade Value Chart

The concept for this research was to use NFL salary data to retroactively grade every draft selection from 2011 through 2015 following the conclusion of their rookie contracts, and to use that data to better project the value of each future draft selection.

First, we found the average of the Top 5 APY (average per year) contracts at each position in each year. For example, the Top 5 QB APY's are $35 million, $34 million, $33.5 million, $33.5 million, $32 million. The average of these 5 APY's is $33.6 million. An APY of $16.8 million would thus be 50% of Top 5 APY. We then converted every new contract in each year into a percent of the Top 5 APY average at the respective position.

In order to get a more accurate representation of the expected performance of a particular draft pick and increase the sample size, we smoothed the data by averaging out the post rookie-contract APY amounts for a few picks before and after each draft pick. The grouping of a few draft picks within a small range removed a lot of the variance that occurs in large part due to “busts” and generated more realistic projections, as the range more accurately reflects the quality of talent available to a drafting team. The ranges start very small (e.g. examining picks No. 1 + No. 2 for the No. 1 slot) and expand in the later rounds of the draft

You can learn more about this analysis in the book The Drafting Stage by Brad Spielberger & Jason Fitzgerald.