The Quarterback Prediction Problem: Forecasting the Performance of College Quarterbacks Selected in the NFL Draft
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Julian Wolfson
National Football League (NFL) teams spend substantial time and money trying to predict which college quarterbacks eligible to be drafted into the NFL will have successful professional careers. But despite this investment of resources, it is common for quarterbacks to perform much better or worse than anticipated. Prior work on this “quarterback prediction problem” has concluded that NFL teams are poor at determining which quarterbacks are likely to be successful based on information available prior to the draft. However, these analyses have generally focused only on quarterbacks who played in the NFL, ignoring those who were drafted but did not appear in a professional game. Using data on all quarterbacks drafted since 1997, we considered the problem of predicting NFL success as defined by two metrics (games played and Net Points), based on when a quarterback was drafted and his performances in college and at the NFL Combine. Our analyses suggest that college and combine statistics have little value for predicting whether a quarterback will be successful in the NFL. Contrary to previous work, we conclude that NFL teams aggregate pre-draft information—including qualitative observations—quite effectively, and their inability to consistently identify college quarterbacks who will excel in the professional ranks is a consequence of random variability in future performance due to factors which are unlikely to be observable.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Estimating the Offsetting Effects of Driver Behavior in Response to Safety Regulation: The Case of Formula One Racing
- Predicting the Atlanta Falcons Play-Calling Using Discriminant Analysis
- Computing the Probability of Winning a Competition with an Application to Horse Races
- A Regression-Based Adjusted Plus-Minus Statistic for NHL Players
- Markov Analysis of APBA, a Baseball Simulation Game
- Sports Ranking with Nonuniform Weighting
- You're Hurting My Game: Lineup Protection and Injuries in Major League Baseball
- Factor Analysis in Performance Diagnostic Data of Competitive Ski Jumpers and Nordic Combined Athletes
- Match Analysis of Elite Ice Sledge Hockey in Paralympics 2010
- And After That, Who Knows?: Detailing the Marginal Accuracy of Weekly College Football Polls
- On Estimating the Ability of NBA Players
- The Quarterback Prediction Problem: Forecasting the Performance of College Quarterbacks Selected in the NFL Draft
- Finally, Evidence for a Momentum Effect in the NBA
- Are NFL Coaches Risk and Loss Averse? Evidence from Their Use of Kickoff Strategies
- Responses to Scoring or Conceding the First Goal in the NHL
- Using Generalizability Theory to Examine Scoring Reliability and Variability of Judging Panels in Skating Competitions
- Development of a Behavioural Assessment System for Achievement Motivation in Soccer Matches
- Prediction Accuracy of Linear Models for Paired Comparisons in Sports
- Comparing Hall of Fame Baseball Players Using Most Valuable Player Ranks
- Devising New Australian Rules Football Scoring Systems
- Discriminating Factors between Successful and Unsuccessful Teams: A Case Study in Elite Youth Olympic Basketball Games
- Tweaking the NFL's Quarterback Passer Rating for Better Results
- Home Advantage in American College Football Games: A Multilevel Modelling Approach
- Estimating NHL Scoring Rates
