Thread by @ScottBarrettDFB

In our final attempt to find meaning - any meaning whatsoever - in the Combine, I wanted to look at the data in a slightly different way than straight correlations

How athletic is an elite fantasy RB/WR/TE compared to an average one? Or an above average one to a below average one? What happens when we bring draft capital into the equation? What events might NFL teams be over/underweighting in the draft?

Running Backs

In each grouping, Speed Score (weight-adjusted forty-yard-dash time) appears most significant. ...But remember, these numbers are still extremely low overall

Among elite vs. average backs, Speed Score, the Vert, and the Broad Jump were most significant

Interestingly,,,

AJ Dillon absolutely smashed those events:

Speed Score: 95th percentile
Vert: 98th percentile
Broad: 99th percentile

Compare that to supposed all-time Combine freak Christine Michael (99th percentile SPARQ): 66th / 99th / 91st

Or Jonathan Taylor’s 97th / 75th / 83rd

Wide Receivers

Again, the data suggests athleticism (or at least how it’s measured at the Combine) matters far less for wide receivers than the other positions

Tyler Johnson > Chase Claypool, don't @ me

https://twitter.com/ScottBarrettDFB/status/1233424047171604485?s=20

Athletically, there's very little difference between an elite fantasy wide receiver and an average one.

And elite fantasy WRs are actually slower and worse at the broad jump than their average counterparts

Interestingly bench press was the best event at distinguishing between an above average and a below average fantasy wide receiver, but, according to the data, NFL teams still massively overweighted that event on draft day.

(Or at least that's what the data implies)

Tight Ends

The data seems to imply that the Combine matters most for fantasy TEs, then RBs, and then WRs. That's true too for straight correls.

And the single most significant variable across all positions is Speed Score

S/O to Bill Barnwell (ESPN) for creating it

But though 10.4% is the highest number we've seen so far, it's still quite low.

It's a positive indicator of talent (and a small one), and not much more than that. Surely no holy grail.

But lets dig deeper into it

Here’s the all-time top-20 TE leaders in Speed Score (at the Combine), and their best-season finish in PPR leagues

Of these, ~55% finished as a TE1. ~39% finished as a top-5 fantasy TE

Obviously, this bodes well for rookie Albert Okwuegbunam

Here’s one way in which the events appear far more significant:

~thresholds~

Your likelihood of posting at least one top-6 fantasy season in your TE career, by Speed Score:

TEs with a double-digit Speed Score reached our threshold only 4.3% of the time (8 of 185)

This bodes poorly for the Bryant Boys, who were beloved by my Pre-Combine model

Harrison Bryant: 97.1
Hunter Bryant: 98.3

Here's the same thing but look at the vert for TEs

And now Speed Score for RBs

Among all Combine-Invite RBs to run a Speed Score over 105, 21% went on to post multiple RB1 seasons across their fantasy careers (26 of 153). Among those with a Speed Score below that mark (the bottom ~75%), only 3% posted multiple RB1 seasons

But remember,

SPORK Score looks at all / the best events and weights them appropriately according to actual positional significance

I'll have content up on SPORK at some point in the distant future

Final Tweet

I'll have content on SPORK at some point

Here's the RB splits for SPORK

;;whispers;; Jonathan Taylor and AJ Dillon have SPORK Scores that rank top-15 at their position all-time